Share your Bleaching Horror Stories

[Member-I]

We all know it's a bad idea to bleach our hair more than once a month ... and we've all probably done it at least once in our impatience to be our desired colour.  

Here's a place to share our horror stories of bleaching gone bad ... and how long it takes to fix.

My story?  I was so excited to have pink that I used 40 vol peroxide.  It left me with a mildly burnt scalp (which hurt so badly ... like a bad sunburn) but because there were still ginger streaks and I simply refused to dye over it (desperate to avoid a peachy fade), so I put a box blonde on top.

O_O My poor hair.  I thought it was strong enough to handle it, as it had handled regular box dyes for years ... but no.  

I honestly didn't even realise how damaged it was until almost a month or two after I'd done it ... because although it felt a little chewy/stretchy when wet, it hadn't snapped when dry.  Three months down the line, though, if I tugged at the ends of my hair I'd have about a half a cm or so of my strands scattered about my fingertips.  I kept thinking "oh, I'll just get an inch or so chopped off, then the rest will be fine," but it never was.  I regularly reconstructed and deep conditioned but still ended up getting splits every couple of months.  I finally bit the bullet last week and had the last four inches of damage chopped off.  It has taken me around 14 months to grow out all of the damage.  My hair is so healthy now, and I'd actually forgotten what an entire head of healthy hair felt like.

My hair would have been down to the middle of my back now if I'd only used 20 vol and waited an appropriate length of time before further lightening.  I really wish I'd just settled for a month of peachy lowlights in my pink instead.

So, come on, spill.  What's your bleach mishap that had you learning the bleach lessons the hard way?

[Debbielou]

As my hair is soooo thick and very strong I ignored everyone on here and bleached bleached and yep bleached some more

I bleached once in sept to go plum
I re-bleached ALL the hair to go cerise in oct
I re-bleached ALL the hair to go turq in nov, and 2 days later I re-bleached to get it lighter (oops)
as my hair still felt ok (even the hairdresser said she wouldnt recommend it, but as she pulled on my hair and it didnt break or anything she said I was lucky) sooo I decided I wanted green in dec for christmas, so another re-bleach of all the hair, and it didnt remove the turq so 2 days later I did ANOTHER full bleach, to go green
as my hair still felt ok, in jan when I hated the fade I re-bleached again the full head to go cerise, and guess what??? yepp too many bleaches made my hair snap! it looked awful like hay, so I learnt my lesson, I left the pink as long as I could possibly stand and tried to baby my hair but nope it wasnt having it, so in april I had it all cut really really short till none of the bad hair was left
(WOW reading that back- I did 7 full head bleaches in 5 mths)

Ive definatly learnt my lesson, and will listen to everyone on here lol, I did re-bleach after the hair cut as by then it was mostly my roots so virgin hair, Im now violet, and there will be no more bleaching as often as I did, Im going to do plum next on the violet, and will try the plum on the roots when they come through, it will be at least 2 mths before I bleach again AND I also wont be popping strong (or any) bleach on the ends that have been bleached before

[Pippachainsaw]

blimey debbie! im glad your hair is short to start off with!

i went form xxl red(2 years worth) to a weird peach coloyr ready for nuclear with an hour long 40% bleach in feb
then in april i did another 40% bleach to go pink
then in sept i did 2x 40% bleaches to weeks apart......my hair melted! was like chewing gum when wet & crunchy when dry. just horrid. after 8months of kpak, i decided my hair was ready to go silver the following may...
had 2 use 2box dyes as we ran out. my hair melted again. had to cut off my shoulder length collar bone hair to a bob & then re cut it to a blunt bob & used no bleach(except for roots) from june to feb this year i think it was.

i think i need one more cut & i will be fully healthy again. i just wish id listened to the ladies on here & my friends who said hell to the no =s

[KatiePillow]

The worst I did was I had shoulder length black hair in 2007 (and I did all over reapplications, not just roots D:), in the july I decided to go blonde, I bleached once.. went a mahogany colour.. bleached again (same day) bright orange. Then I left it a month, bleached again, about 4 inches of blonde and the rest orange..
So cut it all off except the 4 inches of blonde.. and even that hair looked like straw.. it recovered fairly quickly but I did cut ALL my hair off - it was 1.5 inches at the back and the longest bits were as said, about 4-5" (so basically a pixie cut) if I hadn't cut it off, it'd have been a lot worse..
Don't do it if you want to keep your length basically!

[Daftscrawl]

Mine isn't a horror story but I'm completely freaked out as to why it isn't.

In July of last year I had box ash blonde hair with atomic pink in the fringe, I decided I didn't want the atomic pink anymore and wanted to go white. So with no understanding of what I was doing (because I hadn't discovered this forum yet) I bought the lightest John Frieda foam colour available and in two months I used it 6 times!!!

My hair was fine, wtf?!

[StephanieFlowers]

Back in October I was like "oh cool I wanna go turquoise!". I've never bleached my hair myself, but I've been using box dyes since I was 14. Not knowing better, I bleached my hair with 40 vol twice in 24 hours and my hair totally melted. It literally melted and matted together, and had to have most of my hair cut off. Ever since then my hair was still breaking and snapping and I haven't been able to straighten my hair much without more breakage. Last week I had another huge hair cut and the hairdresser got rid of the last few inches of damage. It's taken six months and having a tonne of hair cut off for it to get anywhere near back to normal.

[Mindi Kellaway]

Mine is from late November of 2010 - First a little back story - in April 2010 I had natural dreads with extenders put in my hair, in black.  Previous to this, I had been box-dyeing my hair black for about six years with a few small periods of colours after chemical straightening damage forced me to get a pixie cut back in 2007 (but that's another horror story!).  So basically, about once a month chemical treatments for a period of about 6 years built up, and I never just dyed the roots black, I always re-did the full head.
So in November 2010, I decided to take the natural dreads out, as I had too much on at the time and didn't have the time to devote to maintenance.  Once they were out, I got bored with my hair being just plain black, and decided to dye two chunky streaks at the sides white blonde a la Patricia Day (Horrorpops).  My hair felt in really good condition (from being in dreads and having very little in the way of styling products or harsh shampoos or dyeing for about 8 months), so I went for it and bleached.  Using 40 vol bleach, straight up.  First bleach was as good as could be expected with all the build up of black dye (this was before I discovered colour B4 - wish I'd known about it first!) - the roots which were virgin hair (about 2 inches worth - I hadn't dyed the roots black for a while from sheer laziness!) went a bright blonde, then it gradually faded into varying shades of ginger.  Obviously, I was disappointed, as I'd foolishly thought that I'd get to blonde in one bleaching, even though I already knew from previous experience that black dye is a nightmare to bleach out!  So I then, even more foolishly, decided to just bleach again straight away, again with 40 vol.
Obviously, this was a complete disaster, and my hair at the sides melted, with about 3 inches falling off straight away, and the rest being gummy and horrible, except for about 1 inch at the roots.   
I tried everything I could think of to repair it (sadly, I didn't know about K-pak then, I think it was just before I joined this forum, so hadn't read any of the advice on here either, and didn't know about bleach baths. *doh*)
from deep conditioning, to biolustre treatment (incidentally, biolustre is a complete waste of money - don't bother with it!), but of course, nothing worked.  I even tried henna to attempt to bring more strength to my hair, but that sadly had the opposite effect to what I'd hoped, and it was after the henna that I decided that I just had to bite the bullet and go for the chop.  Because of the placement of the streaks I'd tried to do, I could either go for a full pixie crop (since there was about 1 inch of healthy hair at the roots), or just have the sides cut and end up with a mullet *shudder*!  Since mullet was never going to be an option, I had to have a pixie crop.  I went from about 12 inches long hair to a super short pixie crop because of my stupid bleaching mistake, and I have definitely learned my lesson!  Never again!
It took me until February of this year to grow my hair out enough to have real dreads with extenders put back in again, and I can honestly say that I wish I'd never taken the first lot of dreads out in the first place, not least because I wouldn't have had to go for the chop because of the bleach damage, but also because I really missed having them!

[amyloud92]

before i discovered this site and the magic of veggie dyes, i wanted red hair. I had dyed black hair. went to the hair dressers, she did two bleach baths for an hour each, then put the dye on, which was permanent, for about an hour and a half. i quite liked the colour, went back a month later for roots and a touch up, she left the dye on for another hour and a half and it was a dark brown colour, when i complained, she just said thats what happens.
so i took it upon myself to dye my hair. bleached my hair for an hour, then whacked on a XXL box dye. did thhe same thing every month for about 3 months, then dicovered beeunique. Started to bleach bath my hair instead to put my cherrybomb,AP mix on.
when i started to want to go blonde, i took you guys advice, bleach bathed every 3 to 4 weeks, but in Jan, go too impatient, whacked on a full bleach without coconut piling before hand and killed my hair. its only just starting to recover. had about 2 inches cut off the day after doing it,  and been babying ever since.

[MommyMorgan]

before i discovered this site and the magic of veggie dyes, i wanted red hair. I had dyed black hair. went to the hair dressers, she did two bleach baths for an hour each, then put the dye on, which was permanent, for about an hour and a half. i quite liked the colour, went back a month later for roots and a touch up, she left the dye on for another hour and a half and it was a dark brown colour, when i complained, she just said thats what happens.
so i took it upon myself to dye my hair. bleached my hair for an hour, then whacked on a XXL box dye. did thhe same thing every month for about 3 months, then dicovered beeunique. Started to bleach bath my hair instead to put my cherrybomb,AP mix on.
when i started to want to go blonde, i took you guys advice, bleach bathed every 3 to 4 weeks, but in Jan, go too impatient, whacked on a full bleach without coconut piling before hand and killed my hair. its only just starting to recover. had about 2 inches cut off the day after doing it,  and been babying ever since.

Iv just read this and i am horrified at what your hairdresser did to your hair! 2 bleach baths and a permanent tint in the same day - all for an hour or more each!! Triple processing - and i know of no permanent tint on this earth that has to be left on for 1hr30mins! It scares me that there are people out there who are passed on these qualifications yet clearly have no clue. Im so sorry you had such a bad experience, it makes me sad to hear about things like this as im very passionate about hair, and very dedicated to my training so to hear of how clients can end up losing faith in their stylist is really sad.

[Firefox7275]

Thanks for sharing ladies, sobering thread. 

[marthamagic;]

My worst bleach story ever.
I'd been blonde since I was about 15, then when I went to sixth form I wanted a 'new look' so I dyed my hair red with XXL dyes in September 2009, and was redying all of my hair every 2 weeks to keep it bright, then I dyed it black by accident in November 2009 and then in Janurary 2010 I bleached all of my hair with 40vol bleach for 2 hours.
Needless to say it didn't remove all of the built up dye, my hair went bright orange and was snapping off and gummy and ruined, so I had to go and have all of my hair chopped off and dyed back to my natural colour, which didn't ruin any salvaged hair, my hairdresser is amazing with colour.

And I wasn't allowed to dye my hair for 6 months and it was all horrible for that amount of time too

[amyloud92]

before i discovered this site and the magic of veggie dyes, i wanted red hair. I had dyed black hair. went to the hair dressers, she did two bleach baths for an hour each, then put the dye on, which was permanent, for about an hour and a half. i quite liked the colour, went back a month later for roots and a touch up, she left the dye on for another hour and a half and it was a dark brown colour, when i complained, she just said thats what happens.
so i took it upon myself to dye my hair. bleached my hair for an hour, then whacked on a XXL box dye. did thhe same thing every month for about 3 months, then dicovered beeunique. Started to bleach bath my hair instead to put my cherrybomb,AP mix on.
when i started to want to go blonde, i took you guys advice, bleach bathed every 3 to 4 weeks, but in Jan, go too impatient, whacked on a full bleach without coconut piling before hand and killed my hair. its only just starting to recover. had about 2 inches cut off the day after doing it,  and been babying ever since.

Iv just read this and i am horrified at what your hairdresser did to your hair! 2 bleach baths and a permanent tint in the same day - all for an hour or more each!! Triple processing - and i know of no permanent tint on this earth that has to be left on for 1hr30mins! It scares me that there are people out there who are passed on these qualifications yet clearly have no clue. Im so sorry you had such a bad experience, it makes me sad to hear about things like this as im very passionate about hair, and very dedicated to my training so to hear of how clients can end up losing faith in their stylist is really sad.

I know, I remember sitting there thinkning it must be time for it to come off but she kept walking past me, she cut the hair of two other people whilst i had one bleach on!  she never gave enough time for me when i went in for anything, the trainee person always ended up drying and styling my hair cos her next client had turned up. I dont go to the haidressers anymore really. Only after i fried it in Jan and my dads friend whos a hair dresser was on holiday.

[TabithaBlue]

I picked up the wrong bottle and used 40 vol instead of 20 vol. Left it on for an hour.

I now have short hair.

[Pixelchu]

It was my first time bleaching my hair 4 or 5 years ago, and I enlisted my now ex to help me out. I was going from mahogany to blonde, using a Jerome Russel kit (which I still use these days!).

I must have got a pretty strong developer. I left it on till my hair was mostly blonde, which was a couple of hours, I thought it hurting was just part of the process... I had blisters on my scalp for 3 weeks after... And it still had gingery bits!

[Glitterpix]

left it on for a couple of hours?! ouch!

My horror story is from about 3 years ago...
My hairdresser had recently dyed my hair a box dye black, and had done two peekaboo slices of blonde through the lengths

anyway, a month later and I'd changed my mind and decided I wanted to all over blonde.
I didn't know much about colouring at that point and assumed a trained hairdresser would know best
She never tried a colour stripper to get the box dye out first and instead told me that I'd need a 40vol bleach, she applied this to my head and scalp, and then after 15 mins panicked about what she'd done, knowing its not meant to go on the scalp, so washed it out...
So there was no lift to my hair, just damage

she left it like that for about 3 weeks, then did an all over 20vol taking my hair to orange, and just left it like that, saying how because i had black dyed hair and naturally dark brown hair, i could never be blonde (i didnt know anything about toning then so believed her!)

I couldnt have bright orange fried hair! So thats when I first went atomic pink, but because of the damage I need several inches of hair cut off...

I now only dye my hair myself!

Oh, and I loved the feeling of her praising how wonderful my hair looks blonde nowadays, after she said it couldnt be done!

[KittyLost]

Im ashamed to say I destroyed my hair almost willingly, i knew what i was doing was wrong i knew my hair couldn't possibly survive the onslaught i would do but time was against me and i held out a lil hope that my hair was different, it could withstand it. I knew what i was doing was the wrong way about it and i knew from this forum and common sense what the right way about it wouldve been.

My story is from roughly a year ago. I was all over blue and loving it, got there with minimal damage, had been blue a few weeks and i was growing my hair. It was all one length, thick, healthy and past my shoulders. After work noticed I hadn't changed it from blue for a while and with a change of regional managers and a smackdown on visible tattoos and piercings they told me my hair needed to go back to a natural colour and quickly. They gave me a weekend off. I did a full head bleaching with the 8shade XXL maximum blonde followed by two colour b4s which still didn't shift my blue and left me with my blonde roots. I then did another round of XXL bleach the next day and it still hardly made a dent so i shoved a permanent brown on top. I was left with browny orange roots and everything else was disgusting blue green grey mud mess, not to mention my hair completely gave up so i shoved directions poppy red on it so at least the colour was an acceptable shade but then had to dye it back brown 2weeks later for a formal occassion. It wYas gummy when breaking when wet, i couldnt brush it or put my fingers through it without it coming away, my once curly hair was straight and lank and limp and dry it felt like straw but also fluffy. No amount of joico was bringing it back, i spent 3weeks moisturising as much as i could, kpak when i washed which was once a week, i had to leave my hair to dry then gently clip it back and plaster my fringe backwards with bobby pins i couldnt dare think bout using heat. I eventually went to the hairdresser to admit defeat and cut off damage, i ended up with 2inch layers and a massively choppy almost mullety type haircut cause i refused to lose length which i'd just spent a year growing. Extremely short layers on curly hair? Not a good look. I had to go back repeatedly for trims too cause the damage was so bad and never ending that really i shouldve just shaved my head.

A year on and my hair is down to my armpits still heavily layered but the shortest are chin length now but i have definately learned my lesson. It is in much better condition due to a year with 1 perm dye and only one bleach for my side flash and no heat styling, my curl is back too. But i havent even considered going near any bleach and im still terrified too even though i want to dip dye. Ive resigned myself to growing out all dye before i go back to a strong relationship with colours again so i've got a long wait to go considering i'm still growing my hair too.

[holly]

I'm suffering from a slight mishap at the moment but I wouldn't say horror story. I re did my roots yesterday with XXL platinum blonde and due to the heat I only left it on for 20 minutes as opposed to the suggested 40. Even though the underneath of my hair was done last I have quite severe blisters and last night it felt like my entire scalp was sunburnt. I don't honestly know what I did wrong or how to avoid this is 6-8 weeks when my roots need doing again

[Mindi Kellaway]

Holly - if you don't need an awful lot of lift on your roots to get your colour to work, I'd suggest a bleach bath next time round, ideally with a 20vol peroxide developer. BUT - make sure your scalp is completely, 100% healed before you even think about putting any more chemicals on it, and do a skin patch test first as it sounds like you've got chemical burns on your scalp and this can lead to increased sensitivity to the chemicals in bleaches and dyes!  Also, if you put coconut oil on your hair & scalp before you bleach bath, it will help protect both your hair and your scalp from the chemicals in the bleach.

[holly]

Thanks Mindi, I was going to do a bleach bath but chickened out at the last minute when I read that box dye could be used instead. My hair is naturally quite a dark brown but I think I may try a bleach bath next time around instead. I just find it weird that my scalp coped perfectly well with 30vol bleach all over for an hour about 6 weeks ago. Did I re bleach too soon? x

[Mindi Kellaway]

It may be down to the heat as bleach development is made more intense by hot temperatures, or it could be a sensitivity to something else in the box dye kit if it's a brand you haven't used before.  Either way, a bleach bath should be much gentler on your scalp, and the coconut oil will help protect your scalp as well.

[Aeryu]

Before I started dying my hair with veggies, I always wanted a bright red fringe (around the age of 20-21), so after bad results on my natural hair, I got me bleach bags and applied it on.
The first time it was pretty much like normally is for me - ginger - but I didnt know that my hair doesnt go light easy yet.
Frustrated and all - instantly applied bleach again, and so on for the next 2 weeks, probably about 4-5 times in total.
It was nearly white, and looked fried as hell - and there is nothing I could do about it. Applying perm reds on it resulted in red hair for 2 washes and ginger forever after :S.

Thankfully no hair been shed.

Yet...

I felt like some white hair on my very long tips and the whole "extension" look... So I went on my crazy ride again, frying the hell out of my hair which resulted in me being forced to cut it really short, losing about 80cms of hair in the process - mostly because I had HUGE chunks falling off everytime I would brush.

[Nani198]

Yikes ladies I feel all your pain!

So in February I decided I wanted to go pink (I have been red for months wanted a bit of a change) my friend that I have known for many years who ( is a hair stylist for crying out loud) I asked him to assist with bleaching and application since I didn't want to do this on my own this time. Well so the bleaching started .... He left bleach on my hair for an hour and ten minutes !!!! I died inside after 30 minutes I was telling him he needs to take the bleach off (he's been a stylist for over twenty years!!!!!) he said no my hair can 'take it' and started laughing up a storm with his assistant . So it continued I was freaking out.. Finally when he took it out and washed it off and dyed it pink it was snapping and my head felt like chewing gum. ;( I was devastated. He said that it was suppose to happen and he styled it anyway as I kept quite. After when I got in my car to drive home I cried to myself on the ride home, I immediately came on here and voiced my problem and with the help from you ladies my hair has since revived 85% and I treat it with care and continue to use cococnut oil and less heat

[spaulding]

My disaster happened in early 2006.

My hair was dyed black and my light/medium brown roots were coming through so it was extremely obvious. I decided I wanted to go blonde as it wouldn't be so drastic having blonde hair and brown roots whenever they came through. So I went to a salon (a salon inside a Tesco I may add - I was 17 and poor) and the hairdresser said she would put blonde highlights through my hair and lift the rest to a caramel colour. Having never been near bleach before, I trusted she knew what she was doing. So she put foils over my hair and left me under one of those heat things for what must have been an hour. I can't remember what she did to the rest of my hair, but when everything was washed and dried I had white roots, a yellow middle section and bright orange ends. I had to be at work that afternoon so I paid the £60 it cost me and left, then burst into tears in the car park!

I ended up calling in sick and dying my hair dark brown. A few weeks later I spotted the hairdresser while on break from work. Noticing my brown hair she said, "I could have dyed that for you if you weren't happy with it before" I just thought to myself, "Like I'm going to let you loose on my hair again!"

[TabithaBlue]

Gosh that reminds me of my own hairdresser disaster. I had had my hair dyed dark brown, and wanted to go blonde. The hairdresser did a full head of highlights, but started at the back with 40 vol. Because my hair is so thick, it took an hour to do my whole head, and she left me for another half hour to cook. By the time I got the bleach off, the hair at the back of my hair was grey and crispy, while the front was dark yellow. It looked HIDEOUS but because I am so shy and non-confrontational, I paid up and went home in tears. It was the middle of summer but I had to wear a bobble hat to work for three days until I could go somewhere else to get it sorted. Thankfully the second hairdresser knew what she was doing and evened everything out but those three days were FOUL!

[stormofdamnation]

I used to think nothing of double processing (or more!) my hair - it's a miracle I even have any left these days, let alone the fact that it's actually in good condition. My most serious infraction was a couple of years ago when I went from box dyed black to platinum blonde - wait for it - in *two days* with no Colour B4. Ouch! I bleached at least twice (once with 40vol) AND used a blonde box dye. I literally have no idea how my hair survived that.