The Story of My Hair
September 26, 2014
I've been wanting to dye my hair blonde since years ago. Having a thought of it always makes me satisfied. Dyeing hair also means a step further to look stylish and cool from head to toe. I know it's the matter of personal taste, but I always find someone with light colored hair, or even crazy colored hair, looks way more awesome than other people.
However, having light hair color needs a lot of efforts. Achieving light colored hair is not an easy job. Moreover we also need to maintain the color. It will need extra extra cares. And it won't be cheap.
Back then, I thought someday I would go to hair salon and get my hair bleached there. But then, I watched many tutorials in youtube about how to get blonde hair, silver hair, white hair, and many more, my confidence grew and I thought I can do it by my self.
I went to Pasar Baru with my sister and purchased these.
Surprisingly, they are not as expensive as I thought. I forgot how much exactly they cost, but for 250g bleach powder, bottles of developer, and a box of hair dye, I think it only costs IDR 200,000. Compare it with going to salon!
But still, please note that I won't recommend to bleach your own hair at home! The result can be shocking, unpredictable, and damaging, so the safest way is just let the experienced hands do it for you. One more thing: please make sure that you go to the most expensive and recommended salon you've ever found. I once dyed my hair at a not-expensive-but-still-expensive salon. Even though they were doing good, I was not satisfied by the result because it wasn't what I wanted. Don't expect to get blonde or ash hair at salons like that.
For bleaching, I chose bleaching powder with an assumption that it will make the most significant result. And for the companion of it, I bought 40 vol. developer. It is the strongest one. Perhaps it will do good for virgin hair, but beware for uneven color.
So the process began. I mixed the bleaching powder with the developer. There was no precise measure. I just made sure the cream looks like the one I look on youtube.
Let me explain my hair condition first.
I have thin hair. Not only that, but every single hair looks really thin, light, and fragile. But it's actually not, it's light but not fragile. I don't have severe hair loss. I have very smooth hair that people call it 'baby hair'. I'm proud of how smooth my hair is, but it also brings trouble because wind can easily mess my hair. It always looks tangled. However, when people touch my hair, they can be surprised that their fingers can make it through the tip and it feels really smooth. This, what I called baby hair, also affects the dyeing and bleaching process. It can easily absorb any substances without causing too much damage. Glad I have this kind of hair.
Therefore I think it's important to know what kind of hair we have before deciding to bleach it by ourselves. The results vary, though we can try to predict how it will turn out. For example, my sister's hair is in the opposite condition with my hair. She has deep black hair, thick, and a bit dry. The bleach didn't do well on her. The risk of having uneven hair color might be bigger on this type of hair.
This is the before picture of my hair. I've bleached it once at the salon. The maximum result was like this, reddish brown color.
If you wonder dafuq with that ugly black roots, yeah it was the longest black roots I've ever had. I had tried to touch it up by dyeing with Freshlight Hair Dye, but nothing happened. Freshlight only gave a slight of reddish brown color but not light enough to cover my black root. You can see clearly there are three layers of color, from light reddish brown, to dark reddish brown, to black. That's why I decided to bleach my hair again.
The process continued. Once the bleaching had evenly spread to all over my hair, I left it for about 45 minutes. My hair became really dry, and tangled, until I felt there was no way to untangle it.
After that, I rinsed my hair, poured so much conditioner, and dried it. This is the result.
Yohooo, orange headed! Very bright! Such a shocking orange!
My roots was brighter than the tips. I did my roots first because from my experience in dyeing hair, roots will absorb dye really fast. But still, this uneven color was unavoidable.
I really hate that orange tone I've got after bleaching. It can damage everyone's eyes. Fortunately, I was prepared for it. That's why I also bought Fresh Light hair dye in ash color, because I know bleach + light brown only make the orange tone worse. So make it safe! Choose ash color for eye safety!
The orange tone then changed to yellow. However, under the sunlight, it still looked so orange.
A week later, I decided to dye it again with Ash. This time, I chose the foam color because the color will be absorbed fast and can resemble the result chart.
At first, I worried the result would turn out to be too dark. My bleaching process would be in vain. But after rinsing and drying, it turned out good. It looks more blonde now than orange, and there's also ashy tone. For the first time in my life, I have ashy toned hair color. I was so touched.
The red tone still looks obvious, especially on the outer part of my hair. I don't know why it happened, but overall, the color is even and I'm proud of myself (and my sister who has helped) that I can bleach my hair at home, without going to salon.
Now how about my hair condition after bleaching it with 40 vol. developer?!
In the first week, it made my hair really dry. It used to be so oily if I hadn't washed it for three days, but this time, on the 4th day not washing it (ewh!), it was still okay. I gave it hair mask and vitamins regularly. Days after, the natural oil has returned. Now I need to wash it every two days. My hair is still smooth and still can be called baby hair. However, the tip can be messier than ever because it's dryer than it used to.
Now almost a month after the bleaching process, the hair dye fades really quickly, well~ typical foam hair dye. My hair is back to reddish orange blonde. But it's still calmer than the right after bleaching color. That one could hurt my eyes. LOL! I think after this, I want to try white hair color like Manic Panic Virgin Snow. I'm serious!
And for you who wants to try something with your hair color, I would like to say 'Good luck!'.
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