The Blondening: Part 1 - My journey and the basics of bleaching asian hair

Before I start talking about bleaching, I want you to know that I am NOT a hairdresser and I would recommend that you go to a proper hairdresser if you can afford it and/or if you are worried about your hair falling out / getting crazily damaged / chemical burns.

Bleaching is dangerous. I had a very laid-back attitude to my hair falling out and my skin is not especially sensitive, so I was happy to adventure on into the face of uncertainty without the help of a professional. That's a personal risk I was willing to take, but one you should think through for yourself.

Now I've got that out of the way, let's get into THE BLONDENING!

The Blondening: from black hair to blonde

Here's my hair journey:

I actually want to go platinum blonde but I need to leave it like this for at least a couple of weeks and let it recuperate from all the bleaching! I just have to be patient and nourish my hair in the meantime.

Want to know what I did? Follow me across the jump.

What I did

If I recall correctly...

• Day 1 - First round: 1 box Schwarzkopf Live Colour 00A Absolute Platinum. Mostly on upper half of head, not enough to cover hair, decided to wait and see how that turned out before using more. That was a mistake - should have made up second box immediately after to cover whole head evenly before leaving hair to develop!
• Day 1 - Second round: 2 boxes of Schwarzkopf Live Colour 00A Absolute Platinum - applied just after conditioning... that was a mistake. I knew it was a mistake, I was just impatient to get more lightening in my hair!
• Day 2 - Third round: 2 boxes Schwarzkopf Nordic Blonde L1 - this product has no ammonia and comes with toning conditioner. LOVE.
• Day 6 - Fourth round: 2 boxes Schwarzkopf Nordic Blonde L1 - MOORE
• Day 8 - Fifth round: 1 box Schwarzkopf Nordic Blonde L1, mostly lower half of head as 
• At some point after this, I also used Schwarzkopf Nordic Blonde Toner (de-yellowing)

Notes:

• I avoided the buying powder bleach + hydrogen peroxide because I trialled a 30 vol bleach mix on my hair one month previous and although the lightening effect was impressive, it took a whole month for my hair to return to some semblance of normal instead of brittle un-combable horror. NOTHX.

• I got Schwarzkopf Live Colour 00A Absolute Platinum (a consumer kit) very cheaply off ebay. I quite liked this, but not as much as the ammonia-free Nordic Blonde that has a less pungent smell and feels less like burning. The 00A Absolute Platinum is also not available locally afaik, which is inconvenient if I need bleach at short notice.

• There's a tradeoff between time, amount of lightening and money. In order to bleach to a platinum colour quickly, it's cheaper (less product) but you damage your hair more severely all at once. I've used gentle products to gradually lighten my hair, it will take longer and be more expensive, but I only damage my hair a little bit each time and there's less cumulative effect as my hair has time to bounce back. I suspect professionals can get it done faster with less damage, but they cost more money. 

Cost - Is it really cheaper than going to a proper hairdresser?

For asian hair, a professional would do it in at least 2 separate appointments with a handful of hours of labour, so I am estimating the cost would be in the hundreds, likely ~$250+.

Here's what I paid:

• 3 x Schwarzkopf Live Colour 00A Absolute Platinum = ~$21 (off ebay, so cheap!!)
• 5 x Nordic Blonde L1 $11.59 = $57.95 (from priceline)
• 1 x Toner = $8.99 (from priceline)
• Total cost so far: $87.94

Even though my hair is not fully bleached yet, I am positive I have made a significant saving and had a lot of fun bleaching my own hair at home :D

Intro to Lightening Asian Hair 101

Contrary to what my partner thought, bleaching hair does not involve soaking hair in a vat of household bleach. This stuff is way too strong! Your options:

1) Hydrogen Peroxide and Bleach Powder, either online or from a local hair store like Price Attack - you need to google to find out the strength of hydrogen peroxide you want and ratios of ingredients to mix together or find a friendly hairdresser to give you some advice. These products are supposed to only be for professional use but I'm sure lots of non-hairdressers buy them and use them safely at home.

2) Consumer lightening kits like the ones I bought above, eg. Nordic Blonde. There's a liquid, cream and/or powder to mix together into a provided bottle and these kits usually also contain gloves along with detailed instructions and safety warnings. These tend to be more gentle than 30 / 40 vol combinations you can mix up yourself, depending on the product that you buy.

A box of Nordic Blonde, half of my gigantor palm and a tiny foot

Nordic Blonde boxes come with a little sachet of purple conditioner which helps keep the colour more towards "sandy blonde" and less like "radioactive yellow". What's not to love about this product?

What's this "40vol" business?

Hydrogen Peroxide comes in different strengths, and is often referred to as 20vol, 30vol, 40vol etc. 20 vol is less concentrated and 40 vol is more concentrated. On the internet, some people recommend using 40 vol on asian hair because it is darker and more stubborn than other types of hair. I tested a little 30 vol + bleach powder on my extremely healthy, virgin (un-dyed) asian hair for 45 minutes and it felt SO damaged afterwards so I can't say I recommend it as I do not enjoy having hair that resembles straw in both colour and texture.

I'd highly recommend bleaching hair with more gentle ingredients (such as the ones in the consumer kits) and having gaps between each round of bleach, giving your hair time to recover before frying it again.

WARNING: Your hair will go orange

I made this diagram below to show the sort of colours black hair will go through as it gets lighter:

Orange is just a phase the hair goes through as it lightens. Just keep lightening or use toner to make the colour less bright and bring the saturation down.

What is toner?

I'm new to this stuff, but my understanding of toner in the context of blonde hair is thus: something that helps make your hair more neutral-coloured (see above). For example, it takes the saturation of your hair from orange back to brown, or from yellow back to sandy blonde. The way this is achieved is by adding purple.

Purple and yellow are opposite on the colour wheel, so when you add them both together, they neutralise each other out to something closer to grey.

There's more tips and info about dyeing / bleaching black asian hair to blonde, so stay tuned for next week's The Blondening: Part 2!!

♥ Sabrina / Rose