Black/White, Dark/Bright

There's been a huge influx of posts lately about going from dark or black hair to going white or blonde. I thought I'd post something here so that all these posts can come together under one section.

If anyone is doing this can they please post before and after pictures here so we can see how you go?

Basically the advice I'm giving out at the moment is that if you have dark or black hair you will need to bleach bath in order to get your hair light enough without damaging it. Remember there's no rush to do this. If you want your black hair to be white by the weekend I'm sorry but it just won't happen.

Don't bleach your hair more than once a month unless you're using a bleach bath. You'll fry it and it will break off. If you have long hair then chances are if you bleach it twice (or more) in one week you won't have long hair any more! Please be careful.

DO bleach bath once a week, it's slower and takes a lot of time but won't fry your hair, you can keep the length and the condition in good order.

Don't ever use bleach for longer than the maximum recommended time on the packet. That time limit is there for a reason!

DO keep a bottle of toner lying around because bleaching hair - even slowly - will cause you to end up with orange brassy tones that look awful (unless you like that sort of thing) and they need to be neutralised to look more natural. Toner won't kill your hair, it's not a bleach and it won't lighten your colour, it simply neutralises what's there already. (Makes it brown or blonde instead of orange or yellow - depending on the depth of colour you're left with).

If you've been dyeing your hair black (as opposed to having naturally black or dark hair) you may want to try Colour B4 first to see if it removes the colour, there have been mixed results with this but it's not a bleach so if it doesn't work as well as expected you can go ahead and bleach in the next couple of days with no trouble at all.

The longer you've had black hair the more difficult it is to remove the colour. The hair becomes saturated with the dye and black is good at sticking in hair so each time you dye you're adding black to black and you get a build up that's hard to remove. But stick with the bleach baths each week, tone the colour and condition your hair between bleaching and you'll do fine with a little perseverance.

If you have naturally dark or black hair (you lucky, lucky thing) then it will be easier but it will take time. Have patience and keep working at it and you'll be as blonde as you can be eventually.

I hope this helps everyone that's looking to go from dark (or black) to white (or blonde) and if you've had experience of it and/or got photo's please can you add your experiences and any pictures to this thread to help others? Thank you!