[Sticky] Bleach Bath tutorial - with pictures!

That makes sense, thanks! 😀

Love this tutorial!  Just used it to help rid me of the pink ready for purply blue and had a wonderful result 🙂 lifted my hair perfectly and it didn't feel at all dried out after.

So, I understand that with normal bleaching you do the lengths of your hair, and do your roots last. However, I did a an ombre style bleach (which didn't really work), then realised I had to remove the old brown-red permanent dye (I used Jo Baz and it worked). I want to do a bleach bath to help lighten it a bit and just strip out some of the golden tones, but I don't need to be a light blonde colour or even close to it.

My question is, so I still do the rest of my hair, and then the roots? I'm thinking that because most of my hair is prelightened, and my roots are virgin, if I did it all at once, would they lift at similar a similar speed?

I have a bleach bath query as well...  I've used it a couple of times to remove unwanted colour tints (accidental) on my finally silver/white hair and its been fine. 
This week my roots (aprox 1-2cm) were a pale yellow but not light enough to tone so my hair was a mix and looking a bit crap so I did a bleach bath yesterday morning to remove the last bit of an old pinkish tint to the length and lighten the roots enough to take the toner.  It did a marvellous job removing the tint but the roots, while paler, will still not take the toner. 
I am going away tomorrow for a week and want to get rid of the light yellow/gold roots.  I don't want to bleach the roots after doing a bleach bath, plus i have fine hair but a hell of a lot of it so doing roots only is a real pain...it tends to go everywhere with my short hair.  Would using another bleach bath put as far as possible on the roots only be ok? 
My hairdresser when she cut my hair last week said it was in really good condition; I use coconut oil after every wash and don't blow dry or straighten so it feels pretty good.  I just really HATE having yellow roots with short white hair!

It's up to you, but it's never something is recommend. Your hair is in a fragile state, but also, so is your scalp.

Hmm, ok thanks Janine!  I know you should leave it a week between bleach bathing normally.  My hair has always been pretty resilient but yeh, I don't want to damage it.  Have to say my scalp is fine, no itching or burning during the bleach bath  yesterday but it was a fairly weak dilution.  I should have bitten the bullet and just bleached the roots instead of doing the bleach bath but I am crap at keeping it to the roots only! 

I will have a think.  I guess the other option would be to go coloured for a while instead of white, but no shop selling directions etc is open today and I don't want to use a box dye.  Maybe if I used the toner again...

Is it possible to do a bleach bath with a box dye?

I'm in Norway and it's really difficult to get a hold of hydroperoxide and bleach powder for private use.

Is it possible to do a bleach bath with a box dye?

I'm in Norway and it's really difficult to get a hold of hydroperoxide and bleach powder for private use.

I have used the live xxl max blonde bleach kit as a bleach bath by mixing it 1:1with shampoo when I haven't wanted to wait to order bleach and it worked. I'm guessing real bleach would work better but I use this method when I don't have real bleach to hand 🙂

Bleach baths are not as damaging as full strength bleachings, but a color remover should always be tried first if you have artificial pigment already on your hair. They shrink and pull out the color molecules, and they aren't damaging at all, they just dry out the hair a bit. Plus, if you have an oxidative dye on your hair already (anything that required a developer), if you bleach right over that without using a color remover first, you will almost always get uneven results. Usually it will be lighter towards the roots and darker towards the ends.

Hello, sorry to butt in but my question is related to this.

I had unbleached dark coppery brown-dyed hair (I used box dyes). I bleached my hair today and it turned into a shade between dark brown to light coppery blonde. Actually, like you said, the result was uneven. Some parts were dark brown and some were light copper (it's not really yellow).

So I'm thinking of doing a bleach bath after 2 weeks.. do you think that's enough time for my hair to handle another bleaching job? Btw, my hair condition didn't change after bleaching, it isn't too dry, but there are some split ends.

Also, do you think I should even do a bleach bath? Because the colors are uneven.. I don't know what to do next. A little help please?

If you did a full bleach today you will need to wait a month before bleach bathing. The two week wait is after a bleach bath, after a full bleach you need to wait at least a month.

To fix the unevenness you could bleach bathe only the darker parts of the hair, then at least two weeks after that you could bleach all of the hair to a lighter shade together.

However, since your hair was previously dyed have you tried using colour removers? I would suggest that before hitting the bleach again as they are designed to remove Permanent pigment and are non damaging.

If you did a full bleach today you will need to wait a month before bleach bathing. The two week wait is after a bleach bath, after a full bleach you need to wait at least a month.

To fix the unevenness you could bleach bathe only the darker parts of the hair, then at least two weeks after that you could bleach all of the hair to a lighter shade together.

However, since your hair was previously dyed have you tried using colour removers? I would suggest that before hitting the bleach again as they are designed to remove Permanent pigment and are non damaging.

Oh, okay, thank you!  *thx*

I've looked for colour removers everywhere but I couldn't find any  🙁 I think we don't have it locally, and I can't afford international shipping lol. I'll probably just bleach it again after a month. Thanks a bunch!  ;D

I've just done a BB on my vr that I'm trying to shift. The roots look better, but I'm now approximately the same colour as a pink highlighter pen! Lol! Ah well - it'll get there in the end...

Panicking a little about my first BB tomorrow: i'm using ion dust free blue powder bleach sachets and it says to mix 1 part bleach to 2 parts developer... do i ignore this for a bleach bath and just do 1:1?

also i don't suppose anyone knows if two bottles of the one shot creme peroxide (so 200ml in total) from sally's will cover hair that's halfway down my back in a bleach bath? weeehhh

Probably "just"... I found one shot was not quite enough for my nearly-BSL hair, but two might just do it for your length.

Good luck with it!  Don't panic - if you're soaking in coconut oil, that will help quite a lot. :-*

thanks alexia, gonna grab another bottle JUST to be sure 🙂

any word on whether i should be mixing the powder & creme 1:2 (as instructions) or 1:1 (as tutorial)?