Coconut oil to prevent damage from peroxide/bleach

Oops I should have made it obvious coconut oiling is really not for use pre veggie dying! It's to use before bleaching (or before using a box dye like XXL or Nice n Easy etc).
Hair before using a veggie dye obviously needs to be bone dry and clarify to facilitate the absorption.
That's why I put this post in the "Bleaching" category!

I apologize if anyone got confused with my statements about semi-permanent, I meant traditional box dyes, not veggie ones!

And thanks for telling us about the Superdrug offer, I definitely need to visit one soon!

Superdrug sell solid coconut oil, it's amazing.

Also i love LHC, but i do love this forum more 🙂 and it's not the first time i've seen us link to each other 🙂

This is pretty amazing. I'm going to try this in a week or two.

Oh oh I got my coconut oil from superdrugs! It is 2 for 2.99 but I just bought the one for now it is like 125 ml and I can't wait to use it for my bleaching next week! It can also be used for skin but I can't wait to give this a go

Do you dry your hair before oiling it as I'm sure you're not meant to use bleach on wet hair?

You can apply the coconut oil to dry hair or to damp hair, it all depends on what you prefer. As long as your hair is free of residue it should be fine. And you're not supposed to bleach/dye straight after applying the oil, but leave it to soak for at least one hour before proceeding to whatever you want to do to your hair. I'm just about to go and shampoo off the bleach right now, and I'll do a post tomorrow about how things went with a play by play.

450g tub of pure coconut oil, half price in holland & barrett at the moment.

So I bleached my hair last night! But I was super cautious as I am very paranoid that my hair my just give up on life any minute soon.
First step: Sunday night I washed my hair with a clarifying shampoo (Boots basics 60p stuff) and hopped out of the shower without putting any conditioner on. I towel-dried my hair a little and covered it in coconut oil and went to sleep.
- next day, my hair had already absorbed a lot of the coconut oil so I slathered on some more. Here is what my hair looked like:

Sorry about using my webcam, but my camera has gone missing. I hope you can tell that it's pretty oily (but not exactly dripping with oil).

Step two: the bleaching! I didn't get around to it until the evening but my hair still felt sufficiently oily. The application on oil is pretty interesting, it feels very different than on dry hair. I quite like it, it feels easier to get an even coverage. As I was being super cautious because my hair is long and fine and has been damaged quite a bit in the past couple of years I did two different mixes. On the bottom half of my hair (by which I mean the underlayer) which is darker and less damaged, I used bleach powder + 20 vol peroxide with only like a tiny squirt of shampoo. On the top half or canopy, which is not looking exactly amazing, I did a bleach bath so again bleach powder + 20 vol + a good amount of shampoo and a little squirt of water.
Left the bottom part on for 40 minutes then rinsed separately, top part was on for maybe 30 minutes total.
Then I washed it off with shampoo, and slathered on some toner (white virgin) mixed with a little bit of conditioner (Tresemme naturals) covered that with cling film and a hat and slept in it.

Results today (after rinsing with diluted vinegar and putting a little bit of a leave-in: Summer Panacea by Nightblooming on Etsy):

Again, excuse the webcam quality of the pictures. My hair is soft, looks shiny and not damaged at all by the bleaching. The underlayer which got the strongest bleach is perfectly fine and healthy still. Also, please ignore the roots, I have intentionally not bleached my natural regrowth which I've been growing for about 3-4 months now. I haven't decided yet whether to keep this as I like the ombre look or bleach it.
Finally, a closer look at my ends:

Okay so I know these aren't the best quality pictures, but I can assure you that I cannot see any sign of damage. My hair isn't stretchy at all, which is my biggest nightmare, and it feels soft and looks really shiny.

Now I have to decide whether to continue lightening very progressively like this until I reach pale yellow or maybe try the same bleach and 20 vol without diluting it with shampoo for a quicker lightening effect. I just don't want my hair to break/fall off/get nasty and gummy!

If any of you try bleaching/dying with peroxide after coconut oiling, please post your experience on this thread!

I tried this today actually, I would definitely say that you should have quite a bit of the coconut oil in, basically be generous, I feel like I didn't have enough of it and my hair is a tiny bit more drier due to bleaching but NO where near as it usually is, but definitely give it a go just be sure there is lots of it, bleach eats through everything.

By the way I got to thank you so much for sharing this coconut oil, because I let it soak in my hair overnight and my hair felt amazing, not even too greasy, just kind of like if you put wax in your hair although feels so soft, I adore coconut oil now and bleaching your hair sure isn't the best of things to be doing if you want your hair to be in good condition :3

It works! Hardly any bleach damage at all, 5 min K-Pak after my bleach was enough to leave my hair feeling only a tiny little bit worse than it did before I bleached.
😀

wowza! i reeeeeeally wanna try this! but im off the bleach for a while.....not fair!

I don't know how I lived without coconut oil before, it is just like magic, they also sell argan oil in superdrugs which is a tad more expensive I think for about 100 ml it is like six pounds, currently on offer, it is also meant to work like coconut oil 🙂

Really want to do this, but I ran out of coconut oil a while back and never got some more.
I get mine from akamuti.co.uk which is a great website. They do loads of organic and fairtrade stuff and it all last for ages too! I only need to buy my face moisturiser every six to eight months!

Excellent, we need more guinea pigs for this! Bought two tubs of superdrugs coconut oil this weekend (as if I needed some more, barely half-way through my biona organic tub and have two bottles of the parachute kind). And I only just looked at the tubs now and realised it's not pure virgin coconut oil but it's hydrogenated and has fragrance in it. Silly superdrugs! Oh well, I'm sure I'll still use it.

Thanks for recommending akamuti.co.uk randomwickedness, it looks really excellent!