[Sticky] Share your Bleaching Horror Stories

As my hair is soooo thick and very strong I ignored everyone on here and bleached bleached and yep bleached some more

I bleached once in sept to go plum
I re-bleached ALL the hair to go cerise in oct
I re-bleached ALL the hair to go turq in nov, and 2 days later I re-bleached to get it lighter (oops)
as my hair still felt ok (even the hairdresser said she wouldnt recommend it, but as she pulled on my hair and it didnt break or anything she said I was lucky) sooo I decided I wanted green in dec for christmas, so another re-bleach of all the hair, and it didnt remove the turq so 2 days later I did ANOTHER full bleach, to go green
as my hair still felt ok, in jan when I hated the fade I re-bleached again the full head to go cerise, and guess what??? yepp too many bleaches made my hair snap! it looked awful like hay, so I learnt my lesson, I left the pink as long as I could possibly stand and tried to baby my hair but nope it wasnt having it, so in april I had it all cut really really short till none of the bad hair was left
(WOW reading that back- I did 7 full head bleaches in 5 mths)

Ive definatly learnt my lesson, and will listen to everyone on here lol, I did re-bleach after the hair cut as by then it was mostly my roots so virgin hair, Im now violet, and there will be no more bleaching as often as I did, Im going to do plum next on the violet, and will try the plum on the roots when they come through, it will be at least 2 mths before I bleach again AND I also wont be popping strong (or any) bleach on the ends that have been bleached before

blimey debbie! im glad your hair is short to start off with!

i went form xxl red(2 years worth) to a weird peach coloyr ready for nuclear with an hour long 40% bleach in feb
then in april i did another 40% bleach to go pink
then in sept i did 2x 40% bleaches to weeks apart......my hair melted! was like chewing gum when wet & crunchy when dry. just horrid. after 8months of kpak, i decided my hair was ready to go silver the following may...
had 2 use 2box dyes as we ran out. my hair melted again. had to cut off my shoulder length collar bone hair to a bob & then re cut it to a blunt bob & used no bleach(except for roots) from june to feb this year i think it was.

i think i need one more cut & i will be fully healthy again. i just wish id listened to the ladies on here & my friends who said hell to the no =s

The worst I did was I had shoulder length black hair in 2007 (and I did all over reapplications, not just roots D:), in the july I decided to go blonde, I bleached once.. went a mahogany colour.. bleached again (same day) bright orange. Then I left it a month, bleached again, about 4 inches of blonde and the rest orange..
So cut it all off except the 4 inches of blonde.. and even that hair looked like straw.. it recovered fairly quickly but I did cut ALL my hair off - it was 1.5 inches at the back and the longest bits were as said, about 4-5" (so basically a pixie cut) if I hadn't cut it off, it'd have been a lot worse..
Don't do it if you want to keep your length basically!

Mine isn't a horror story but I'm completely freaked out as to why it isn't.

In July of last year I had box ash blonde hair with atomic pink in the fringe, I decided I didn't want the atomic pink anymore and wanted to go white. So with no understanding of what I was doing (because I hadn't discovered this forum yet) I bought the lightest John Frieda foam colour available and in two months I used it 6 times!!!

My hair was fine, wtf?!

Back in October I was like "oh cool I wanna go turquoise!". I've never bleached my hair myself, but I've been using box dyes since I was 14. Not knowing better, I bleached my hair with 40 vol twice in 24 hours and my hair totally melted. It literally melted and matted together, and had to have most of my hair cut off. Ever since then my hair was still breaking and snapping and I haven't been able to straighten my hair much without more breakage. Last week I had another huge hair cut and the hairdresser got rid of the last few inches of damage. It's taken six months and having a tonne of hair cut off for it to get anywhere near back to normal.

Mine is from late November of 2010 - First a little back story - in April 2010 I had natural dreads with extenders put in my hair, in black.  Previous to this, I had been box-dyeing my hair black for about six years with a few small periods of colours after chemical straightening damage forced me to get a pixie cut back in 2007 (but that's another horror story!).  So basically, about once a month chemical treatments for a period of about 6 years built up, and I never just dyed the roots black, I always re-did the full head.
So in November 2010, I decided to take the natural dreads out, as I had too much on at the time and didn't have the time to devote to maintenance.  Once they were out, I got bored with my hair being just plain black, and decided to dye two chunky streaks at the sides white blonde a la Patricia Day (Horrorpops).  My hair felt in really good condition (from being in dreads and having very little in the way of styling products or harsh shampoos or dyeing for about 8 months), so I went for it and bleached.  Using 40 vol bleach, straight up.  First bleach was as good as could be expected with all the build up of black dye (this was before I discovered colour B4 - wish I'd known about it first!) - the roots which were virgin hair (about 2 inches worth - I hadn't dyed the roots black for a while from sheer laziness!) went a bright blonde, then it gradually faded into varying shades of ginger.  Obviously, I was disappointed, as I'd foolishly thought that I'd get to blonde in one bleaching, even though I already knew from previous experience that black dye is a nightmare to bleach out!  So I then, even more foolishly, decided to just bleach again straight away, again with 40 vol.
Obviously, this was a complete disaster, and my hair at the sides melted, with about 3 inches falling off straight away, and the rest being gummy and horrible, except for about 1 inch at the roots.  *ill*
I tried everything I could think of to repair it (sadly, I didn't know about K-pak then, I think it was just before I joined this forum, so hadn't read any of the advice on here either, and didn't know about bleach baths. *doh*)
from deep conditioning, to biolustre treatment (incidentally, biolustre is a complete waste of money - don't bother with it!), but of course, nothing worked.  I even tried henna to attempt to bring more strength to my hair, but that sadly had the opposite effect to what I'd hoped, and it was after the henna that I decided that I just had to bite the bullet and go for the chop.  Because of the placement of the streaks I'd tried to do, I could either go for a full pixie crop (since there was about 1 inch of healthy hair at the roots), or just have the sides cut and end up with a mullet *shudder*!  Since mullet was never going to be an option, I had to have a pixie crop.  I went from about 12 inches long hair to a super short pixie crop because of my stupid bleaching mistake, and I have definitely learned my lesson!  Never again!
It took me until February of this year to grow my hair out enough to have real dreads with extenders put back in again, and I can honestly say that I wish I'd never taken the first lot of dreads out in the first place, not least because I wouldn't have had to go for the chop because of the bleach damage, but also because I really missed having them!

before i discovered this site and the magic of veggie dyes, i wanted red hair. I had dyed black hair. went to the hair dressers, she did two bleach baths for an hour each, then put the dye on, which was permanent, for about an hour and a half. i quite liked the colour, went back a month later for roots and a touch up, she left the dye on for another hour and a half and it was a dark brown colour, when i complained, she just said thats what happens.
so i took it upon myself to dye my hair. bleached my hair for an hour, then whacked on a XXL box dye. did thhe same thing every month for about 3 months, then dicovered beeunique. Started to bleach bath my hair instead to put my cherrybomb,AP mix on.
when i started to want to go blonde, i took you guys advice, bleach bathed every 3 to 4 weeks, but in Jan, go too impatient, whacked on a full bleach without coconut piling before hand and killed my hair. its only just starting to recover. had about 2 inches cut off the day after doing it,  and been babying ever since.

before i discovered this site and the magic of veggie dyes, i wanted red hair. I had dyed black hair. went to the hair dressers, she did two bleach baths for an hour each, then put the dye on, which was permanent, for about an hour and a half. i quite liked the colour, went back a month later for roots and a touch up, she left the dye on for another hour and a half and it was a dark brown colour, when i complained, she just said thats what happens.
so i took it upon myself to dye my hair. bleached my hair for an hour, then whacked on a XXL box dye. did thhe same thing every month for about 3 months, then dicovered beeunique. Started to bleach bath my hair instead to put my cherrybomb,AP mix on.
when i started to want to go blonde, i took you guys advice, bleach bathed every 3 to 4 weeks, but in Jan, go too impatient, whacked on a full bleach without coconut piling before hand and killed my hair. its only just starting to recover. had about 2 inches cut off the day after doing it,  and been babying ever since.

Iv just read this and i am horrified at what your hairdresser did to your hair! 2 bleach baths and a permanent tint in the same day - all for an hour or more each!! Triple processing - and i know of no permanent tint on this earth that has to be left on for 1hr30mins! It scares me that there are people out there who are passed on these qualifications yet clearly have no clue. Im so sorry you had such a bad experience, it makes me sad to hear about things like this as im very passionate about hair, and very dedicated to my training so to hear of how clients can end up losing faith in their stylist is really sad.

Thanks for sharing ladies, sobering thread.  *hugs*

My worst bleach story ever.
I'd been blonde since I was about 15, then when I went to sixth form I wanted a 'new look' so I dyed my hair red with XXL dyes in September 2009, and was redying all of my hair every 2 weeks to keep it bright, then I dyed it black by accident in November 2009 and then in Janurary 2010 I bleached all of my hair with 40vol bleach for 2 hours.
Needless to say it didn't remove all of the built up dye, my hair went bright orange and was snapping off and gummy and ruined, so I had to go and have all of my hair chopped off and dyed back to my natural colour, which didn't ruin any salvaged hair, my hairdresser is amazing with colour.

And I wasn't allowed to dye my hair for 6 months and it was all horrible for that amount of time too 🙁

before i discovered this site and the magic of veggie dyes, i wanted red hair. I had dyed black hair. went to the hair dressers, she did two bleach baths for an hour each, then put the dye on, which was permanent, for about an hour and a half. i quite liked the colour, went back a month later for roots and a touch up, she left the dye on for another hour and a half and it was a dark brown colour, when i complained, she just said thats what happens.
so i took it upon myself to dye my hair. bleached my hair for an hour, then whacked on a XXL box dye. did thhe same thing every month for about 3 months, then dicovered beeunique. Started to bleach bath my hair instead to put my cherrybomb,AP mix on.
when i started to want to go blonde, i took you guys advice, bleach bathed every 3 to 4 weeks, but in Jan, go too impatient, whacked on a full bleach without coconut piling before hand and killed my hair. its only just starting to recover. had about 2 inches cut off the day after doing it,  and been babying ever since.

Iv just read this and i am horrified at what your hairdresser did to your hair! 2 bleach baths and a permanent tint in the same day - all for an hour or more each!! Triple processing - and i know of no permanent tint on this earth that has to be left on for 1hr30mins! It scares me that there are people out there who are passed on these qualifications yet clearly have no clue. Im so sorry you had such a bad experience, it makes me sad to hear about things like this as im very passionate about hair, and very dedicated to my training so to hear of how clients can end up losing faith in their stylist is really sad.

I know, I remember sitting there thinkning it must be time for it to come off but she kept walking past me, she cut the hair of two other people whilst i had one bleach on!  she never gave enough time for me when i went in for anything, the trainee person always ended up drying and styling my hair cos her next client had turned up. I dont go to the haidressers anymore really. Only after i fried it in Jan and my dads friend whos a hair dresser was on holiday.

I picked up the wrong bottle and used 40 vol instead of 20 vol. Left it on for an hour.

I now have short hair.

🙁

It was my first time bleaching my hair 4 or 5 years ago, and I enlisted my now ex to help me out. I was going from mahogany to blonde, using a Jerome Russel kit (which I still use these days!).

I must have got a pretty strong developer. I left it on till my hair was mostly blonde, which was a couple of hours, I thought it hurting was just part of the process... I had blisters on my scalp for 3 weeks after... And it still had gingery bits!

left it on for a couple of hours?! ouch!

My horror story is from about 3 years ago...
My hairdresser had recently dyed my hair a box dye black, and had done two peekaboo slices of blonde through the lengths

anyway, a month later and I'd changed my mind and decided I wanted to all over blonde.
I didn't know much about colouring at that point and assumed a trained hairdresser would know best
She never tried a colour stripper to get the box dye out first and instead told me that I'd need a 40vol bleach, she applied this to my head and scalp, and then after 15 mins panicked about what she'd done, knowing its not meant to go on the scalp, so washed it out...
So there was no lift to my hair, just damage

she left it like that for about 3 weeks, then did an all over 20vol taking my hair to orange, and just left it like that, saying how because i had black dyed hair and naturally dark brown hair, i could never be blonde (i didnt know anything about toning then so believed her!)

I couldnt have bright orange fried hair! So thats when I first went atomic pink, but because of the damage I need several inches of hair cut off...

I now only dye my hair myself!

Oh, and I loved the feeling of her praising how wonderful my hair looks blonde nowadays, after she said it couldnt be done!