[Sticky] Share your Bleaching Horror Stories

So sorry that the hairdresser didn't know what they were doing and didn't listen to you when you said you were in pain 🙁

Hey everyone, I'm full of regret this afternoon. Despite reading all the excellent advice on this forum I still didn't trust myself /  feel comfortable enough to bleach my own roots & my usual hairdresser was beginning to bore me as almost every time i asked for a new colour she said she couldnt do it.

So i booked an appointment with another one at a pretty decent & pricey salon today. I went in there with 1 inch dark brown roots (natural hair colour) and just past shoulder length capri blue with a very patchy fade - grey on some mid lengths to ends & but very bright still towards the top & on some patches underneath. When i said that i would like to get back to the pink i had previously i wsa quite surprised / nervous / excited when she seemed quite confident that it would happen today rather than a slow process over a number of weeks. This is what happened:

She applied straight bleach (not sure what volume) to my roots, this took her about 20-25 mins & was stinging like crazy so i was thinking i wouldn't have to sit there for very long seeing as she took so long to apply it.

I was wrong. she left me for another 30 mins on top of this.

When she eventually came back i was dying to get the bleach off but she had what she called a bleach bath with her & started vigourously rubbing it into my lengths. I know it must have been a lot stronger than what you guys refer to as a bleach bath on here because the blue was just vanishing within a couple of minutes. I was really starting to worry now, 10 - 15 mins of her applying this & i had now had bleach on my hair & scalp for over an hour.

Her assistant then took me over to wash it off, i was sop relieved but she was also being super harsh & using really hot water so even the wash off was agony. In case you're wondering why i haven't said anything, i am super shy & hate confrontation, if they made me totally bald i would probably just smile, pay & fight back the tears till i got home  :'(

So bleach washed off i got back to the chair & had a quick feel - hair felt extremely gummy / stringy, i wanted to cry. She came over with a mix of colour & toner & the instant this touched my scalp i felt i was on fire. at this point i said its really burning me. she said she would have to continue now shes started  😮

so she very quickly slapped this concoction all over, rubbed it in a bit & washed it off for me with cold water, what a relief!!

In the end my hair has come out a beautiful colour even though i think i've taken a lot of hair damage to get it, my scalp is sore & has scabs forming already  & to top it off i had to pay £103 for the experience.

so from now on i can safely say i will be very carefully following all of your advice & taking my chances doing it myself. sorry this is such a long post & thanks for reading!

Dear lord. NO patch test? And whilst you expressed discomfort they did not stop applying the product? Seek medical and legal advice. What this salon has done voids their insurance, shows no regard for their clients and is disgusting practice.

I'm a qualified hairdresser and i hate hearing these kinds of stories. What you have described is not the correct procedure, i know of no bleach in the land that should be left on for more that 45 mins, and the moment you reported discomfort it should have been rinsed off immediately. I often wonder how some stylists pass the exams :/ Im so sorry for you 🙁

Thanks everyone

I'm just really hoping that my hair doesn't come out when the scabs start to come off :/

At least I've learned my lesson now & my hair is as light as I'm ever going to want it to be so no more bleaching for a long time 🙂

Oh poor you 🙁 i'm the same , I wouldn't complain either, hope your hair and head gets better xx

Some of the posts on here make me wince! But, guilty as charged...

Around 18 months ago now, I'd been using XXL platinum on my roots and it just wasn't cutting it, leaving my naturally light brown/dark blonde hair a really brassy colour and generally in terrible condition. The last time I used it my roots went NAPALM ORANGE. I looked like I'd been tangoed. I was devastated. Toner did nothing. I told myself I would wait, that I shouldn't put another one on so soon... But after a week I couldn't stand it, after all wearing a hat in the summer isn't too comfy. I went out a bought another box dye. I eschewed the XXL in favour of a Loreal lightening kit and pot of toner. I whacked it on.

Now I sometimes think that I might have got away with it... however I fell asleep for a short while with the cursed stuff on my head.

I woke up and dived in the shower to get it off, it hadn't been too long after all and the roots felt ok... What I hadn't counted on was that when I fell asleep and wriggled about I'd managed to smear the mixture onto my already white blonde hair... I felt the hair stretching as I ran my hands through it in the shower and then forming into clumps. You know the rest.

For the next few days I had a ridiculous amount of breakage, I toned and reconstructed as best I could. The roots were shockingly ok but the rest was frazzled. I made a pact with myself that I wouldn't go near bleach again for 6 months and I damn well wouldn't trust any more box dyes.

As if this wasn't bad enough I learned a further lesson shortly afterwards. In my infinite wisdom I thought it would be a great idea to braid in a set of dread extensions to 'give my hair a rest'. I thought a few weeks without brushing or excessive washing, let the oils recover would help it. Oh no it most certainly did not. It left me with a shaggy mop that had snapped off at assorted length depending on where the bleach had hit it. I cried in the shower afterwards. The damage behind my ears/on the sides was so bad that I visited my hairdresser and had her shave me into a deathawk (like a mohawk but longer). I couldn't face the full chop.

I discovered the forum, I learned how to do it right thanks to you ladies and now I have a healthy lilac mohawk (despite having had it cut in a panic, I quickly discovered I actually love it) with only a little damage left to be cut away very soon.

Now I sometimes think that I might have got away with it... however I fell asleep for a short while with the cursed stuff on my head.

Oh my god o_o;;;; Lucky it wasnt too long as you said >_<

Thanks everyone

I'm just really hoping that my hair doesn't come out when the scabs start to come off :/

At least I've learned my lesson now & my hair is as light as I'm ever going to want it to be so no more bleaching for a long time 🙂

You should write to the manager explaining how disappointed you are. That avoids all confrontation but gets your point across 🙂 oh and tell everyone you know not to go there!!

I haven't had anything awful happen to my hair, luckily, but I used to go to a hairdresser to bleach my roots (I was platinum blonde) and she'd pull the bleach through all the way to the ends which were already very white. I didn't say anything because I didn't really know anything about hair, I trusted her. I ended up going to a different salon one day for a trim and ended up having to cut 4 inches off.

Ive had a few!

When i was about 15 i went dark, hated it and went blonde again. My friend was training to be hairdresser and done it for me. Obviously she had missed this part of her training! i dont remember how many processes it was but i was there all day. The front part of my hair snapped off to about a inch and felt like candyfloss

Another time, before i understood bleaching and toning, i tried to bleach up some sections  from yellow to white. Totally snapped off again :s

And yet another - went from black to red in one day and distroyed my hair! Hair was bleached twice in a row for 30 mins each and then a perm red. It didnt snap but it felt horrible for months. Luckily veggie dyes covered up most of the damage

I'm so glad I've found this forum! Feels nice to share my utter hair horror stories - of which I have many! Haha 😀

I've been dying my hair since I was about 9, and mostly at school because of "extreme colour" rules I stuck to black, blue-black or black-purple. So I get to being at college and decide... right, it's time to bleach this mother.
Naiive, inexperienced, totally clueless me goes and spends £50 - YES, £50 - on home bleaching products - in hindsight, I could have saved up a bit and got it done professionally, as lifting black to blonde as I now know is a nightmare... but no, I could DO this.
So, at home with about 4 different boxes of blonde dye kits and bleaches, I think, what the hell, and whack them on. By myself.
Needless to say, it was orange. And burgundy. And brown. And yellow.
Well, I almost died. Parents wouldn't pay to fix it, so I naiively thought - another bleaching will surely do the trick!
...Now I was totally orange. Like, a natural but very bright ginger. And my roots were white.
Queue four months wearing hats and conditioning the living shit out of my now utterly fried hair!
Not knowing at the time that I could have just whacked on my Directions Flamingo Pink over my orange hair - which I did, and it turned out AMAZINGLY. I was so chuffed! Didn't need a lot of chopping either.
Then after a couple of years of dying it red, I decided I wanted my waist-length hair cut above my shoulders, and WHITE. My hairdresser friend said she could do it cheaply and easily as I was a friend. I specified to her to not cut it TOO short.
So she whacked on a 40% bleach... onto my scalp. And did it twice. For an hour. In the same day.
My head was ON FIRE. I was in agony but she assured me it "was meant to sting." She then said I wouldn't go white in one day and whacked on a pink colour - permanent - which also burned to fuck. That had to be stuck on my head for an hour too. My head felt strained, stretched and hot. And I was paranoid as I saw her chop off about 14 inches of hair.
The end result was a lovely pink colour and not bad condition as much as I thought it would be. However, the back was an inch and a half long, the front was a long side-sweeping fringe to my chin. Which I wouldn't have minded if I hadn't then had BAD chemical burns on my scalp. Like, scabby weeping chemical burns.
Over the next few months I was bleaching my hair every 2-3 weeks, applying new colours and it was BUGGERED. So I threw on a brown dye [for work], then black... that was about 6 months ago and I'm ready to whack on some bleach again!