Bleaching advice and info

Great advice, thank you! My hairdresser nearly went mental at me when I said I was going to bleach my hair so I could get it bright pink, so I was wondering what to do. It has XXL red in at the mo, and I'm naturally brown but with a scary amount of grey these days :'(
Hadn't heard of Colour b4 and it sounds like a good thing to try so have just ordered some. If it can strip enough of the red out, I reckon that the amount of grey should give me a good bright pink. Never thought I'd be pleased about the grey!  ;D

yay! glad you found this helpful. aot of ladies have had great success with xxl reds & cb4. so good luck =)

also grey hairs tend not to hold colour as well as regular bleached hair, as it is already porus. you may be one of the lucky ones & don't notice the difference, but wanted to prewarn you =)

welcome!

AuntyT I have just got rid of Live XXL red; it took four Jo Baz/ Colour B4's (last one was to sort out a mistake) and three (gentle) blonde box dyes. You could substitute a bleaching or bleach baths for the box dyes as Pippachainsaw explains, I just have sensitive skin. If you read around my posts you will see what I did and what I learned - mainly to be patient!

Thanks Pippachainsaw. I had a scan around about dyeing grey hair and saw that people have mixed results. Mine picks up the XXL really well, and gives a bit of a high/lowlight effect as the grey dyes a different colour than the non-grey, so I'm hopeful that the SFX will do the same. Only one way to find out! 😀

Don't have much time to be patient Firefox7275 - got to try to get myself pink for the 12th May for the London Moonwalk! Nothing like leaving things till the last minute... Might try an XXL blonde if the Colour B4 doesn't do the job, but I'm guessing  the CB4 will be kinder.

I'll try and get before, during and after photos, as I suspect it could be an interesting process!

So impressed with this forum - tons of really useful advice and real results, which is fab 😀

just be carefl. wash your hair for AGES after cb4, as you run the risk of reoxiding the dye when you use xxl blonde & end up black =s good luck though =)

Ooh blimey, don't want that! Will rinse and rinse a lot, thanks. Starting to realise that I really haven't left enough time for all this... which is about par for the course for me 😉

If you are really short of time try this with each Jo Baz/ Colour B4
http://www.hairdyeforum.com/index.php?topic=6197.0
Also maybe wash your hair twice a day after the stripper and before the bleach, that should get more colour molecules out, but don't use silicone conditioners or styling products because that could lock colour molecules in. IMO don't heat style for the duration because your hair is going to be in a vulnerable state. Your hair will probably feel like straw the whole way through, but you can pull that back with intensive treatments when you are done; if you fry your hair with bleach or end up reoxiding the Live XXL you can't really fix that.  ???

Thanks Firefox  *thx*  Luckily I don't use any heat styling with my hair - it's curly, so looks better just left to dry naturally than blow dryed (frizz!), and hair straighteners just don't do it - tried them once, got it straight-ish, then went out in drizzle and was back to curly again, so that was a waste of an a waste of an hour! 
How do I know which conditioners have silicon? Just scanned the ingredients of my usual L'oreal Elvive colour protect (which I guess I don't want to use through this process?), and can't see anything that says silicon...

Silicones are anything with the suffix -cone, -conol or -xane. I am curly too, can highly recommend going sulphate surfactant free for hair health and colour longevity.

Thanks for all the help, the Colour B4 did the trick. Just used it once, rinsed like a mad thing (good tip as someone said in another post to have a clock, as it does take longer than you think). That stripped the Red XXL out to a sort of pale copper, and it's picked up the Atomic Pink a treat, just in time for the Moonwalk tomorrow. Happy Days  *1*