From Henna to SFX red via bleach bath....(with pics)

OK, so that's my starting colour, and I then bleach bathed it twice to get a bright ginger/orange colour.  The point is, that even though henna is permanent, it can be bleached over provided that a) the henna you have used was 100% pure and didn't have any nasty metallic salts in it, and b) that you're being realistic with your colour expectations.  Henna will never completely bleach out of your hair, so don't expect it to go blonde, but if you're planning to put red semi-permanent dye over the top, you will achieve enough lift to get the red to show up.  You could probably even get away with purple or pink, but blues, greens and turquoises probably won't work.  The reason for this is because henna is permanent, and not permanent in the way that chemical box dyes are permanent.  Chemical box dyes deposit colour molecules into the hair shaft, which then expand during the oxidation process (via peroxide) and give the colour.  The henna molecules don't change size, they actually bond themselves to the keratin in your hair, and are impossible to remove completely. This is why bleaching over henna will always give you an orange tone, because all you're doing is removing the colour from the hair, but the red molecules are still there over the top.  Henna is a progressive colour, it's a bit like adding a translucent film of red over your hair, it won't lighten your hair, but will add red over the top of whatever colour you already have.  So this is what I ended up with after two bleach baths (40 vol developer and Jerome Russell Powder bleach).  Again, excuse the crappy pic of me without makeup and with un-conditioned hair.....

And now the final result......
I used a mixture of SFX Nuclear Red, Blood Red and Devilish.  I can't give exact proportions because I just dumped them into a bowl and mixed until I was happy with the colour.  However, it's a bit too pink tinged for my liking, so when it fades and I go to re-dye it, I'll just use Nuclear Red and Blood Red.  This pic is after about two weeks, so has had multiple shampoos and there is a little fading around the hairline.  I left it on overnight for a nice deep colour, and I'm very pleased with the result!

Your dreads were lovely, but oh my gosh, this looks absolutely gorgeous!  Seriously beautiful colour and really suits you.

Thanks squishy000!  The plan now is to grow my hair out (still bright red) and have synthetic dread extensions put in when it gets a bit longer (still bright red) to help with the growing out stages (my hair is extremely thick and curly - almost afro territory - and it looks absolutely awful when it starts to get to that sticking up everywhere, growing out stage!).  My avatar pic isn't of my natural dreads, it's from a previous growing out stage when I had dread extensions in, so it's the same sort of dreads I'll be having done again, just in bright red this time!  But sadly, not for a good few months yet.  Need to grow it out a bit for the dreads to be attached.  I don't have a pic of my natural dreads.  🙁

OOh I love the red! That's the colour I'm going for, but a tad brighter. Just used Hot Lava on it and it's orange at the moment tho 🙁 When you finally get your dreads in make sure you post more pics to show it off! x

Good advice on henna there! And a great end result.

i know nothing about henna, so is defo's helpful =) i love your dreadies, but red looks amazing on you!

Wow it looks amazing, it really suits your skin tone! Love it 😀

That shade of red on you is AMAZING!!!

You look fantastic with the red! Glad it turned out well, always wondered how successful bleaching henna was