How I Got Blonde Hair

So first off let me start by saying that this is NOT a tutorial, yes I’ve gone to hair school, no I’m not finished yet so I am in no way a professional. This is how I myself got to blonde. My best friend is a professional licensed hair stylist and she gave me tips and things to do also but ultimately I did my research and then did my own hair.

My hair was relaxed for years until I got older and realized that I didn’t need relaxers at all and my hair type was perfectly fine without it and it was just damaging my hair. I also love my natural curl pattern. (Mixed girls FTW, lol). So I stopped putting them in my hair and waited about a month and a half before I started my lightening process.

It took me about 8 months total to get to the blonde I’m at now. I am almost as light as I want but not quite there yet. I have maybe 2 or 3 more tones to go before I’m as light as I’d like to be. Maybe. Who knows we will see lol. Anyway here are the products I used to get to the reddish brown color I started off the lightening process with:

(Image from Google)
L’oreal Hi-Lift Brown in Downtown Brown
I lost the picture I took but this is the exact box.

Which got me here

Then about 3 weeks later I used

L’oreal Excellence Creme in B2 Extreme Light Beige Blonde

Which started stripping all the darker tones out of my hair and left me with a ginger red.

Then I let another month or so pass by and I used the L’oreal Hi-Lift in Downtown Brown again and it pretty much at that point was about as light as it was going to be without the help of bleach. By that time I had shaved the sides of my head, cut my hair and gotten extensions to give my actual hair a break from heat styling, etc. to let it grow a bit.

By the time I started the bleaching process it had been about 6 or 7 months since I had permed my hair. With all the cutting and shaving and trimming pretty much all except for the tips of my hair had relaxer in it. So then I was ready to venture into bleach. My first bleach I used these products from Sally’s:

2 packets of L’oreal Quick blue or you can buy the quick blue bucket so you have bleach to maintain your roots once your blonde.
30 Vol Salon Care developer
Wella t14 ash blonde
20 vol Salon Care developer-$4.99 1/2 gallon (sale)
Mixing bowl
Brush
Measuring cup
Reusable Black Gloves

I have a Sally’s Beauty Club card so its a tad cheaper if you sign up for one of those or if you have the professional card it’s even cheaper. Anyway I mixed the bleach and developer together and it looked like this:

I applied starting from about 1 inch from my roots to ends. I did that for my whole head and then left it on for about 10 minutes and then I applied the rest to my roots, put a cap on my head and left it on for about 30 minutes. (Had bleach on my head for a total of 40 minutes). I used my iPhone timer to be accurate and I started timing once I was done with each application. I used 2 packs of the quick blue which is why I recommend getting a bucket of bleach if you aren’t sure or if you just want to have it for eveytime you bleach.

The first bleach application after rinsing all the bleach out my hair looked like this (this was the first packet of bleach before I realized that I needed more):

This is after the second packet covering everything I couldn’t with the first packet:

Then I took my Wella toner and mixed it with the 20 volume developer and applied that to my hair and let it sit for about 10-15 minutes. It says 20 minutes on the bottle but I do a little less because I feel like it’s to much for my hair.

After toning and conditioning again and blow drying my hair. The ends of my hair were extremely white but they were also the pieces that still had relaxer in them so they just broke off. Which wasn’t a huge deal because they were such short little pieces it wasn’t enough for anyone to notice, it just looked like I had trimmed my ends. This was the end result for my first bleach application.

I waited about 2 almost 3 weeks and then I bleached my roots and a few areas that were resistant to the bleach the first time. (You don’t want to over process your hair by re-bleaching hair that is already really blonde.) But this time I used Kaleidocolors Blue instead of Quick Blue. Which I actually liked better than Quick Blue. It’s a lot more blue in the bowl than QB also.

This is what it looked like after bleaching, conditioning, toning, conditioning and blow drying. So it took me about 8 months all together to get to the color I currently am now. I bleach and touch up my roots about every 3 weeks and the current shampoo and conditioner I’m using helps with brightening my blonde and keeping my hair looking nice.

I deep condition my hair about once a week and shampoo and condition my hair once a week to keep it as healthy as possible and clean. I use oil treatments as well both on my wet and dry hair so that my hair can stay strong through all the damage I’m putting it through with the bleach.

So overall ladies this is what I went through to get my hair platinum blonde. I did the slow process because I didn’t want to damage the crap out of my hair to where it was just falling out of my head. I also wanted my hair to be completely perm free for the most part so my hair was completely natural. I suggest for those who have over processed or permed hair to also take the slow lightening route just to save your hair some damage and it helps you get use to having lighter hair gradually rather than it just being one big color changing shock.

Remember that blonde hair is more work to upkeep just like having red hair so make sure it’s something your looking to commit to doing or you’ll be going back darker in no time lol. I will have a video up of my bleaching experience this weekend possibly event tonight if YouTube agrees with me lol about everything I went through and all and possibly even some things that didn’t get covered in my blog post.

Well that’s all for now. Hope you all are having a beautiful Friday even though it’s raining where I am. Any questions don’t hesitate to comment and ask.

Always Remember You’re Beautiful!

-Lola