Bleaching offers one of the easiest ways to change your hair color and give your hair a great transformation. Whether you are inspired by Taylor Swift’s bleached hair and are looking to go blonde, or you wish to make a bold statement with dark purple hair, bleaching is the way to go.
However, this kind of hair transformation does come at a cost. Bleached hair is highly prone to damage, frizz, dryness, and hair fall. Moreover, bleached hair also requires a lot of care and maintenance in order to not only maintain the color but also prevent significant damage to the hair.
So, if you are considering getting your hair bleached, make sure to follow a proper hair care routine afterward.
We’ve outlined the best-bleached hair routine to follow in 2022 that will help you maintain your freshly bleached hair, as well as save your hair from a bleaching disaster!
Bleached Hair Guide: Avoid Frequent Washing
One of the first and most important steps to take care of bleached hair is to avoid frequent washing. Cut down on the number of times you wash your hair in a week.
We know how bleached hair is back in style – from Miley Cyrus to Zayn Malik, everyone is bleaching their hair. But there are consequences to bold fashion choices.
Overwashing your hair is always a big no even for non-bleached hair, so you can imagine the kind of damage it can do to bleached hair. This is because freshly bleached hair is already very dry, and frequent washing can further strip away the essential oils and elements that your hair needs to ensure good health.
Initially, it is ideal to wash your hair twice a week to help your bleached hair recover from the bleaching process. You can simply invest in a nice, quality shower cap to prevent your hair from getting wet during shower times.
If you feel that your hair looks too dirty and you can’t go on for long with these wash breaks, you can use a little dry shampoo, but only when needed.
Bleached Hair Guide: Cut Back On Shampoo
Proper hair care after bleaching doesn’t only require you to cut back on washes, but also on shampoos. Shampooing your hair more than required can easily and quickly strip your hair of moisture and natural oils from the hair follicle.
With bleached hair, use shampoo only once or a maximum of twice a week to ensure healthy, shiny hair. This might take some time to get used to, especially if you are habitual in washing your hair every other day.
Invest in mild shampoos with hair-nourishing active ingredients, natural formulation, and superior moisture levels to make bleached hair soft and silky.
Bleached Hair Guide: Use Purple Shampoo
If you are wondering how to fix bleached hair that turned yellow, purple shampoo is your best friend.
As the name suggests, purple shampoo features a purple-colored pigment that helps neutralize yellow tones, brightens blonde hair, and eliminates brassiness.
It is important to understand that one of the biggest pitfalls of bleached hair is the occurrence of yellowish, brassy tones that can quickly ruin the look and appearance of your newly colored hair. Purple shampoos help prevent this by neutralizing bad pigments, thereby maintaining the color and shine of your hair.
However, note here that using too much purple shampoo or using it too soon after getting your hair bleached is also dangerous because it can change the color of your bleached hair as hair after bleaching becomes quite absorbent and porous.
Ideally, you should incorporate a purple shampoo into your hair routine two weeks after getting your hair bleached and then use it once every few washes.
Bleached Hair Guide: Alternate Your Shampoo and Conditioner
One of the biggest requirements of bleached hair is creating a healthy balance between moisture and protein. Both elements are absolutely crucial for maintaining hair health, but at the same time, overdoing either of the two can have extremely adverse consequences on your hair.
What you need to do here is alternate your shampoo and conditioner, both of which should be sulfate-free considering how sulfates can dry out the hair.
The ideal shampoo-conditioner ritual for bleached hair features a protein-rich, sulfate-free formula, and a moisture-rich, sulfate-free formula where you alternate between the two.
If you follow this routine for your hair religiously, you will be able to both maintain your bleached hair and also help it recover from post-bleaching side effects.
Bleached Hair Guide: Avoid the Heat
This probably doesn’t come as a surprise considering how heat is already so damaging for your hair, and the damage can be worse when it comes to bleached hair.
The hair is super dry, dehydrated, and vulnerable to heat right after bleaching so it’s extremely important to take a break from your usual heat styling products and give your hair a break from the heat.
For the first couple of weeks, try to avoid heat and stay as far away from styling tools as possible. While this might be a little unreasonable or unrealistic to achieve for some people, it’s only a matter of a few days and at the end of the day, it will help prevent excessive damage to your hair.
Once it’s okay to reintroduce heat styling to your hair routine, try to keep it to a minimum and use heat on your hair only when needed. Also, always make sure to use a heat-protectant spray before styling your hair with a straightener or a curling tong as this will protect your bleached hair from serious damage.
Bleached Hair Guide: Style the Hair with Care
Limiting the use of hair styling tools is one thing, but at the same time, you should also be mindful of other hair styling habits.
For instance, brushing your hair harshly, tugging at your hair, or pulling your hair into tight hairstyles is extremely damaging and can result in serious breakage around the hairline.
With bleached hair, it is best to opt for loose, easy hairstyles, as well as use a wide-toothed comb to minimize damage and to ensure the best results.
From loose braids and ponytails to half-hair updos to micro bangs, these are just a few of the many options to help you style your hair with care without imposing any significant damage.
The same hair styling rules apply to men as well. Take platinum hair for men, for instance. This color also requires bleaching which means you must take extra care after the bleaching session.
Bleached Hair Guide: Rice Water Rinse
Rice water has lately been making rounds in the world of hair care and has been trending as one of the most beneficial home remedies for dry, dehydrated hair.
This is primarily because rice water is super rich in vitamins and minerals such as amino acids that help strengthen hair roots, as well as inositol, a carbohydrate known for repairing damaged hair and preventing further damage.
A rice water rinse is an excellent natural remedy for providing moisture to bleached hair and maintaining hair health.
All you need to do is boil some rice, strain the water, and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight. Transfer the rice water to a container preferably a spray bottle as it will help you rinse your hair with great ease and convenience.
Do rice water rinse every time you shower or as many times as you need, and pave the way to healthy, happy hair. This home remedy also works for sun-bleached hair and can thwart adverse consequences.
Bleached Hair Guide: Use A Microfiber Towel
Regardless of whether you have treated or untreated hair, using a microfiber towel for your hair is always a good idea.
Compared to regular towels and other fabrics, a microfiber towel is designed in a way that reduces the amount of friction created by which your hair is subjected during the drying process.
Moreover, microfiber towels are gentler on the hair, are great at wicking away moisture, and they also help reduce frizz. This results in less breakage overall, reduced dryness, and prevention of unnecessary pulling or stretching of the hair.
The highly-absorbent and ultra-soft feel of microfiber towels helps maintain the soft and smooth texture of bleached hair without causing any kind of damage or frizz.
Bleached Hair Guide: Avoid Washing Hair with Hot Water
If you look at Kendall Jenner street style, you will marvel at her hair which always looks like it’s been blow-dried. And as a model, we know how much treatment her hair goes through on regular basis. But how is her hair so silky smooth? The use of anything hot on bleached hair is extremely dangerous because heat and steam are two elements that open up the hair follicles, causing further damage to the hair.
If, for instance, you absolutely can’t use cold water, you can wash your hair with medium temperature to lukewarm water, but make sure to use a quick spritz of cold water at the end to help seal in the moisture and close the hair cuticles.
Bleached Hair Guide: Get Rid of Dead Ends
A simple, easy way to repair damaged bleached hair is to go for regular hair trims and get rid of dead ends. Since the ends of your hair are farthest from the roots, they tend to get excessively coarse, dry, and damaged after a bleaching session.
So, make it a rule to go for a hair trim every 6-8 weeks after getting your hair bleached, depending on the rate of your hair growth.
Bleached Hair Guide: Avoid Sun Exposure
Prolonged exposure to the sun can seriously damage the hair, especially the outer covering called the cuticle. Sun damage takes many shapes and forms such as frizziness, hair thinning, split ends, dryness, brittle strands, discoloration and so much more.
In the case of freshly bleached hair, sun exposure can worsen the damage so try to avoid it as much as possible. Whenever you step out, either wear a scarf loosely around your hair or wear a hat to protect your hair from excessive sun exposure.
Bleached Hair Guide: DIY Hair Masks
With bleached hair, deep conditioners, and hair masks are an absolute non-negotiable. Because the effects of bleaching can be so damaging to the hair, you must use hair masks to ensure moisture, nourishment, and softness.
It is best to avoid chemical hair treatments and resort to more natural, DIY hair masks where you can know exactly what you are putting in your hair.
You can whip up the best hair masks for bleached hair with a few, simple ingredients from your pantry such as honey, avocado, and egg whites, to name a few. These are excellent moisturizing ingredients that are full of essential nutrients that your hair requires for good health.
It is ideal to use homemade hair masks twice or thrice a week, or until the condition of your bleached hair begins to improve in terms of strength, elasticity, and softness.
Bleached Hair Guide: Use Hair Oils for Hydration
In many cases, bleached hair ends up having a characteristic frizzy look which can worsen if you don’t take good care of your hair.
Hair oils play a very important part here considering how much they help in protecting the hair from regular wear and tear. We’re sure that’s the secret of Timothee Chalamet curls. They fill the gap between the cuticle cells, keeping the surfactants at bay and locking in moisture, which further helps restore shine, strength, and gloss to a great extent.
There are so many different types of hair oils that you can use, each of which offers a unique purpose. These oils also help fix bleached hair breakage and with consistent usage, they can improve the overall quality and appearance of your hair.
Olive oil, for instance, can help restore the life of your hair, and coconut oil prevents frizz and protein loss.
There’s also argan oil which is quite rich in antioxidants and protects the hair from damage, and almond oil helps make the hair strands stronger, thanks to the abundance of proteins and vitamin E present in it.
Right after having your hair bleached, start oiling your hair twice during the first week, and then switch it to once a week afterward.
Bleached Hair Guide: Use A Shower Filter
If you have bleached blonde hair, water is undoubtedly one of your hair’s worst enemies given the fact that the chemicals, grime, and minerals in it can worsen the brassiness post-bleaching. Excessive exposure to such water can also lead to breakage, dehydration, and discoloration.
Therefore, it is best to invest in a shower filter to maintain the integrity and color of your bleached hair. A shower filter will help remove chloramines and chlorine from the water that you use for showering, thereby preventing them from permeating the hair fibers.
This is particularly essential for those who have high chlorine content in their water because high chlorine levels can quickly agitate both the skin and hair, leading to dryness and itchiness.
Bleached Hair Guide: Sleep On A Silk Pillowcase
Silk pillowcases have experienced great hype over the years and truth be told, the hype is well justified. Most silk pillowcases are made of mulberry silk, which is known to be the highest quality silk on the planet.
One of the biggest benefits of using a silk pillowcase for sleeping is that it’s a friction-free material that lets the hair slip and slides while you are sleeping instead of pulling and breaking it. Moreover, it helps fight frizz, thereby retaining moisture in your hair.
Silk pillowcases also prevent moisture from getting absorbed into your pillow so if you ever happen to sleep with your hair wet, this will help your hair from drying out and breaking while you sleep.
Common Bleaching Concerns
How to Darken Bleached Hair
Bleached hair is supposed to be light in terms of color, but there are times when the result ends up being lighter than what you had in mind. There are many ways to fix this such as you can always visit a hair colorist at a salon.
However, if you’d rather resort to a DIY method, there are a few things you can do to darken bleached hair at home. One way is to use a darker-colored hair dye according to your preferred shade and follow the instructions that come with it.
If you don’t wish to use a chemical-based dye, you can darken the hair naturally using ingredients such as coffee, black tea, or henna, to name a few. It is best to consult a professional to prevent any kind of damage or hair color disaster.
How to Fix Uneven Bleached Hair
There’s nothing worse than a splotchy bleach job with half-bleached hair, but the good news is that there are a few ways to fix uneven bleached hair. One way is to re-bleach the hair 3-4 weeks after the initial bleach job, either all over or as a spot treatment.
Another option to fix badly bleached hair is to use a darker dye all over the hair to cover the splotches.
How to Make Bleached Hair Soft and Silky
A common concern among those with bleached hair is how to make bleached hair soft and silky.
This isn’t surprising considering how bleach is such a harsh invader that affects the hair bonds as well as the hair cuticle.
There are several things you can do to make bleached hair soft and silky such as regular oiling, hair masks, protein treatments, avoiding heat and styling products, rice water rinse, and so much more.
FAQs – Bleached Hair
What can you not do with bleached hair?
You can’t use hair styling tools for at least the first 2-3 weeks with bleached hair, you can’t use harsh products on your hair, you can’t tie your hair up tightly or make elaborate hairstyles, and you can’t make your hair vulnerable to prolonged sun exposure, among many other things. The same also applies to men’s bleached hair. Don’t indulge in excessive hairstyling, and opt for easy men’s haircuts before bleaching such as a mohawk haircut, for instance, where you will need to bleach a small amount of your hair, thereby reducing the extent of overall damage. Pair it with short beard styles and you are good to go!
Will my hair get ruined if I bleach it?
If the bleaching isn’t done correctly and properly, it can certainly ruin your hair forever. It is best to leave it to a professional who knows the ins and outs of hair bleaching. Most of us are guilty of searching for how to bleach our hair online at least once in life, but truth be told, bleaching should never be done at home without professional expertise.
However, even with correct and proper bleaching, your hair will experience some side effects such as dryness, frizz, split ends, and also hair fall in many cases. But, you can minimize the side effects with extensive hair care post-bleaching.
How long can you keep bleached hair?
Bleached hair shouldn’t exceed 30 minutes because that’s the maximum amount of time you can leave bleach in your hair. After that, the bleach will stop the coloring process and will start cooking your hair strands, resulting in serious damage. It’s a common misconception that the longer the bleach stays in your hair, the better the color will be. This is simply a myth that can simply lead to a bleaching disaster.
How long does it take to recover from bleached hair?
Since each individual’s hair is unique in terms of length, texture, quality, and growth rate, the recovery process for bleached hair can vary for everyone. If you take good care of your hair after bleaching, use the right products, and follow all the do’s and don’ts as required, chances are that you might be able to recover from bleached hair within a few months. However, note here that bleached hair doesn’t exactly return to normal, so if you want to go back to your natural color, the only way is to be patient and let your hair grow out.
Conclusion
Bleaching is surely a great way to achieve colored hair, especially if you wish to go blonde.
However, with bleached hair, following a proper hair care routine is absolutely necessary. Bleaching itself can have damaging effects on the hair, and if you don’t take care of your hair, the effects can worsen with time.
So, make sure to follow the above-mentioned hair care tips for bleached hair in order to maintain soft, silky, smooth, and healthy hair. In case your hair doesn’t start to regain stability after the bleaching process despite following a hair care routine, you may have to consult a hair professional for help. You can get to know more about the best men’s haircuts or cute hairstyles that require literally no treatment whatsoever.