Bleach is often the suggested solution to lighten hair you had dyed previously. But bleaching your hair is not entirely straightforward and, in some cases, can cause severe damage to your mane. A hair bleach bath is the answer if you want a more gentle version of a typical bleaching process.
Hair bleach bath treatments are used to:
- Strip previous hair dye
- Strip toner from overtoned hair
- Lighten hair enough to get rid of excess brassiness
- Even out hair color after bleaching
What Exactly Is a Bleach Bath?
A bleach bath is a bleaching process that uses a mixture of bleach and shampoo to lift hair color or strip unwanted hair dye gently. It's the recommended treatment to remove color depositing dyes and even out your hair color. Unlike traditional bleach applications, a bleach bath is applied on wet hair, making it less challenging to get the application right. As the bleach is diluted with shampoo, your hair will suffer less damage.
Why Opt for a Bleach Bath?
A bleach bath is not a replacement for bleaching your hair at home, but it works great when all you want is to remove some stubborn dark pigments to get an even canvass. A bleach bath can lift enough pigment to tone to blonde perfection afterwards, but with minimal damage, if you want to fix orange hair after bleaching.
Overall, you should choose a bleach bath instead of bleaching if:
- Your hair is damaged, and you want to avoid further damage.
- You only need 1-2 levels of lift.
- You want to strip darker pigments, a toner, or get rid of a rainbow dye that is not faded enough.
- You aren't confident bleaching your hair at home but want to make your hair lighter.
- You only have half an hour instead of several hours for a complete bleach application.
What’s the Main Benefit of a Bleach Bath for Hair?
A considerable benefit of a bleach bath is that it's much easier than actually bleaching your hair at home. If all you want is 1 or 2 levels of lift, why bother going through the trouble of an entire bleaching session? It's also much more accessible; anybody can do a bleach bath at home, whereas bleaching is often better left to experienced hair dyers and professionals.
How Damaging Is a Bleach Bath?
A bleach bath is not damaging for hair in the grand scheme of things. It is not conditioning, and your hair will feel dryer afterwards, so the last step on a bleach cap is always a deep conditioning treatment. But compared with a traditional lifting process, your hair will not suffer from a bleach cap.
That said, it's not something I would use many times in a row to lift your hair color several levels. If you want that level of lift, you should consider regular bleach.
Why Do a Full Bleach at All? Bleach vs. Bleach Bath
A full bleach is more versatile than a bleach bath, and the results are different. We are talking apples and oranges here. It's also much more complicated, and it has serious risks for the integrity of your hair if you don't know what you are doing.
Tools You Need For A Bleach Cap
To do a bleach bath on your hair, you'll need the following:
- Your favorite bleach.
- Your preferred developer for bleaching. A 10 vol developer is usually enough, but if you have very dark hair try a 20 vol developer instead.
- Clarifying shampoo.
- Vaseline to protect your ears and the skin around your scalp.
- Gloves.
- Old towels and an old t-shirt (this is still bleach, and it will still stain and discolor your clothes)
- A wide-tooth comb.
- A clear plastic shower cap or transparent cling film.
Mixing Ratios For A Hair Bleach Bath
To mix the bleach cap mixture, you should mix:
- Equal parts bleach and developer (unless the developer and bleach instructions say otherwise)
- Equal parts shampoo.
So the result is 25% bleach powder, 25% developer, and 50% shampoo. You can adjust this depending on the condition of your hair; If your hair is very damaged or you want a very gentle effect, add more shampoo.
Hair Bleach Bath, Step By Step:
Step 1: Wash Your Hair With A Clarifying Shampoo
Make sure your hair is immaculate and free from any residue. This will allow the bleach cap to be more effective. Do not dry your hair; just towel dry it to remove excess moisture. Do not apply any leave-in products or oils.
Step 2: Apply The Bleach Bath Mix
Wear your gloves and make sure old towels protect your surrounded surfaces, and you are wearing an old t-shirt or a hairdresser cape.
Start at the ends of your hair and evenly apply the bleach cap mixture working up towards your roots. Make sure you soak the hair entirely, so the result is even.
Once you have applied all the mixture, use the wide-tooth comb to comb it through the hair. Clip your hair up and cover with the shower cap or wrap with cling film. The plastic will keep your hair temperature, so the bleach cap is more effective, and since it's transparent, you will be able to evaluate the lifting process.
Step 2: Let It Develop
Watch your hair closely. Unlike hair dye, bleach will keep lightening hair until you wash it off. Every five minutes, check if you have achieved the desired base color, and once you are there, it's time to wash it off.
Usually, light hair will lift in about 7 to 10 minutes. Are you looking to fix green hair after ash toner? This would usually be enough to get rid of it. Darker, permanent dyes take longer, and some rainbow green and blue pigments can take 20 or 30 minutes.
Black permanent dye takes a long time to lift with a bleach bath. If you are using a high-strength developer, you should wash it off after 10 minutes. If you use a 20 vol developer, you can leave it for between 30 and 45 minutes tops, but that will dry your hair. Using a bleach cap on black hair sometimes requires several treatments to get it lifted.
Please do not leave a bleach bath for more than 45 minutes; it's better to wash it off, condition, and reapply in a separate session a day or two later.
Step 3: Rinse The Bleach Cap Very Carefully
Now it's time to rinse and condition. Use warm water and rinse your hair well; the shampoo will lather, which is normal. Make sure it's all gone, or your hair could continue lifting!
Unless you are going to tone or dye your hair afterwards, use a deep conditioning treatment to help your hair recover.
Bleaching Black Hair With A Bleach Cap
Using a bleach bath on black hair will lift only one or two levels, so it's unlikely to give you actual blonde hair. If you want blonde hair, choose bleach for black hair and apply it as a regular bleach treatment in two or three sessions to achieve maximum lift.
However, a bleach cap can effectively remove black dye over several treatments. Pure black dye usually has a lot of blue pigments, so your hair may go green or blue as you lift.
If you can, use a color remover such as ColorOops first to get the bulk of the black pigment out, then use a bleach bath for the stubborn bits that won't lift and even out the color.
What Went Wrong With My Bleach Bath?
There is not much that can go wrong with a bleach bath. Unlike regular bleach, troubleshooting a bleach cap is usually relatively easy. If you are trying to remove dark hair dye, a color remover before the bleach bath usually works best.
Suppose you feel the bleach bath didn't lift anything. You may want to use a higher volume developer; however, think of how you mixed the bleach cap mixture before you do that. You should first mix the bleach and the developer, same as if you were bleaching your hair. Then, once the mixture is ready, mix the shampoo in.
Is Bleach Bath an Alternative to Regular Bleaching?
A bleach cap will work better than bleach if you want to get an overall even, gentle lift. Bleach is much stronger, and the application is much more controller. You can get highlights using bleach; you can turn a brunette into a platinum blonde using bleach. You can't do that with a bleach bath.
But if you are looking for a solution to strip demi-permanent dye from your hair, bleach baths are usually the first thing you should try. For permanent and semi-permanent dye, try color remover first and then use a bleach bath to remove any stubborn left-over pigments.
How Many Levels Does a Bleach Bath Lift?
A bleach bath will lift between one and two levels but will very effectively strip previous dye from your hair. Do you need to get rid of that pink hair on time for work on Monday? A bleach cap is your best friend.
Will A Bleach Bath Fix Orange Or Yellow Hair?
A bleach bath won't fix brassy hair on itself because the orange and yellow pigments are the color of your hair once you strip away pigments... but it may lift your hair color enough to tone it to remove unwanted brassy tones. If your hair is orange because it didn't lift enough, a bleach bath will remove that orange, but your hair will still look brassy.
Thankfully, you can use a gloss or toner to bring your hair to the right tone of blonde, platinum, or golden and eliminate the brass. You can also use purple shampoo for this purpose, but only after you are done with the bleach cap.
Why Not Use A Purple Shampoo To Do A Bleach Cap?
It sounds like a brilliant idea, lift, and tone simultaneously, right? Lift and tone work for dying brunette hair blonde at home, but it won't work with purple shampoo on a bleach bath. The bleach will eat up all the pigment on your purple shampoo, and nothing will happen in terms of toning your hair.
You can use a purple shampoo or conditioner after a bleach bath to remove brassy tones from your hair. But not at the same time. The best shampoo for a bleach bath is a clarifying one that will allow the bleach to be the most effective.
