Hairdressers and Bleach Baths?

[youvegottobekidding]

Do hairdressers still do bleach baths?!
I only ask as I remember having one done a fair few years ago (about 6 years!) & wonder if it's something they still do?! Has anyone had one recently?

I have at the moment, coloured, reddish brown shoulder length hair. My roots as they come through are like a lighter brown, mixed with a few greys. I want to go a couple to a few shades lighter, preferably without so much red tones, so a light brown. I can't do highlights, then end up shit in my hair, yellow streaks at best.

The last time I had a bleach bath was much better result, only I opted to have a bright copper colour applied afterwards as I was going from dark brown to copper. It was £10 for the bleach bath then the cost of the colour on top.

After having a couple of bleaching horrors at home in the past I'm not brave enough to attempt a bleach bath at home! Am I being realistic I can get the colour I want this way? Bleach bath then colour on top at the hairdressers? or will I be laughed at?!

I don't know about bleach baths, Iv never heard of this.
But I do know u can buy from supermarkets/boots etc a product called colourb4 or other hair strippers.
Basically takes out any dye in the hair and I have always had good experiences, especially for red tones that can be hard to remove.
It won't leave u with a complete natural colour that is underneath but does leave u with a good base if u dye it at home..

Thanks for your reply, I've already tried colour B4 & Colourless in the last 3 months, they worked to an extent where they removed the dark brown & left me with a nice lighter auburn colour, however, both times my hair re-oxidised & darkened somewhat over the next few days. I think a bleach bath (where the hair is basically washed with a mixture of bleach & shampoo over a basin for a period of time, think last time it was around 25 -30 mins while the hairdressers continually 'washed' & 'worked' in the mixture) is probably my only hope now!!

Yes, they definitely still do them, although I'd expect it to cost more, but that will depend on the hairdresser.

I can't see how highlights wouldn't work if your 'bleach bath' did. After all, they are both products with bleaching agents. If you have the correct highlighting procedure done, it shouldn't be any more yellow than a 'bleach bath' would leave you.

I had a bleach bath last year as I home colour between professional colours and have to do quite a dark brown (my natural colour) and have quite a lot of grey now so the bleach bath helped lift it all a bit lighter. In fact I was just looking at photos over the weekend and thought I must do that again soon! I’d never heard of it before last summer but my hairdresser (quite expensive) suggested it. It was around £40 I think.

I buy this

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I mix up half and then add shampoo (fudge violet toning) and then leave it on for 20 mins/half an hour. I do this every couple of months.

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Yes they still do them but colour reducers (Colour B4 etc) are kinder to the hair. I'll be honest, most salons don't use colour reducers as they are expensive and time consuming. They go straight in with the bleach bath. I use colour reducers and would try to talk you into using one. If it's re-oxidising you're not rinsing properly.

If you're adamant you want a bleach bath just tell the salon. They'll be trained in how to do one and will oblige.

Would colour b4 work if I’ve been using ‘medium brown’ to colour away greys? Worried it will take away the brown and leave me with grey hair, not a good look! Or would it just lighten the brown a bit?

Janus, Colour B4 strips away any artificial colour on the hair, so, in theory it should leave you with the grey hair. If you're just wanting to lighten the medium brown you have, I'd keep washing it using a clarifying shampoo like tresemme deep cleansing shampoo & conditioner.

Frequency, I did make sure I rinsed properly, I rinsed for around 20 mins on both occasions, felt like eternity! I'm just in two minds now what to do, on close inspection, my hair is like 3 different colour bands! It's like a mid chestnut brown up until about 3 inches of the root, then there's a darker band, then my root area which is lighter! I don't want to go dark again I know that much. I can't afford hairdressers just yet anyway so will just have to sit on it for a while & then maybe pop into my local salon & see what they think.

Theoretically, Colour B4 should remove all the artificial colour and leave you with your base colour which would be slightly lighter than your natural colour and a but brassy from the peroxide you used to colour it brown. In practise the only time I've ever experienced colour B4 was when a client wanted to go platinum. She was already medium blonde. I applied the bleach and watched in horror as her hair turned red. There shouldn't be any red tones in medium blonde hair. I was expecting to see orange and yellow. She eventually admitted she'd coloured her hair black and removed it the night before her appointment with Colour B4. It reoxidised when I put the bleach on.

I've used Pravana Colour Reducer which I was not impressed with at all. It hardly shifted the colour at all. Proclere IceLites Colour Reducer is brilliant. It strips everything. It even budged Henna last time I used it.

If you just want to lighten up the brown either go to a salon and ask for bleach bath followed by a lighter brown or use Head and Shoulders Original.

For banding you really need a professional to help you. You'll probably need on more than one colour if you want an even result.

Thank you so much, don’t think colour b4 is for me then, I definitely don’t want to go grey yet!! So a lighter brown (with probably about 40% grey now 😭!) is realistically best achieved by a bleach bath again. Luckily my hair is in quite good condition and short and grows ridiculously quickly so it shouldn’t be too much work, I hope!

I've just used Colour B4 a few days back to remove Level 4 red and brown dye. It got it to a browny/coppery shade.

I am surprised someone found that bleach caused their client's hair to go red. I had that happen when I used Colour B4 two years back, but, I was using a blonde box dye and random red streaks came up. I ended up having highlights put in at the salon some time later.

I thought the whole thing about bleach was that it strips all the colour from the hair hence how can it re-oxidise on bleach?

I want to blonde up my hair now and have been planning to head the the salon for highlights.

Hairdresser here. Colour removers will never ever return your hair to its original virgin hair colour. They will always just remove enough to get it to a light brown/coppery colour. That allows you to lighten or change tone or whatever you want to do but if you put a colour on your natural grey or whatever colour you are and then “strip” it, it will not return to grey. It will just lighten.
And yes bleach baths are still done in salons

Colour removers and colour reducers are different things. Colour removers do indeed lighten the hair and could never return the hair to it's natural state. They could lighten past mid-brown if you left them on long enough but you might fuck your hair if you leave them longer than directed on the manufacturers instructions. They're bleach based. They work like bleach by de-colouring the artificial colour molecules.

Colour reducers i.e colour B4 work by reducing the size of the artificial colour molecule so that they can be rinsed from the hair. You can't return to your virgin hair as it no longer exists, the peroxide in the colour you're removing will have lightened your hair and left it brassy under the artificial colour and if you're using very dark colours or have repeatedly coloured your hair you may have cuticle staining which only bleach can remove. It could certainly uncover grey or get you lighter than mid-brown depending on what colour you used, your base colour and the condition of your hair.

What happened with my client was the colour B4 shrank the artificial colour molecule so it couldn't be seen by the naked eye but she didn't fully rinse them away. They would have swelled again when they came into contact with oxygen and become visible again. Peroxide is oxygen, so when I put the lightener and peroxide on her hair the colour molecules swelled while the lightener was decolouring both the artificial colour molecules and her natural pigments hence them turning red not brown or black. I did get her past the red stage. She was left a gorgeous nice light copper colour in the end and booked in for root regrowth and highlights to get past the copper stage but ended up keeping the copper because she loved it.

Thank you for all that info Frequency & Lorelai, its really good to know, I know for sure I'm not going down the Colour B4 route again as it will be a waste of time. I'll give my hair a rest for now (surprisingly my hair doesn't look in too bad a condition) & when I've saved up the funds will ask in my local salon, one day I'll be happy with it!