Hair Lifting @ home & the "right" light tone for you
So many people have asked me how do I lift my hair? How do I get my DARK ASIAN Hair to be a pretty light blonde? Do I even look GOOD with light hair? Are asians suppose to HAVE light hair? Why cant we just stick to having DARK hair?
this is is an on going debate that will probably never change. So many people are for it while some are against it.
Personally, I've been both dark and light :P
which do I prefer? Honestly, it just depends on my mood. Thankfully I own plenty enough wigs to play with and whatnot but there's just SOMETHING about having light hair thats definitely a show stopper >:D
First of all, there are DIFFERENT shades and tones of LIGHT hair - Blonde hair.
From golden tones to more ashy tones. I've been both! 8D but don't use me as reference.
Some people look better with a more warm tone (warmer-gold tones) while others looks better with a more lighter cool ash tones.
It all depends on your skin tone.
So before you pick up a packet of bleach and peroxide and start bleaching the crap out of your hair, stop and check your skin tone and what are your skins undertones.
Those with pink or blue skin undertones fall into the cool category. This means that hair colors that have a cool overtone will generally look much more natural on you. When I say 'cool tones' that usually falls in the category of anything with the name 'Ash' on it.
While obviously those with darker tones in their skin are best to stick with a more warm tone. This rule isnt always 100% full proof on anyone and everyone. I'd suggest using swatches and placing it against your face to try and test out what color would be best on you. Since sometimes, someone who is pasty white like white rice wouldnt look good with anything ashy as it would simply wash them out even more! Golden tones help bring warmth to the skin and gives it a more natural glow.
I personally have red undertones in my face - so something warmer works for me, but! I've been bleach blonde and SILVER before 8D
how did I get away with it? Simply my dears - Makeup. Proper makeup application. I used the proper primer and base to cancel out all my nasty red tones in my face to give my skin a more 'cool' tone to it. You wouldnt catch me walking outside without so much as a base foundation on my face when I had blonde hair ahahaha.
So just keep that in mind when picking the level and tones of 'blonde' you want to be 8D
anyways, lets move on before I continue to blab some more! I'm going to go ahead and throw myself out there and use myself as an example. I am 100% Asian born with 100% DARK black hair 8D
Examples of how much I've killed my hair, probably not THE best examples :D but its better than slapping this post with photos of ageha models who are clearly not human and photoshopped to prettyness >D (no, I'm not bashing on those models, they are gorgeous, too gorgeous that its harder for us everyday folks to try and see ourselves are.../: )
so onto how to get your hair that light 8D
first of all, bleach can and WILL damage your hair, lightening your hair to this extreme levels will result in alot of breakage, throughout the whole process I think I lost a good 4" in lenght /:
(only because I went SILVER, I'm sure I could have save myself some breakage had I not pushed to bleach it silver :D kekeke) but again, the breakage differs from each and everyones hair and how much you're hair can personall take.
what you will be needing:
- Gloves
- Plastic Bowl & Applicator Brush
- Plastic Processing Cap (or a shower cap but I prefer the plastic ones you can get locally at your beauty supply store)
- Bleach
- Vol. 30-40 developer (refer to my previous post on developers for info on the difference and what do they do exactly)
- Foil (optional)
- Plastic Cape & Towels
- Hair Mask/Deep Conditioners (my personal favorite and go to is Ion Keratin Reconstructive Mask)
- Vol. 20 + Toner OR the hair dye of your choice (depending on how lighter/darker of a tone it is, you'd want to get a vol. 10 or 20, again refer to my previous post on developers)
- Plastic Clips
How to get started:
Mixing the product: Mix your Bleach and Developer in a clean plastic bowl. Follow the instruction on your bleach packet, but more often than not, they will be asking for 1:1 ratio. That means, 1 part bleach to 1 part Developer. For those of us who aren’t too keen on math, that usually means, for 1 cup of powder bleach, you drop 1 cup of developer in. Easy enough? Mix! :D It shouldn’t feel too watery or runny, if its TOO watered down, its going to be a hot mess! You want a nice good consistency- like cake batter :D ahaha. A good way to test how ‘thick’ your mix is, if you dip your brush into it, and lift it up, if the product is thick enough, it wont simply FALL off the brush. So you know you have a good consistency and it wont just drop everywhere!
Drape a towel around your neck and another one behind you, (so you will need 2 towels)
The 2nd towel should be tucked into the back of your shirt, the first one should be wraped around your neck. Drape your plastic cape on, you usually wanna wear 2 towels incase the first one doesn’t catch any bleach residue falling into your shirt! :o which would definitely suck. The cape is optional but I always suggest picking one up since their super cheap anyway at your local beauty supply store. Or just get a big towel. But plastic capes are definitely the best since their easier to clean!
Onto the hair!
First, you wanna section your hair off in 4 different sections or regions, it just simply makes it easier to do it and allows you to do cleaner and easier partings to properly distribute the product onto your hair. If you have sensitive scalp, I suggest definitely using Ion Sensitive Scalp Developer and to wash your hair previously with COLD water, thus closing the hair cuticles and minimizing the ‘burning’ sensation in your hair.
Starting in your back section, you wanna try and do nice clean partings, small partings layer by layer and apply the product half an inch away from the scalp to the end.
Why away from the scalp? As explained before in my previous post, you wanna start away from the scalp first since Hydrogen Peroxide, or developer reacts to heat, and well, clearly your scalp produces heat :D!
So if you ever noticed, if you do your roots-end application, your roots tend to always be a lot lighter then the rest of your hair? Well, that’s why! :D
So go ahead and go all around your hair, and in the last 20 mins of processing, you wanna apply some bleach to the roots where you left off, again starting at the back to the front sections again .
Once you’re done with that, you wanna cover your hair with a processing cap, to help keep the heat in and keep the bleach from drying out, once it dries out, then you’re pretty much done processing /:
Bleach/Dye usually is done processing at 40 mins to 60 mins. So no point in trying to leave bleach on your head for an hour and half, since most likely the bleach has dried out already.
Another option, since I mentioned foil in the above materials is, well, as you apply the bleach half an inch away to the ends, you can wrap hair in foil to help keep it moist and this also helps process the bleach faster, keep it moist and not dry out so much faster and also helps differentiate layer by layer – making root application a lot easier. Since you just need to lift one foil, after the other and sneak your brush through to the roots and apply the bleach there :D
After processing, you want to go ahead and rinse off your hair, shampoo and condition as always. Then dry.
Most Asians will most likely end up with either brassy orange hair to yellow.
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v93/cruelangel45/?action=view¤t=zomfgblonde.jpg
This photo above is my hair going from Brown to Blonde, this was done with I believe 1-2 bleachings, with vol. 40 and purple shampoo, I haven’t toned my hair yet at this point.
Again, how much your hair will lift can definitely vary, please refer to my previous post on Hydrogen Peroxide levels, I have a level chart there that talks about the different levels of hair and color and whatnot.
I got this light personally because my hair as already a BROWN shade and not VIRGIN BLACK. So it only took me 2 bleachings at the most using vol. 40 developer to achieve this color.
Now usually at this point I can choose to pick a blonde dye to throw over my hair, which would also help tone out the yellowness, or I can continue to bleach it one more time and then apply purple-blue toner to achieve and platinum or white blonde color.
What are toners and how do I use them?
Toners comes in different shades, ranging from blue, purple, green and etc. what they basically do is, when applied with developer and applied to hair, basically cancels out the contributing pigments.
At the above photo, you can clearly tell I had Orange and Yellow underlining pigments.
To get a ‘pure’ color, you definitely want to cancel those out, so if I wanted to continue going blonde (depending on how much orange/yellow I have in my hair, it would also depend on the toner I need)
I would go ahead and use a purple-blue toner, my personal favorite is Wella White Lady, since it has both purple and blue in it to help cancel out all the yucky yellow and orange tones in my hair.
I personally don’t tone my hair tillI get it to this level of lightness. Since after 1 bleaching, and my hair is at that loooovely orange stage, the toner wouldn’t do anything or even budge it.
Toners have instructions in them so I wont bore you guys with any more info on them.
For my next post, I will go over some products for us wannabe blondors :B and the difference in different ‘bleach products’ and etc. Since this post has definitely gone pretty long already
