Bleach kits will be labeled as white, blue, or purple. Blue and purple add in cool tones to help combat brassy-ness. Blue is more ideal for canceling out orange hair, and purple is best for yellow. White bleach is normal, with no added tones. If this is your first time bleaching or dyeing your hair at home, you may want to seriously consider going to a hair salon to get your hair bleached. Bleaching is the hardest part of this whole pastel hair process and improperly bleached hair can end up looking really fried and dead. Consider going to a hair salon to get your hair bleached and they do the pastel dyeing yourself (or have them do the whole thing).
Using a toner over already yellowy-blonde hair may be enough to lighten your hair. Try this before using bleach. Virgin Snow by Manic Panic is a great toner and won’t set you back too much cash. Alternatively, if the toner just doesn’t cut it you may use a bleaching method such as this. A less harmful way to lighten your hair is a bleach bath. (a bleach bath is a mixture of half bleach, half shampoo)
If your hair is already light blonde, use a 10 volume developer. While you may find it odd to bleach your hair when you are already blonde, using a 10 volume developer will help to open up your hair and make it more receptive to the pastel dye. If your hair is light to medium brown or strawberry blonde, use a 20 volume developer. If your hair is dark brown or black, use a 30 volume developer. Keep in mind, the higher the volume of developer, when you use it with bleach, or determines how FAST it processes. NOT how light your hair will get.
If possible, ask a friend to help you with the actual bleaching process, as it can get a little tricky to just do by yourself. If your bleaching kit did not come with a tint brush, you can buy one at any beauty supply store.
Don’t use metal clips; they may have a chemical reaction with the bleach.
You should wait until later on to bleach your roots because roots tend to process quicker than the rest of a strand of hair.
Your hair may or may not be platinum when you are done. The instructions on your bleach will likely say you can leave it on for 50 minutes. That is a bad idea. If your hair is still dark (or very orange) after 30 minutes, you may need to bleach again. It’s better to bleach two times for 30 minutes than to do it once for nearly an hour. It is not common for hair to bleach white! The lightest you need to have your hair when bleaching is a pale yellow. Once your hair has reached the pale yellow point, you need to use a high lift blonde permanent color, or a toner, to make it white. Bleaching past white is dangerous, as once it is white, there is no more pigment left and will break (fry, melt, fall off) if chemically processed much further.
The best color dyes to work with when making pastel dye include Manic Panic, Pravana, Crazy Color, and Special Effects, among others. (Splat is not suggested)
If you are concerned about the dye washing out of your hair, add enough dye that the mixture becomes one shade darker than you ultimately want your head to be.
No matter what application technique you go with, even saturation of the dye is essential.
