How to Brighten Blonde Hair- 8 Tips
How to Brighten Blonde Hair in 8 simple tips. For both bleached and natural blondes.
It’s frustrating to wake up in the morning, and first thing you do when you look in the mirror you go ‘ick’ because of your hair. Brightening both bleached and natural hair is possible! And it’s possible to do it without causing a tremendous amount of damage to your hair.
My disclaimer, however is this- No matter what you do to your hair, it will cause a little bit of damage. I call it regular wear and tear. Even brushing your hair, sleeping on your hair, and washing your hair will cause minimal and gradual wear and tear on the hair.
In the 8 tips on how to brighten blonde hair remember, excessive attempts to lighten blonde hair (dark hair too, but we’re specifically talking about blonde hair today) will cause more wear and tear.
Tip #1- Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!
Hair naturally is dry.
Conditioners and leave-in conditioners are key. Bleached hair especially needs extra hydration. Every two weeks or so put a mask on your hair. When you’re ready to tone and lighten your blonde hair even more, make sure it’s been thoroughly and consistently hydrated.
Best Conditioner for Dry Blonde Hair
Tip #2- Making the hair look like a lighter doesn’t mean it is lighter, but just brighter!
Brightening blonde hair via purple and blue shampoos is the least damaging way to brighten blonde hair.
Toning the hair is easy and doesn’t damage the hair as badly as bleaching the hair.
If your hair is naturally blonde, toning with shampoo is my first suggestion. If your hair is not naturally blonde, a color toner might be better to start with, and then continue with toning shampoos.
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On the color wheel, naturally blonde hair has an undertone of yellow. Which isn’t bad. In the hair professional world we call it ‘gold’. To eliminate or minimize gold simply put the color opposite on the color wheel on the hair and suddenly, the hair is neutralized and it looks brighter!
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Brighter hair gives the illusion that the hair is lighter.
Tip #3- DO NOT bleach already bleached hair! Never!
Bleach is a method of lightening hair that chemically lifts the cuticle on the hair shaft (the cuticle is like shingles on a roof), the bleach penetrates the strand and clings to the natural color molecules in the hair. When the bleach is rinsed out, it pulls the natural color molecules out with it.
Colors, bleaches, and toners, are all activated with a developer (the cream or clear liquid you’ve seen your professional add to the color before putting the bleach, color, or toner on your hair).
What Activates the Bleach?
The active ingredient in every and all developers is hydrogen peroxide.
Hydrogen peroxide is the chemical that lifts the cuticle.
Also, depending on the percentage of hydrogen peroxide in the developer (10%-100%) determines how many levels the color, bleach, or toner will be lifting and depositing.
However the bleach itself cracks and damages the cuticle, the first barrier of defense for the internal structure of the hair strand.
If hair is re-bleached, you are risking stripping the strand of it’s cuticle, leaving no outer barrier to hold the strand together, causing risks of no elasticity, severe breakage, and the hair melting (it’s not an exaggeration), and no longer having the ability to retain color.
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Tip #4- Bleach Damage CANNOT be reversed
Once bleached, the cuticle has been cracked (which isn’t all bad, but you don’t want to crack it even more). It is imperative to take extra good care of your bleached hair. Whether you’ve gone blonde or even highlights. The damage done cannot be reversed.
In reference to Tip #1 and Tip #3, the best treatment for bleached hair is to keep it hydrated and as a rule, do not re-bleach already bleached hair.
But you CAN tone bleached hair with minimal damage.
Bleached hair has a tendency to fade to coppers and yellows which are very easy to tone out.
Tip #5- Hydrogen Peroxide is a Good Natural Alternative to Lighten Hair, But Must be Used With CAUTION
This tip IS NOT to be used on hair that has been bleached (even if it was ‘only a little’) or permed.
As discussed in Tip #2, hydrogen peroxide chemically lifts the cuticle and lightens the hair. Do not leave on the hair for more than 30 minutes. If this chemical burns on your skin, DO NOT try to bear it, wash it out!
Hydrogen peroxide will only lift your hair so much. And again, as a chemical it will lift the cuticle more than is natural, therefore do not repeat this technique on your hair.
Put hydrogen peroxide on your hair and sit in the sunlight for 20-30 minutes. The heat will cause a small reaction with the hydrogen peroxide in the hair causing it to lift a level or two lighter.
Hydrogen peroxide will not work for darkening the hair, only lightening. Unless mixed with a professional color to penetrate the strand to deposit darker color.
Do not mix with box color, there are metallics in box color that will cause a catastrophic chemical reaction that will be very difficult to repair on the hair.
Tip #6- You can over-tone your hair
Have you ever seen the grandmas at the grocery store with purple hair? That’s because they use purple shampoo too often.
The toning pigments in purple and blue shampoos do actually leave some pigment in the hair. If you over use a toner, your hair might swing to the other side of the pendulum, and look the opposite color that you had in the first place.
Use purple or blue shampoo, but have a second available too. Only wash your hair with toning shampoo once or twice a week (if you wash every other day), and use the other shampoo more regularly.
If the purple shampoo doesn’t seem to be helping. Before trying a color toner, try letting the shampoo sit for a few minutes before washing it out.
How to Use Purple Shampoo / Treating Orange Hair at Home
Tip #7- To know what color toner you need, you need to know what color level you are.
Professionals use a 1-10 color level system. 1 being raven black, 10 being platinum blonde. European professionals and color lines use a 1-12 color level system.
Levels 1-3 are usually almost black. Raven black and very dark browns.
Levels 4-6 are generally dark to medium dark browns.
Levels 7-8 are mousy, light brown, or ‘dirty’ blonde.
Levels 9-10 are very blonde, almost platinum blonde.
A toner won’t work if you have a level too light, and if you have a level too dark, it will darken your hair. Which is beside the point, especially because we are specifically talking about making blonde hair lighter and brighter.
Tip #8 Not All Natural Lightening Tips Online Are Good For You!
There are plenty of websites and magazines eager to share their ‘professional’ advice on how to brighten blonde naturally with hair with vinegar, and lemon juice, and honey may temporarily lighten your hair, however the pH of all these ‘natural lighteners’ sit between a 2-3 pH.
Human hair and skin sit at a 4.5-5.5 on the pH scale. More acidic than alkaline. So be careful not to shock the hair by throwing off the pH with more acid.
Can I lighten my already light hair?
Yes. There are several ways to brighten your blonde hair. The least damaging of these methods would be toning.
What is toning?
Toning is an easy way to brighten blonde hair with minimal damage.
But what is toning? To tone hair means neutralizing underlying pigments and colors in your hair already.
For example, and for the sake of our subject of blondes, if you have too much gold in your hair, it looks too yellow, the simple solution to making it less gold and look brighter is to tone your hair with a purple. Not a bright violet, but using a purple shampoo would be the easiest and least damaging.
There are toners that professionals use that are very light, so the toner doesn’t change the light or darkness of your hair but just changes the tone, which gives the hair an overall brighter appearance. So it looks lighter even though it’s not.
Good luck on lightening and brightening your hair friends!