I’ve Been Bleaching My Hair For Three Years And This Is How I keep It Healthy

Bleaching hair can be a really harsh process, here's how I bleached my hair white without it falling out, causing damage, or using harsh products!

I love being blonde, and I also love dyeing my hair crazy colours. I’m not naturally blonde (my natural colour is a light brown), so this requires bleaching my hair. The first time I bleached my hair was when I was 17, and now I’m 20 years old, and I bleach my hair fairly regularly. I’m not 100% sure how many times I’ve bleached my hair in the past three years, but I do know it’s enough that I’ve cycled through almost the entire colour wheel and still come back for more. My hair is currently just blonde, which means I’m having tons of fun and my grandma doesn’t wince every time she sees me. Here’s how I keep my hair healthy, even though I have been bleaching hair for three years.

1. Deep Condition

Since bleach strips all the colour out your hair, it can leave your hair open to damage and very dry. My hair is no exception to this, and can get very thirsty. A good way to help remedy this is to deep condition once a week, and/or use a moisturising hair mask. I also use conditioners meant to hydrate and moisturise which is a massive help. If you love coconut oil, you’ll be happy to learn that coconut oil can also really help, and it doesn’t risk staining your hair like argan oil can (forever thankful for my bleaching buddies who told me this before I used argan oil on my hair after bleaching it for the first time). If you want to go platinum blonde, or are platinum blonde, then violet/silver conditioner can be a great thing to put on your hair, but I would suggest leaving it on for only 10-15 minutes to avoid over-toning.

2. Don’t Use Heat

Before I bleached my hair, I used to love using heat on it. However, using heat on bleached hair is a sure-fire way to cause damage, breakages and split ends. To avoid this, I shower at night so my hair can dry whilst I sleep, I only use heat on very special occasions, and when I do use heat I liberally apply heat protection spray and (where available) use the appliances I use on their lowest heat setting. Taking these precautions means that my hair is fairly less likely to be heat damaged, meaning that it can stay as healthy as possible whilst I bleach it.

3. Don’t Wash Your Hair Every Day

We all know we’re not supposed to wash out hair every day, and this is especially true if you have bleached hair. When it comes to bleaching hair, you need the oils produced by your scalp to help keep it as healthy as possible. so washing away these oils every day is a bad idea. Instead, wash your hair every 2-3 days, and brush your hair thoroughly to disperse this oil throughout your hair. This may sound gross, especially if you’re someone who cannot stand having greasy hair, but this has really helped me keep my hair shiny and soft. Plus, when you brush the oils through your hair, it won’t concentrate them in one place so you won’t feel like your hair is super dirty.

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4. Let Your Roots Grow Out

One of the other reasons why my bleaching hair stays healthy is because I wait a fairly long time between bleaching sessions. Typically, I wait 4-5 months between bleaching my hair (sometimes longer, sometimes less), so my hair has a chance to grow out and thrive. If you bleach your hair super often, you risk badly damaging at possibly even chemically cutting it (this happens when you put very damaged hair up in a bobble and the hair just breaks off – something that motivates me to look after my hair as I’m terrified of it happening). Leaving your roots to grow out is not the end of the world, especially seeing as grown out roots are in fashion. I personally like my hair best when its got a little bit of root showing through, as I feel it adds dimension to your hair.