Has anybody used honey to lighten your hair color?

[vidgrl007]

I used it and didn't do anything to lighten it. but on the flip side it makes my hair feel really soft so I just use it once a week for a good treatment lol.

[Flying Betty]

!!!!!!!!!!

[GlassEyes]

WOW! So you're saying the combo of honey + henna gives you a golden color? Was it very reddish?

Not quite. I lightened Pre-henna, meaning that it was done on my previously dyed-black hair, which eventually lifted out to a golden-brown.

My post henna hair was a nice red-tinted brown.

[Katze]

I shared my experiences and folks can take it or leave it. My hair started out far too dark to be able to accept drug store hair dying kits. It lightened enough through the use of honey, chamomile and - I forgot to mention maybe - hot/warm EVOO treatments. Please remember that I had dyed brown hair. The results may be that the combination of these items used consistently over time pulled the chemical coloration out of my hair - rather than actually bleaching. I never claimed chamomile was a bleach. Or honey or EVOO. I'm giving my results. And yes. My hair lightened considerably. But it took months, and months (at LEAST 4 months to be exact). I am not the only one who has achieved this. The results above are not the result of flash or shadow. I have no reason to mislead anyone. I don't own stock in honey.

Much of the info shared on the LHC is indeed anecdotal in nature. Everyone's hair reacts differently, especially when you are working with natural products. My hair hates aloe. Go figure.

I wasn't meaning to say that you were misleading anyone! Sorry about that. I just think that many people get the impression that honey is a "safe hair bleach", when it isn't.

You mentioned dyed hair, and in 2006 I had my hair dyed darker to try to get rid of the bleached, brassy, two-tone look. The dye was effectively gone within two months (dye job in June, parents visited in August and I was back to two-tone in pics)! I do think that what I was doing to my hair - SMTs, Rhassoul, heavy conditioning - may very well have faded my haircolor. After all, there must be a reason why so many products are sold as haircolor friendly!

It is interesting that you could not dye over the dye. As a colored hair long hair person, you seem to have resilient hair, and perhaps that means your hair is less porous than mine was, because I had no problem bleaching black-dyed hair to blonde, over and over again.

Nevertheless I think it is an important distinction to make, whether honey (or oil, or normal shampoo, or CO washing, or whatever) fades hair dye, or whether any of these things actually bleach hair. That's a difference which your post has now made clear to me, hopefully to others too who have tried honey hoping it will make their hair lighter.

As for the henna issue, I use honey in my henna paste and get darker color with it...since we don't really know what's going on with henna, either, or how it really works (also only anecdotal evidence!) but it would be great to know some day.

Maybe some day I will get a lab and actually test some of this stuff.

[Fireweed]

I have been using honey on my hair for a long time and it does not seem to change the colour of my hair. I was not able to remove my henna with it and had to cut in the end.

[Darian Moone]

Did you use permanent dye Katze? The reason I ask is that it was explained to me by the hair dye manufacturer (whom I called after not getting the results I wanted), that once you dye your hair dark long enough, when you attempt to dye it lighter all that will happen is that it will open the hair cuticle and deposit whatever pigment is in the hair dye, leaving your hair even darker than before.

The only solution they offered me was to actually straight out bleach my hair and lift all the color up, then if I wanted to chose a specific shade of blonde, use a toner rinse.

I do have pretty stubborn hair though. It's obnoxious and does whatever it feels most days. LOL!

[Ryanne]

I use it and I think it lightened my hair a little, just a little.

[ChloeDharma]

I've not used it deliberately to lighten my hair, but i was using it every wash as part of a DT that i'd leave on for at least an hour and frequently using henna but never had the henna build up, plus my hair stayed quite light....so maybe, but it was the conditioning effect i was more interested in.
On the peroxide debate, i found a few studies looking at the use of honey for wound healing that kept mentioning the role of peroxide, but the links to those are on my old laptop. I did find this link though in a quick search...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey

"Hydrogen peroxide
Hydrogen peroxide in honey is activated by dilution. However, unlike medical hydrogen peroxide, commonly 3% by volume, it is present in a concentration of only 1 mmol/L in honey. Honey chelates and deactivates the free iron, which starts the formation of oxygen free radicals produced by hydrogen peroxide and the antioxidant constituents in honey help clean up oxygen free radicals present. http://www.worldwidewounds.com/2001/...cal-agent.html




C6H12O6 + H2O + O2 → C6H12O7 + H2O2
When used topically (as, for example, a wound dressing), hydrogen peroxide is produced by dilution with body fluids. As a result, hydrogen peroxide is released slowly and acts as an antiseptic"

One thing with hair, some seems more resistant to peroxide than others. A simple lightening treatment that my mother told me about that was popular at a salon she worked in (in the 60's) was to mix peroxide with shampoo and leave that on the hair for about half an hour. But the results varied alot....on one friend i tried it on it produced no lightening at all. So it would make sense to me that some people find honey lightens their hair and some people notice no difference at all.
I think it's simpler just to try it and see if it works for you, rather than argue over it and insist it either does or does not work 100% of the time.....one thing we know here is that nothing seems universally popular.

[willowcandra]

I used honey to help fade out some henna. I also used it alongside lots of oilings. It pulled alot of colour out and left me a very natural looking colour with no regrowth. It didn't have a huge effect on my natural colour though.

[Katze]

Did you use permanent dye Katze? The reason I ask is that it was explained to me by the hair dye manufacturer (whom I called after not getting the results I wanted), that once you dye your hair dark long enough, when you attempt to dye it lighter all that will happen is that it will open the hair cuticle and deposit whatever pigment is in the hair dye, leaving your hair even darker than before.

The only solution they offered me was to actually straight out bleach my hair and lift all the color up, then if I wanted to chose a specific shade of blonde, use a toner rinse.

I do have pretty stubborn hair though. It's obnoxious and does whatever it feels most days. LOL!

It was dye in a salon, so I am guessing it was permanent. Sure didn't stick around long, though! that was the first time - in ages - that I had dyed my hair dark. Normally, I was a bleacher.

Stubborn might be good, in this case, that you can dye and still have long hair. I notice even the last bits of dyed hair on my ends are in terrible, terrible shape, and that's after years of LHC.

Honey, however, does give a nice temporary softness to damaged hair.