Looking for advice on how to grow out bleached hair!

[Kriegerin]

I recently decided - after about 4 years of bleaching it constantly - to finally give my hair some rest! I have made peace with my natural hair colour, and want to grow it out. :joy:

Now I would be curious to hear about other people's experiences with growing out bleach. When you did it, did you grow it out "cold turkey", or did you do something to transition the colours better (dying it dark/getting very light highlights)?

So far, I've been growing it out "cold turkey", coming from heavily highlighted hair. As happy as my little, natural roots make me (Trackable progress! Yay!) I can't help but worry that they won't look so great in a few months, as the line is kind of harsh.

I've been thinking about giving myself a kind of "root shadow" by taking a hair dye that's close to my natural colour and combing it down, creating a gradient.

Maybe someone on here has better advice though? Maybe even with something more natural, like henna? I'd be happy to hear it! :)

[Bat]

There's the growing out dye thread here
https://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=24075 but by I think a shadow root is the best way to grow out I'd say

[Kriegerin]

There's the growing out dye thread here
https://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=24075 but by I think a shadow root is the best way to grow out I'd say

Thank you!! I've been trying to find a thread like this. I think I'll order some demi-permanent dye soon then!

[paulownia]

Is your natural colour very dark?
Henna gives red so it's not a solution here but if you are interested in trying herbal dyes I would give cassia a shot.

[Shug]

When I was trying to grow out my blue hair and go virgin again, I chopped it all off to my chin and cut the rest of the bleach off once my hair grew back to my shoulders. I guess my strategy would fall under “cold turkey”

[Kathie]

I had a professional dye the bleach to match my roots and grew from there.

I can say that the dye matched colour isn't nearly as nice as natural hair colour- it's a flat colour and not a good indicator of what your hair will look like virgin. But it does help the growing out process.

[FaeBroom]

Congrats on going au natural! I decided to just start growing and let the roots come in. I tried color matching with some box dye in the early stages but gave up because I am lazy, and I never got it to look exactly right. But it still darkened the blonde enough to make it look more "lived in" than just half blonde half brown, so it helped if you wanna go that route. If you want to spend the money the only thing I would've done differently is have a professional blending so it looks less harsh in the grow out. But like I said I am lazy, and I wear my hair up 99% of the time so I didnt splurge on it.

I plan on doing some henna over the bleached parts when my roots get to chin! I did a 50/50 henna amla gloss but it didn't do much to color my hair lol. Its really hard to apply the henna without getting it on your roots to preserve the natural color, so I would say try it now while you don't have too much progress or wait until you can section it out without much difficulty.

[Glitch]

Good luck on this new journey! :flower:

My bleached hair was bright blonde but as my natural hair is black, I just dyed it all black and let it grow out. I couldn't visually distinguish the progress of my bleached hair growing out, and that's how I wanted it to be, otherwise the demarcation line would have personally started driving me crazy. Your hair is already at MBL so I think it'd be worth to dye the bleached hair yourself/professionally to your natural color so that everything flows nicely for the next however many years. But to each their own - if you feel comfy as is letting it grow out without doing anything, that's fine too!

[Wendyp]

The way I did it was getting Olaplex treatments but now you can buy the whole line and do it at home. Also stop bleaching of course lol it takes a lot of patience, it really took me years to get it all out. It was so worth it though. Find a shampoo method that works for you as well.

[Wendyp]

Oh also nightblooming has a whole ebook on damaged hair I bought that and it helped.