Bleach Over Henna/Indigo

[DolphinPrincess]

Hello hennaheads! :D I currently have two-step henna/indigo hair (several applications) that I think I would like to remove and try something a little brighter and more vibrant. I'm just wondering if there is any way to do it without bleaching that won't kill my hair. The lower half of my hair had also been chemically dyed in the past, so I don't want to fry that. If I do have to bleach, is there any type or brand that is better than another?? Is there any particular deep-treatments that will protect and save my hair better than others if I use bleach? I have used both the Caramel Treatment and SMT and am willing to do some more or more often or anything necessary. And suggestions?? Help!:o:confused:

[wintersun99]

I really don't think it's possible. I have tried every single method I could think of, both natural and not. What I did end up doing is eventually turning my hair into a nasty, gummy, melted slop that had to be cut from APL to mid-neck and still didn't lighten any indigo. Good luck to you though...

Some of themethods I tried work well on henna alone and even on hennindigo, but the two-step henna + indigo, that you, and I wanted to lighten, ya, not happening for me. I did manage to turn my indigo quite green by using bleach the first time, it was using bleach multiple times that gummified it. :(

Methods Tried
honey/condish
honey/condish/LJ
honey/condish/hydrogen peroxide
honey/coconut milk/olive oil
olive oil/amla
amla alone
sun-in
peroxide 3%, 6% and 9%
peroxide/bleach - this one finally killed the hair
*probably other combo's I forget to mention

[DolphinPrincess]

Hmmm... Thats what I was afraid of... Anyone else?? I'm still keeping my fingers crossed!

[spidermom]

The color that you have is shiny and lovely and you have quite a long length goal, so don't be messing with your hair too much. You could set yourself back a whole year, and that would be kind of a shame, I think. Two-toned hair looks pretty vibrant.

[DolphinPrincess]

Thanks Spidermom! If nobody has removed the indigo in some way, I think I'll just let it grow and do my new growth with only Henna.

[Madam Librarian]

I was able to bleach henna to a light enough shade to color on top, but not without significant damage along the way. I should have about midback length hair right now. Instead, I had to cut quite a bit away on my own, and later went to a salon to add layers and even up my at home hack job. My hair is sitting at armpit length right now.

I also had 2 step indigo in my bottom layer. It didn't go away, but it did fade to a greenish blue. The dye I chose covers it pretty well, but it is still somewhat visible in the right light, especially when the dye fades after a few weeks.

Knowing what I know about how my hair reacted to bleach, especially over the indigo, I would not attempt to bleach indigo if I had it all over my head.

[Morticia]

My hair color is naturally black. I had done 2 step henna and indigo over it to cover grays and to improve scalp health. About a year ago, I decided to have a one inch section of hair lightened from root to ends so that I could have a lighter streak of color. Just that one section of hair took 3 hours to lighten, and it turned every shade from green to blue, to orange, to pink before it eventually got light enough to henna over. It also left that section of hair fairly frail. I have extremely coarse straight hair, so my hair was able to recover, but I would strongly caution against trying to bleach henna and indigoed hair.

[Nightshade]

Another person here saying just to grow it out.

If you haven't tried it, you could give an alkaline shampoo at whirl (like baby shampoo), it's what's recommended for getting dyes like Manic Panic out, but you seem to be one of those for whom indigo is very colorfast, so I wouldn't hold out much hope.

[Unofficial_Rose]

Has anyone mentioned Colorfix, leaving out step 3? (the peroxide - don't do this, as others have said)

It worked a bit for me and I had some indigo as well as henna in my hair. Takes enough out so that you might get a colour you'd be more comfortable with. Also not damaging - but do a strand test first.

Good old yoghurt also lifts quite a bit out without damage.

After doing both of these I got enough out to highlight over, but my hair's pretty damaged. Good luck :flower:

[DolphinPrincess]

Thanks so much everyone! I think I'm going to try a soak of yogurt, honey, EVOO, and coconut oil, let sit a long time, the wash out with baby shampoo! :p I figured why not try it, right? Plus, thats the stuff that I have laying around, so I don't have to go to the store!:D

[akurah]

There's some manner of colorfix in the world that doesn't use peroxide or ammonia, it has citric acid and some other things instead.

I have a box at home.

I've been prone to fussing with my color--I tend to mix honey with either conditioner or baby shampoo. It doesn't lighten a whole awful lot, but it makes me happy nonetheless. (but I'm weird) And of course, I promptly redarken it a few days/weeks/months later with henna, so I'm sort of spinning my wheels there.

[Ohio Sky]

Im not a big fan of bleach so I wouldnt recommend it anyways, but I know if it has metallic salts in it it can damage your hair even more than bleach usually does when applied over henna or indigo, and turn some gnarly colors as well.

I have a box of color oops that I had considered using to lighten my chemical black before hennaing. I never did use it, but its supposed to be gentle on hair. Doesnt contain peroxide or anything.

Because I never use dit, I now have about 3" of growth thats not black, and Ive been hennaing it, so my roots are a deep red and the rest of my hair is black with kind of a red sheen to it. It looks kinda cool, actually. It sounds liek you may have similar results if you just start hennaing without lightening.

[Celebrian]

Please don't bleach over Indigo *she said wearily*. I did and despite re-hennaing still have fine strands of greeny-blue throughout the red, gold, dark brown etc. I quite like it myself, as green hair suits me anyway. But most people wouldn't want it. Plus, attempts to further bleach on past the green rendered those hairs fragile.

Bleach over henna by all mean, provided it's just henna and herbs with no metallic salts. I have had nice results from this and been left with suprisingly well conditioned hair. But Indigo = no bleaching. Unless you like green hair (and some do!).

Just go on with your henna. I really think that you will be happier in the long run...

[DolphinPrincess]

No, definitely no green hair for me! It's one color that doesn't really go with my complexion! ;) I'm sitting here with a mix of yogurt, honey, EVOO, and coconut oil on my head, and eventually will go wash it out. It's already been on for 2 1/2 hours, so we'll see what it does. While I was working it into my hair, though, I did notice the drips were coming out slightly blue-greenish. I have a little bit of hope! :magic:

[NightingaleLHC]

I am going to echo what everyone else has already said. Luckily for me I decided to *only* bleach two strands to make sort of a stripey look (really dumb). Well I had indigo in it already, so my roots turned platinum while the rest of the strand turned a bluish green. Being very intelligent, I decided to leave the bleach in longer to lighten it more and it got very gummy and squishy. The plan was to cover the strands with purple which I did, but with the continual fading I couldnt take the upkeep. So I hennaed over it *multiple* times and now it matches pretty well but you can still see the color difference. The quality of the hair isn't too bad, though. I can't really tell a difference from the rest of my hair except that it is lighter. So thats good, right?

[wintersun99]

I am also sitting here with EVOO and yogurt on my head - although I did it a little differently this time. I have EVOO in my hair for about 2 hours now and I am about to add the yogurt for another hour. Keeping fingers crossed for us both! (although in my case, I believe that anything that was going to fade/come out, has already) :)

[DolphinPrincess]

Ooh, good luck, wintersun! At least its a good deep treatment!!:D:p

[Ninika]

@Wintersun99 and DolphinPrincess:

The tomato lightening recipe might be of interest to you, Liv has reported quite some succes with using it on her previously hennaed/indigoed/chemically dyed hair.
This (http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showpost.php?p=6467&postcount=4) is her post from the Honey Thread.

[Rain]

For what it's worth, I've been growing out my two-step henna/indigo'd hair since last July and my indigo has faded out a lot. My hair is not even black anymore. I would just keep up the henna at the roots only and see if your indigo fades with time. It might.

[Shell]

Thanks Spidermom! If nobody has removed the indigo in some way, I think I'll just let it grow and do my new growth with only Henna.

This is what I was going to suggest.

[Blueglass]

I suppose you could fade out your indigo by adding less and less to your mix until it's gone.

[DolphinPrincess]

Thank you everyone for all the help and suggestions! My first attempt resulted in lots of dye rinsing out in the shower (blueish-purple, so I assume mostly indigo) but no actual noticable hair color difference. I think I will try the tomato lightening recipe suggested by Ninika next week. I really hope it'll work for me!!:pray:

[RedHeadReader]

Hello.... Im new here and I found this community whilst googling for a solution to my too dark indigo/hennaed hair. Its about as dark as yours....... Im planing to get some bleach tomorrow and have a go at lightening it that way, Ill let you know how it turns out!

[wintersun99]

Forgive me, but did you actually read this thread? Don't try to lighten Indigo with bleach, it will probably turn your hair green...

ETA: It just ocurred to me that perhaps you meant that you were buying bleach to test hair strands, not actually bleach your the hair on your head - in which case, check out the test I did (below.)
________________________
*note the test strip on the right*

That is after 8 minutes of bleach/peroxide (highlighting kit) and it fried the hair...
The middle test is the control and the original starting color. That is my hair with the Indigo+Henna 2-step method.
The left is after 48 hours of 10 volume peroxide alone, which resulted in no change in color

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii267/LHC_2008/Bleach%20Damage/002.jpg

[Oskimosa]

Thank you everyone for all the help and suggestions! My first attempt resulted in lots of dye rinsing out in the shower (blueish-purple, so I assume mostly indigo) but no actual noticable hair color difference. I think I will try the tomato lightening recipe suggested by Ninika next week. I really hope it'll work for me!!:pray:



I think all the natural "soups" you can treat your hair with will work slooooooowly. You have to do bunches and bunches of them to get a difference. Maybe you should try the honey lightening method... I think there's a pretty narrowed down method that gives quicker and more reliable results. Ktani's got all that info on a thread someplace... Still, it might take like 3-4 to get a dark brown instead of black, and maybe 4 more to get a reddish brown, and so forth. But you wouldn't have any damage at least :)

[jessica3llen]

I used to just henna my hair, but my hair is naturally very dark so I did a two step henna indigo because the first time I did, it faded to a dark auburn. I did it again and it has stayed very dark. The first time I tried it I decided I wanted highlights from a salon. It turned my hair green! I tried today to bleach two strips to dye blue, thinking that it would turn green which was ok with me since I was going to add blue. WRONG, my roots turned blonde (the natural out growth of my hair) the rest that had the henna/indigo did not change color at all. Like others have said in this thread do not bleach unless you want green hair, and even then it might not work and will just end up damaging your hair.

[patti]

Don't even think about bleach with indigo. The green you end up with henna won't even cover. The damage is deadly. Please don't do it!

[Evie]

Please don't bleach over Indigo *she said wearily*. I did and despite re-hennaing still have fine strands of greeny-blue throughout the red, gold, dark brown etc. I quite like it myself, as green hair suits me anyway. But most people wouldn't want it. Plus, attempts to further bleach on past the green rendered those hairs fragile.



I agree with everything Celebrian says here. I tried it, I thought I'd even be 'clever' and try it really slowly, doing bleach caps, and then trying the UK's answer to colorfix.....I don't understand what it is, but bleach over henndigo trashes my hair, whereas bleach over my hair without henndigo does not. And I too got grey/green ends....

My new approach is to use a semi for a bit, until I can then use colorfix to remove that instead (I know this works on me and I never do anything other than the roots on my hair).

Go with the henna over it approach :)

[jojo]

Well the other day I accidently used this http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150337824093 and once it was on my head, realised it had mineral oil in it, when i washed my hair the following morning my hendigo (lush mix done approx 5 times) had faded down to a deep chestnut colour and I only had a lightish oil on, im wondering if a deep oiling of this might lift more, especially after a few overnight treatments. I can't guarantee it will work and it wont life the colour altogether but it will be less damaging than bleach which is a big no no with indigo and will maybe fade your hair light enough to blend as you grow out, the only other option is to cut but that would be a real shame as your hair really is lovely.

ps this oil is pennies in Indian shops if you want to try and my hair did feel very conditioner after.

[dropinthebucket]

If you really don't want a demarcation line, you might be able to do the new growth with a demi, or something like Elumen - something that will definitely wash out - in a shade that matches the hendigo. It'll have to be done repeatedly, but when it's all grown out to a length you can live with, chop the hendigoed hair and stop using the demi; it should fade/wash out, and you should have lighter hair all the way down. A friend of mine did this - she couldn't take two-tone (which I think looks pretty cool, I guess it depends on what a person wants) and didn't want it cut too short. When it got to SL, she cut the rest, washed a few times, and voila, underneath the demi dark brown, she had her own light brown. No demarcation. I think even a demi will stain blonde hair more permanently, though, so it might not have worked for her if her hair had been very light.

[dropinthebucket]

sorry, just realized this was an old thread.

[PinkTulips]

sorry, just realized this was an old thread.
haha I do that too! ;)