totally stupid question

[dropinthebucket]

I have a totally stupid, don't-know-bleach-from-dye question: it seems the general concensus is that bleach really damages your hair. what does "bleach" mean? when i hear bleach, i think of platinum blonde. but i have no hair experience and no hair knowledge. is there bleach in regular hair dye? what about permanent brown hair dye? does that have bleach in it? does it damage hair, like the light blonde dyes do? sorry for the dumb question - the girl at Sally's looked at me like i had two heads and i skulked off without an answer. :(

[FrannyG]

Regular drugstore permanent dye does have ammonia and peroxide in it, whether it's medium blonde or dark brown. It helps make the hair porous enough to accept the dye permanently.

Ultra Light Blonde shades have double the volume of peroxide.

When you buy what we call bleach, it has an even higher concentration of peroxide and actually does have a bleach odour to it.

So while many people think that it's not going to be at all damaging to use brown dyes, actually, it's just as dangerous as using my medium blonde shade. If you do colour your hair brown, you have to be just as careful with it as most of us blondes do.

The only time people really need bleach is if they're dying their hair from dark to very light. In my case, I am naturally dark blonde and silver, so I just use regular dye. I still do need to be very protective of my hair, and give it a lot of moisture and then oil to help seal in that moisture.

I hope that helps. :)

[frizzalot]

Bleach (hydrogen peroxide) strips the hair of its colour.

Usually if you have dark hair you can bleach it lighter to brown or even lighter to blond.

With normal box dyes you won't see any chnage in colour of your hair is darker than than the box dye colour, so you would have to bleach it(go lighter) and then use the box dye.

e.g. you have dark brown hair and want pink highlights. first you'd bleach the streak to light brown or blond then wait a day or then use pink dye on it.

the colour progression is (usually) as follows
black -> brown -> orange -> yellow ->white


hth

[Kathie]

When you bleach your hair you strip it of color... the structure of the hair is now weakened because 1) the cuticle has been lifted and 2) you’ve taken some of the components of the hair shaft i.e., the color molecules out.

When you dye your hair, say a dark brown color, your own hair color is removed and replaced with synthetic brown color molecules. So your hair is damaged because, again, the cuticle is lifted to get the color molecules in and out but you’ve also artificially replaced some of the hair shaft components that were lost, so it can look in better condition than bleached blond hair.

[Calaelen]

I am a stylist who has specialized in hair colour, so I do know the science behind this.

In most cases when you're colouring a darker shade there is not a high enough percentage of developer (peroxide, usually 20%) in the kit to remove the natural colour of your hair, its purpose is to lift the cuticle to deposit colour into the shaft. The cortex itself does change, and of course, there is some damage.

However with bleach, the percentage of peroxide is so huge 40% or more sometimes 50 or 60%, that along with the activator it does completely strip the hair to the lowest amount of melanin that can be achieved. There is no deposit in this case and the hair is severely damaged in the process. Another thing to note is that, normal hair colour formulas (even very light blondes) will stop reacting after 30 minutes, however, hair bleach will remain active as long as it has moisture, and the longer it processes, the more damaged the hair will become.

Also, in the bleaching process you add a powder (calcium hypochlorite) which is not included in hair colour to the peroxide creating a very intense chemical reaction that results in the hair being stripped.

That's the difference, and it's a big one. now you know :p (probably more than you ever wanted to..lol)

[dropinthebucket]

Thanks for all the awesome info. I'm thinking of trying the least damaging ash brown dye over my current hendigo (looks like henna, though, as the indigo seems to have faded right out). Will strand test, and wait a couple of months, just in case there's still indigo even if it looks like there isn't. I know bleach turns indigo green - i just wasn't sure if that also meant commercial hair colours - when people say they bleached their indigo and it went green, did they *bleach it* bleach it , or did they just try to dye over it with commercial? and so, if commercial isn't what people mean by "bleach," is it less likely to go green? it's all kind of confusing! :) This info. is a great start. Thank you!