Lightening henna to bleach blonde!

**beabees** · July 2nd, 2015, 04:52 PM

YES, it can be done! My hair is definitely more damaged than when I was red, but I just wanted to share my journey from henna to blonde. Keep in mind my hair also had a bright red direct dye on it as well which didn't want to budge.

I spaced out my bleachings over the period of 7 months, and had to deal with hideous hair. There is no quick way to try and go to blonde from henna, so I would advise against it. It's better to have ugly neon hair for a long time than rush it and have to cut it into a pixie when you are trying to keep your length.

Here's what I did:
The first time I bleached my hair was so I could go red initially. I used 20 volume developer without Olaplex. Then to get the red out I bleached twice using 20vol developer and no Olaplex (didn't have it at the time). Then 4 times I bleached with 30vol + Olaplex and 1 more time with 20vol + Olaplex. Yes, my hair has been bleached 8 times. The orange and yellow tones were very persistent.

Hair before:

Hair after letting the colour fade for about 3 months before trying to strip it:

Hair after being bleached twice (first bleach counts as the first time I bleached my virgin hair to put the red on top):

Hair after being bleached 3 times:

Hair after being bleached 4 times:

Hair after being bleached 5 times:

Hair after being bleached 6 times:

I didn't get a photo of the seventh bleach. This is because I tried to bleach with 20vol + Olaplex instead of 30vol and I didn't really see a change.

Final eighth bleach/current hair:

I have not used a toner yet, but I plan to as soon as I let my hair recover a bit (just bleached it yesterday). I used purple shampoo which did tone it a bit, though. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. And sorry if the photos look too large, I didn't know how to resize them!

**ghost** · July 2nd, 2015, 05:14 PM

Your hair looks really nice! Does Olaplex make a big difference in how your hair feels, post-bleach?

I'm sort of missing my blonde hair now...

**beabees** · July 2nd, 2015, 05:21 PM

Thank you! I test stranded a few bleachings with 20vol developer on part of my bangs before I received Olaplex to see if I could push my hair light enough to go blonde or if it would be a waste of time trying. Without Olaplex it was tangled and breaking off after 2-3 bleaches. I can guarantee without Olaplex my entire length would pretty much all be melted off (and just for the record, I'm not sponsored or anything by them). My hair is very fine and thin, so I need to be quite careful with it.

**meteor** · July 2nd, 2015, 06:12 PM

Wow! That's impressive! 8 bleaching sessions!

And you got the henna completely out!

Your hair is VERY resilient!

Congratulations! And thanks for sharing your experiences with Olaplex!

Do you think you'll be doing this again a few times as a standalone treatment for after-care? Or just the #3 conditioner?

**beabees** · July 2nd, 2015, 06:48 PM

Originally Posted by meteor

Wow! That's impressive! 8 bleaching sessions!

And you got the henna completely out!

Your hair is VERY resilient!

Congratulations! And thanks for sharing your experiences with Olaplex!

Do you think you'll be doing this again a few times as a standalone treatment for after-care? Or just the #3 conditioner?

Well, to be fair, I completely drenched my hair in coconut oil before bleaching and used Fastcolor by Ardell in most of my mixtures. Both helped prevent a lot of oxidative damage. I've gone to a salon before where they've bleached my virgin hair once and it started to break off at the root, so my hair is not THAT resilient, I just have to be super careful with it. Oh, and my hair was in excellent shape to begin with before I started to go blonde. I was always doing S&Ds, used heat once or twice a year, and I never sleep without my satin cap to protect my hair.

As for using the Olaplex treatment, I didn't bother to waste my money with the #3 bottle. It's just a diluted version of the others. I did do 3 separate standalone Olaplex treatments with bottles 1 and 2, and honestly I wasn't impressed. I didn't feel like they helped my hair at all. The results were astounding when I used the treatment with my bleach formula and for that reason I feel like anyone trying to bleach out their henna should absolutely be using Olaplex in the mixture.

I am almost out of Olaplex so I will be purchasing more tomorrow. Now that my hair has been bleached so many times I will try another standalone treatment and see if it helps any better now that my hair is significantly more damaged than the last time I did a treatment.

**Lady Mary** · July 2nd, 2015, 07:00 PM

Wow, that's a lot of bleach! My hair would have turned to dust long before then. Henna really is stubborn.

**meteor** · July 2nd, 2015, 07:29 PM

Originally Posted by beabees

Well, to be fair, I completely drenched my hair in coconut oil before bleaching and used Fastcolor by Ardell in most of my mixtures. Both helped prevent a lot of oxidative damage. I've gone to a salon before where they've bleached my virgin hair once and it started to break off at the root, so my hair is not THAT resilient, I just have to be super careful with it. Oh, and my hair was in excellent shape to begin with before I started to go blonde. I was always doing S&Ds, used heat once or twice a year, and I never sleep without my satin cap to protect my hair.

As for using the Olaplex treatment, I didn't bother to waste my money with the #3 bottle. It's just a diluted version of the others. I did do 3 separate standalone Olaplex treatments with bottles 1 and 2, and honestly I wasn't impressed. I didn't feel like they helped my hair at all. The results were astounding when I used the treatment with my bleach formula and for that reason I feel like anyone trying to bleach out their henna should absolutely be using Olaplex in the mixture.

I am almost out of Olaplex so I will be purchasing more tomorrow. Now that my hair has been bleached so many times I will try another standalone treatment and see if it helps any better now that my hair is significantly more damaged than the last time I did a treatment.

Yay!

Thanks a lot for these details! They are very helpful, especially for those of us who use or contemplate using bleach. Thank you!

Still can't get over how strong your hair is!

Congratulations on bleaching henna out, a.k.a. "achieving (almost) the impossible"!