How I bleached my hair without damaging it too much

Long story short: I wanted to colour my hair blonde but since I had black henna in my hair its almost impossible. I even went to see Tracy Cunningham (Hollywood celebrity colourist) in the hope that she could do something for me. Her response: “Forget about it, its impossible to change black henna into platinum blonde”. Me being the stubborn person that I am, I just couldn’t take “no” for an answer. So, I went to SLaM salon here in Dubai and I asked them what they could do for me. They gave me 3 options on how to get rid of the henna:

1. Bleach the hair several times.
2. Cut all the henna out of the hair (which means I would have shorter hair than my husband has).
3. Or wait another 10 years for everything to grow out.

I obviously chose to bleach my hair several times and I just took the risk of damaging my hair for the sake of looking hot (the things women do to look good). Ali, my hairstylist did everything she could to keep my hair healthy and to not lose the curls. I have to admit, she did a darn good job at that! We’ve kept 1 month in between each bleaching session to allow my hair to recover. In total it took me 4/5 months to get the hair colour that I’ve always wanted!

 

 

1st session August 2015:

Before After

Yes, my hair was actually yellow and orange after the first time bleaching. The orange part is where I still had the black henna left. The yellow part is where my natural hair colour was. This is why its so hard to bleach black henna, it doesn’t lift the bleach easily and even if it does, it has a very orange tone which is hard to get rid of. For this process, shampoo, conditioner, bleach and peroxide was used.

I obviously couldn’t leave my hair orange and yellow, so Ali used a medium ash brown toner to kill all warm tones created by the henna.

 

2nd session September 2015:


Before After

A month later, Ali used a lot of highlights to infuse the blonde in my hair. This way, we could build up the blonde colour and add more highlights every month. From there we just kept going lighter. She used bleach with 6% oxidant and let the foils develop for 35 minutes. Through out the bleaching process, she also used Olaplex. This product is essential when doing a process like this as it not only protects the hair as much as possible but it keeps the cuticle intact.Its described as an anti biotic for the hair and its used by many hairstylists.

 

3rd session October 2015:

Before After

 

4th session November 2015:

Before After

The texture of my hair has definitely changed through out the bleaching process. When my hair is wet, its thinner then it used to be. But once dried, its still as big. It has also become dryer and less shinier, but considering the fact that I’ve bleached my hair 4 times and that I went from black to almost white hair, I’m surprised I still got hairs left on my scalp.

The final result!

I’m happy that I got my hair done by Ali Keogh from SLaM, I feel like she really understood the direction that I wanted to go to. In the beginning we took it really slow and tried not to put a lot of pressure on my hair, just to see how it would react. After we realised that my hair remained healthy, with the same curls, just a bit dryer – we decided to put more pressure on it and just keep going lighter. Through out the process I made sure that I took really good care of my hair, I do weekly oil treatments and I rarely blow dry it. Check out my video on how I take care of my hair and how I keep it healthy after bleaching it:

 

The lesson I’ve learned after this? Never, EVER colour your hair with black henna ever again!

If you have the same problem like I had, make sure you check out SLaM salon! They’ve got some of the best hair colourists in town, and they do really cool & funky hair styles: