It’s 6 o’clock at night on a Wednesday and I’m sitting in my living room, wearing an old Laurier t-shirt. I have a box of L’Oreal Paris Colorista dye on my right and my laptop with a YouTube video playing on my left. I’m in the zone and I’m ready to ruin my life: I’m going to bleach my hair.
This isn’t my first brush with do-it-yourself dye jobs. I’ve tried Manic Panic and Kool-Aid (remember using Kool-Aid to dye hair?). I’ve even had a professional platinum blonde balayage done at the salon (shout-out to my stylist) and I needed more, more blonde, more platinum and more of a change. I can’t exactly afford the professional touch for my hair so I figured I should Amazon Prime deliver some bleach and go for it. What’s the worst that could happen?
So, I’ve got the bleach on the ends of my hair. It doesn’t smell as bad as I thought it would, but it doesn’t smell pleasant. I have an hour to kill, so I decide to watch the Taylor Swift documentary again on Netflix (and 10/10 would recommend!). I love her and the fact that she also had a hair bleaching phase (though I’d bet my tuition that she didn’t do the bleaching herself in her living room).
With every 10 minutes that passes, I feel my anxiety increase. My mind starts going through worst-case scenarios and my heart is pounding in my chest! What if my hair is fried? What if the colour is awful? What if my mom is disappointed in me for taking a risk? What if, what if, what if?! There are a million things racing through my head and they are all super negative. Something that should be exciting and new is taking a negative turn and my anxious brain is telling me to panic.
Instead of panicking, I read through the instructions that came with the bleach and calm my nerves. I’ve followed everything properly and I feel a little better now. My timer goes off and I’m quick to grab the anti-brass conditioner and hop in the shower to wash everything off, the anxiety and the bleach. I jump out of the shower and towel dry my hair. Next, I blow-dry my bangs and apply hair oil to the length of my hair and wait.
Obviously, I am in no way a professional hairdresser, nor do I pretend to be. That being said I do have some advice I could give based on my one-time hair bleaching bonanza.
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Trust the process.
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Use relatively dirty hair.
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Do your research.
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FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS THAT COME WITH THE DYE!
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Watch something or listen to music to pass the time, otherwise, you may stress out more than you would otherwise.
My hair dried and actually looks pretty good! I think I did a pretty good job and it still looks relatively natural, but not too natural that it looks like there isn’t a difference. It looks like that one scene from The Lizzie McGuire Movie where everyone is asking Lizzie how her hair got to be so light and she tells them “the island that we were on was really, really sunny.” It kinda looks like that.
Would I bleach my hair at home again? Heck yeah! It saves me money and it looks decent? Sign me up!