Ultimate Guide: How to Bleach Your Hair at Home Like a Pro
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Being a former professional hair stylist, I’m going to let you in on a little secret…
There are times when you just need to bite the bullet and pay for a pro to color your hair.
But there are also a lot of times where you can get professional results right in the comfort of your own home!
I recently found Zotos Professional AGEbeautiful Ultra Bond™ Powder Lightener and Developer at my local Sally Beauty and I am seriously impressed with the results.
I’ve tried a few other powder lightener brands at Sally Beauty over the past 8 years of DIYing my own platinum blonde hair at home, and they didn’t quite perform to my standards.
AGEbeautiful Ultra Bond Powder Lightener lifted my hair fast, evenly, and most importantly safely!
Seriously, look at the “before”… yikes!
Don’t just take my word for it…
Keep reading to see how I achieved pro results at home and how you can too!
Keep This in Mind Before You Begin Bleaching Your Hair at Home
Don’t wash your hair the day of. Even better if it’s been a few days! The natural oils in your hair help protect your scalp when doing an all-over bleach application.
Know where you’re at naturally. Natural hair color comes in levels 1-10, 1 being naturally black and 10 being naturally very light blonde. Compare your regrowth to a natural hair level chart.
Know your undertones. All natural hair also has undertones with level 1 having red undertones and level 10 having pale yellow undertones. When you lighten your hair, the undertones will be exposed until the bleach eventually lifts most of them out.
For example:
If you are a natural level 4 wanting to get to a level 11 (platinum) your hair will need to first lift out red, then orange, then yellow undertones.
Supplies You’ll Need for Bleaching Your Hair at Home:
- AGEbeautiful Ultra Bond Powder Lightener 6 oz
- AGEbeautiful Ultra Bond 20 Volume Developer 4 oz
- Mixing bowl
- Applicator brush
- Alligator clips
- A shirt you don’t care about anymore (or a hair cape)
- Measuring cup
- Gloves
- AGEbeautiful Permanent Liqui-Creme Topcoat Toner
- AGEbeautiful Ultra Bond No.2+ Deep Treatment 8.45 fl oz
Step One: Section your hair
Before you do anything, make sure you are wearing a shirt you don’t care about, or even a hair coloring cape. When you bleach your hair, it WILL get on what you are wearing.
Part your hair into 4 sections: down the middle of your head and from the top of your ear to the top of the other ear.
Secure each section with an alligator clip.
Step Two: Mix the bleach
AGEbeautiful Ultra Bond Powder Lightener is mixed in a 1:1 ratio with the developer.
Mix 1 scoop (provided) powder lightener with 1 oz. of cream developer until you get a pudding consistency. Use a hair color measuring cup for accuracy.
If you have thicker hair, you might need to double or triple the amount.
If you are only retouching regrowth:
Because your scalp generates heat (which helps bleach work more efficiently) you will only need to mix up one batch using 20 volume developer.
If you are lifting previously colored hair:
If you currently have previously colored hair, especially if it’s very dark, I recommend going to a professional until you have the results you’re looking for.
There are just so many things that can go wrong when you are lifting previously colored hair, and a pro has the knowledge and tools readily available to them in case of emergency.
Once you get to an overall platinum blonde, it’s very easy (and budget friendly!) to do your own retouches at home.
Step Three: Apply bleach to the outline of each section
Make sure you are wearing gloves! Working very quickly, apply bleach with your applicator brush to the outline of each section. This will help keep your application neat.
Make sure you only apply bleach to the regrowth. If it overlaps, you risk having banding issues (uneven lifting). Luckily, you’re using AGEbeautiful Ultra Bond lightener so you don’t have to worry about breakage 😉
Step Four: Apply bleach to the rest of your head
Using your applicator brush and working one section at a time, take approximately 1/4″ diagonal partings and apply the bleach to the regrowth.
Most would say to start in the back. From personal experience, I like to start in the front so that it gets nice and light. I don’t mind if the back is ever so slightly darker.
Step Five: Let it process
Bleaching is less about watching the clock and more about watching your hair. There are multiple factors that affect how well your hair will lift including:
- air temperature
- humidity
- and even hormones!
About 15 minutes after you have finished the application, check your hair periodically (about every 5 minutes) until your hair is the color of the inside of a banana.
Step Six: Rinse and treat your hair
Rinse the bleach out of your hair with warm water until you can no longer feel any left behind and the water is running clear.
Shampoo with AGEbeautiful No.1 Cleanse and bring the porosity of your hair back to normal with No.2+ Deep Treatment.
Because I have very porous ends, I prefer to do this before I tone my hair so that the toner takes more evenly.
Step Seven: Tone your hair
Check out my in-depth, step by step post all about hair toner here!
The toner you should use depends on your final result desired and what current undertone is present after lifting your hair.
From past experience, I know that it’s tough to get all of the yellow undertones out of my hair. I also had more of a golden blonde before and was now wanting to go more ash. So I selected the Silver Ash Blonde toner.
Apply the toner to your regrowth first because your ends are usually more porous and will soak the toner up VERY quickly. Once the regrowth looks like it’s starting to take to the toner, working very quickly, apply the toner to your ends.
Just like the bleach, keep an eye on your hair so you know when it’s time to rinse.
Step Eight: Give your hair a final shampoo and condition
Rinse under cool water until it runs clear, and then repeat a shampoo with the No.1 Cleanse and No.2 Condition.
Besides the fact that I need a haircut in the worst way, didn’t it turn out beautiful?!
Platinum hair with pro results at home is within your reach! Head out to your local Sally Beauty to pick up AGEbeautiful Ultra Bond Powder Lightener and Developer (don’t forget your toner).
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I look forward to trying this..
My doughter bleashed my hair to make it black do i have to bleash it to get a burgundy color
I’m assuming she used a box color to color your hair black? If so, I would definitely recommend seeing a pro if you want to go any lighter (including burgundy). Black box dye is super pigmented and really unpredictable.
I went from a light dirty blonde to bleach blonde do I need to bleach my roots again or can I just use a toner
Toner only deposits color it doesn’t lighten or lift more than maybe 1 level (depending on the toner, some don’t lift at all). You’ll need to re-bleach your roots to match your ends before you tone. Hope that helps!
Your beautiful thank you for the tips
Peroxide. Can i take a tooth brush and put peroxide on strands of hair ? How long can I keep it on the strands. Yahoo
Hi, I am a guy with black virgin hair, and I want to bleach my hair to a level 9 blonde. Would I still use a 20 volume developer or should I go higher with a 40?
If you’ve got black virgin hair, you still have all of those red/orange/yellow undertones to go through, it will just happen faster than on color treated hair. 40 volume is not recommended to be applied on scalp (trust me, it burns so bad!) so I wouldn’t go any higher than 30 volume and it will probably take a few applications to work.
Do I need to mix the Topcoat Toner with the developer, or do I just apply it directly to my hair? Can I do it on wet hair?
Also looking for an answer to the toner step. Do you use the toner with developer? Ratio? Wet or Dry Hair? Thanks
How you mix the toner depends on which toner you use. Some will say to use 20 vol developer (which will actually lift natural pigment and is more harsh on your hair) some will say to use a lower volume developer or a custom developer just for that toner. Refer to the toner manufacturer’s instructions for what you will need to make it work correctly. I personally like doing toner on towel dried hair (mostly dry and not dripping wet) vs completely dry. The drier the hair, the quicker the toner will take and the more chances of it depositing more uneven.
The directions on the bag say for on scalp application use 1:2 ratio, so why do you use 1:1? I’m doing my regrow this and I would like to know your reasoning. Thanks
Great question! It’s really about personal preference and keeping the bleach from drying out as it processes. I like it a little more thick to keep it under control so it doesn’t overlap on my pre-lightened hair too much and I also use a plastic cap to keep it wet as it sits. I probably do more like a 1:1.5 ratio with SLIGHTLY more developer than powder. One of those things I picked up working in a salon 🙂
If I have red dye hair it’s about a level 3. I got done it at a salon but I want to go teal, would I need to bleach my hair to take our the red or can I use a color fix?
I would use bleach to remove the red, the color corrector is just as harsh and won’t work as well. Make sure you get it as light as possible past the super yellow stage or the teal will look more green.
My hair was professionally bleached 3 days ago. I hated it as I wanted a true silver hair color. I ended out putting a smokey silver color on it. Its way to dark for what I wanted. I would like to bleach this color out and return to level 10-11 for a true silver. Is this possible? What should I use and how much?
Hi Carmin! I don’t know how I missed this comment! In the future, what I have found to work best when toners take a little to dark is to strip it out using vitamin C packets! Believe it or not, they do a great job taking the color out without damaging the hair further.
I am looking for a good natural sun blonde toner but, I can’t find one. Do you know off one that you would recommend?
Thank you
Sandra
Hi Sandra! You asked this awhile ago and I missed it 🙁 What do you mean by natural sun blonde toner? Are you looking for a toner to use on already blonde hair that leaves a natural look?
Hi! I’ve been bleaching my hair regularly once I start to see some of the pale yellow strands and natural root regrowth. I always start with the roots and apply allover. I’ve been testing various toners(brands/colors/box dye even). It naturally has taken quite a toll on my hair. It’s time again for regrowth application and had a thought that I’d like to find an answer to. I’ve already stocked up on the essentials along with additives to fortify my strands. I was curious about how to maybe work my roots into the final look. Similar to what I’ve found as blending, smudging but not as far as bayalage. I have around shoulder length hair that I toned using an ion white brand vs Wella t18. I have a half tube of icy white ion toner and 20v developer along with Wella t18 and matching 20v developer. I also have the new silver lilac color charm paint. Any tips on mixing toners/hair partings/brush applications that would blend parts of my regrowth to help extend the time between bleaching? Thank you!
My first question is, do you pull the bleach through your ends every time? If so, you definitely can cut this out because once you lift your natural color out, a toner is all you should need to keep your ends bright. I only bleach my regrowth and don’t pull it through my ends unless I was trying to pull out unwanted tones from a leftover toner (example- I used to be rose gold and wanted to be more ashy so pulled a tiny bit of weak bleach through my ends to cut the rose gold out before toning)
As far as making your roots work to extend time between bleaching, first I would make sure you’re using a purple conditioner to keep your ends from getting brassy (I use one about once every 4 washings when I start to see yellow come through). I find that as long as my ends aren’t getting icky yellow, I can extend the time a bit between bleaching my roots. Next, you don’t want to wait too long between touching your roots up because the application gets far more complicated due to the heat that your head gives off and the length of your regrowth. I think if you follow my tip above about not bringing the bleach through your ends and using purple conditioner, you’ll find the results you are looking for! Keep in mind that any toners that use 20 vol can be as harsh as bleach because they’re using a similar process to change the color of your hair (don’t want to get too scientific) so you don’t want to be toning constantly with products like that or you risk the health of your hair.
I hope this helps!
Hi I have bleached some strands oh hair mostly on the top around the crown a few times now so it’s mostly blonde. I do have a few orange undertones can I apply a platinum color to the strands . I’m wanting platinum starting out on the top so I can start to let the gray grow in
Ideally, you would want to start with undertones that are more pale yellow. Orange is really hard (i.e. impossible) to get platinum. I would try to lighten the orange areas to a pale yellow and then apply a toner with a stronger blue/violet base to get them platinum.