Bleaching your hair can be an exciting way to change up your look, whether you’re doing it at home or using the services of a stylist. Hair lightening products, which often contain bleach, are popular for their simplest and fastest ways to remove pigment from your hair strands.
However, this process comes with its own cost. Bleach acts as a harsh invader that breaks apart hair proteins to remove color, leaving your hair lighter but significantly weaker.
In my own experience, I remember the breakage, frizz, and dryness I faced after bleaching my hair. These side effects can be tough to deal with. Thankfully, there are natural remedies to help restore your hair’s strength and softness after using bleach.
Tips like coconut oil treatments or aloe vera masks can improve the texture and maintain the luster of your bleached hair, making it smooth and shiny again. While dealing with the effects of bleaching can be difficult, with the right approach, you can make your bleached hair healthy and vibrant.
Whether you’re trying to learn new methods or simply scrolling through advice, remember that your hair can bounce back with the proper care.
Natural Ways to Restore Bleached Hair
Bleaching strips hair of its natural color, often leaving it dry, brittle, and prone to sun damage. To combat this, use DIY hair masks like yogurt and olive oil, avocado and egg, or apple cider vinegar mixes to restore shine and health. Nourishing oils such as olive, coconut, argan, and almond oil can help seal moisture and protect the hair. Incorporate rice water rinses to strengthen strands, use sun protection, and opt for protein-infused shampoos to repair damage. Limit heat styling and consider trimming split ends to revitalize bleached hair.What is Bleach Damaged Hair?
Bleaching your hair works by opening the cuticle and altering the melanin inside the hair shaft to change its color. A protective layer of protein scales covers the hair shaft called the cuticle. The bleach strips your hair of natural protective fibers and oils during this process.
Ideally, the cuticle should close and return to normal, but bleach can disrupt these scales, causing them to lay flat. This disruption leaves bleach-damaged hair with more volume than virgin hair because each strand takes up more space.
As a result, moisture escapes from the inner parts of the hair shaft, making your twisty treasure dry, brittle, and prone to breakage. That’s bleach-damaged hair in a nutshell.
How to Identify Bleach-Damaged Hair
Here are a few warning signs which indicate the bleach-damaged hair.
Lack of Natural Shine
When bleach damages the cuticle, the outermost layer of the hair, it causes it to lift and roughen. This change diminishes the cuticle’s ability to let light reflect smoothly off the hair surface, giving your hair a duller appearance.
A key sign of bleach damaged hair is the absence of its natural shine, as the once flat layer that helped your hair stay shiny no longer functions as it should.
Hair Tangles
When cuticles are healthy, they lay flat and aligned, allowing strands to glide smoothly over each other. However, if the cuticle is damaged by bleach, irregularities in its structure can cause adjacent strands to catch and stick together, often resulting in tangles. This effect disrupts the natural flow of your hair and makes managing your locks more challenging.
Dry and Brittle
Bleach strips the hair of its natural moisture and oils, leaving it more porous and prone to dryness. This disruption of the protective cuticle allows moisture from the inner layers of the hair to escape, leading to dry and brittle hair. Normally, the cuticle acts as a barrier to prevent moisture loss, but when it’s damaged by bleach, the hair becomes parched and fragile.
Flyaways
Bleach can leave hair looking damaged and weakened, which makes it more susceptible to breakage. This often manifests as shorter, broken strands that stick out from the rest of the hair and are commonly known as flyaways. The lack of moisture and structural integrity in bleached hair can cause frizz, further contributing to the appearance of flyaways.
Split Ends
Breakage caused by bleach can damage the hair, leading to split ends. The hair shaft splits into fragments at the ends, making the cuticle compromised. The inner layers of the hair are then exposed to environmental stressors, causing them to weaken and fray.
Split ends are a visible indication of significant damage to the hair structure, often appearing as small, ragged strands at the tips of the hair.
Ways to Naturally, Rehabilitate the Bleached Hair
When you bleach your hair, you’re removing its natural color by subjecting it to a chemical process. As a result, your hair may appear damaged, dry, and brittle, leaving it susceptible to sun damage. Here are some natural ways to restore the damage caused by bleaching.
Make DIY Hair Mask
To restore the shine to damaged, dry, bleached hair, try a hydrating DIY hair mask. For instance, the yogurt hair mask recipe can enhance the shine of dry and damaged hair strands.
- Combine one cup of yogurt with a tablespoon of olive oil, apply this paste to your hair, wait for 10 minutes, and rinse with warm water.
- Another option is the avocado hair mask recipe to give your hair new life. Crush an avocado and mix it with an egg to make a paste, apply it to damp hair, let it sit for 30 minutes, then rinse with warm water.
- The apple cider vinegar hair mask recipe can revive lifeless hair by combining 3 egg whites, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar, rub the mixture into your hair, leave it on for 30 minutes, then shampoo and condition as usual.
Use Nourishing Hair Oil
Bleached hair often looks fried and frizzy because the hair cuticle, which locks in moisture, gets disrupted. While the cuticle rebuilds, using products like olive oil, coconut oil, argan oil, and almond oil can help seal the hair and restore its gloss and shine.
A few drops of olive oil applied with your fingertips can breathe life into your hair, especially at the ends. Similarly, coconut oil can prevent protein loss and tame dry, frizzy spots. Argan oil, rich in antioxidants, protects the hair from further damage and adds shine.
Finally, almond oil, full of proteins and vitamin E, strengthens the hair strands and fills in gaps, reducing breakage from bleaching. Apply a few drops of these oils daily to keep your hair healthy.
Rice Water Rinse
A rice water rinse is an excellent DIY treatment for bleached hair. Including a rice water rinse in your hair care routine can reinforce your hair cuticle and repair dry hair, enhance bounce, and reduce breakage. To make your own rice water rinse, boil a bowl of rice in water.
After shampooing, apply the strained rice water rinse. Rinsing your hair with water used to boil rice can help make your hair strands stronger. Rice water contains inositol, which repairs hair strands from the inside out. You can rinse your hair with rice water every day if your hair is extremely damaged.
Use Sun Protection
After bleaching, your hair becomes vulnerable to burning from heat styling and the sun. Using sunblock for your hair not only protects it but also your scalp, which may be irritated due to bleach exposure. You can use an SPF spray specifically designed for hair or look for hair products that include SPF.
Use a Protein-Infused Shampoo
To repair dry, brittle ends, you need to add some protein to the mix. You can do this by using a hair treatment made of an egg and some shampoo. If making your own protein treatments doesn’t appeal to you, there are various protein shampoos available at beauty supply stores.
Leave-in Conditioner
Leave-in conditioner products, available at almost any beauty supply store or supermarket, can help revive bleach-damaged hair. Some leave-in conditioners are thick and you can apply them in the shower, while others are simple spray-on formulas you can put on your hair before you head out for the day.
Follow the label directions carefully and look for products that advertise moisturizing and keratin-building effects.
Avoid Heat Styling Tools
Right after bleaching, your hair is especially dry and vulnerable to heat styling damage. It’s important to cut back on how often you blow-dry, curl, or straighten your hair with hot tools in the weeks following a bleach. When you’re ready to reintroduce heat styling, keep it to a minimum — once or twice per week, max.
Natural blondes know to be careful about exposing their hair to chlorine, a chemical found in pools. Chlorine can turn hair green and dry out bleach-damaged hair, leading to more breakage.
The best way to avoid this is by not dipping your hair into the water while swimming. Alternatively, you can prevent your hair from soaking up chlorine-laden water by rinsing it with fresh water before diving in.
Invest in Good Hair Ties
If you have bleach-damaged hair or heat-damaged hair, you might think that putting your hair in a bun is the best way to avoid the temptation to heat style. However, using traditional hair ties can do more harm than good.
Traditional elastic hair ties tug on your hair, which can break fragile, bleach-damaged strands. Instead, use Hair Rings that gently grip your hair without causing breakage.
Go for a Trim
Trimming off split ends can help breathe new life into hair that has been damaged by bleach. Ask your hairdresser to trim off 2 to 3 inches — it might feel like a weight lifted off your shoulders.
Conclusion
Hair damage from bleach is not uncommon, and there are natural remedies you can try to restore the strength and flexibility of your hair strands. The real cure might require some patience, as it may take time for your hair to start to regain its shape.
Stick to a daily hair hygiene routine that limits heat styling and incorporates a moisturizer and a sunscreen. If your hair doesn’t start to regain its shape and stability within a month to 6 weeks, you may need to enlist the help of a professional hair stylist.
FAQs
How to repair bleached hair naturally?
These tips, tricks, and hair care treatments can help repair damaged hair. Wash your hair less often, condition more, use a hair mask, and dry your hair gently after washing. To maintain color, keep brassiness at bay, add a hair oil into the mix, skip heat styling, and see your stylist for a hair gloss treatment.
How to fix badly bleached hair at home?
Re-dye your hair a darker colour as it is the fastest way to resolve badly bleached hair. This is a good option if your hair was dark and the bleach has turned it orange, yellow, or green.
How do I get my bleached hair back to health?
Start with deep conditioning to help your bleached hair. Reduce heat and get regular trims to prevent split ends. Touch your hair less and be gentle with it. Avoid silicones and nourish your hair regularly. Remember, deep conditioning is not a one-off event.
How do I get my bleached hair back in good condition?
To rejuvenate bleached hair, apply oils, hair masks, and conditioners regularly to hydrate and mend dry strands. Always avoid heat from styling tools and choose hair lightening products wisely, whether coloring at home or with a stylist.
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