Hair Whitening Update
If you’ve read my old tutorial on hair whitening, then you probably realise that it’s about two years old by now. Long story short, after writing that the first time (for the LiveJournal community), I started whitening my hair again, and in the years since then, I’ve come to perfect my craft, so here’s the Update patch:
extra step in the process: If your goal is to whiten your hair, then as you are mixing the bleach, you really should use this additive called Red Gold Corrector Plus. I usually see it at Sally, cos the mom-n-pop type places around here really seem to be lacking in some things. You add this directly to the bleach before applying it to your hair. If you’ve gotten a large or medium-sized bottle of it, then you need about 12-20 drops per ounce of mixed bleach by volume — three ounces by volume of bleach powder plus three ounces by volume of developer mixes to about six ounces by volume of mixed bleach. If you’re buying Red-Gold Corrector Plus in those little snip-open packets, then one whole packet is about what you need for six ounces by volume of mixed bleach.
brand of bleach: I no longer use Kaliedecolours. It’s a great brand that I recommend to anybody who is merely interested in bleaching their hair for whatever purposes, like dying one’s hair with Special Effects of Manic Panic. What I use now is the Salon Care Quickwhite from Sally Beauty Supply. I’m pretty sure “Salon Care” is also their store brand. The problem I was running into with Kaliedecolours was that I kept having to bleach my hair a second time before toner, thus I was going through a whole tub of powder in maybe two or three months. One bucket of Quickwhite lasts me about six to nine months because I’m not only bleaching my hair half as much every time I touch up, but the tub is also a bit bigger than a Kaliedecolours for roughly similar price. Like I said, if you’re going to dye your hair pink or green or something, Kaliedecolours is probably the best that I’ve personally used. And as much as I believe in supporting Manic Panic for their principles and inherent DIY ethic, you just can’t beat the personal touch of getting your own bleaching components and doing it yourself. (Still, if you truly are lazy enough or just don’t want the hassle of mixing your own bleach, definitely stick with the MP bleach kits.)
important note: If you’re like me and have a patch of psoriasis on your scalp, I highly recommend an additive called Bio-Kur. It’s available at Sally in little packets for about 50¢ each. Still, I highly discourage bleaching your hair when your scalp is irritated (and this goes double for those of you with psoriasis that gets dry enough in the winter that your scalp cracks and bleeds). The bleach will only further inflame your scalp.
toners: Another pretty good brand of toner that I’ve been using recently is Icicle, from Clairol’s “Jazzing” line, available at most beauty supplies. There are some major “cons” with using Jazzing, though. First off, Clairol is a division of Proctor & Gamble, a corporation that has been heavily criticised for testing on animals. If you care about that, then you’ll probably want to avoid it. If you want another reason to avoid Jazzing, it’s more “liquidy” than Special Effects (a cream) or Manic Panic (available in both cream and gel), so it drips pretty heavily. It’s toxicity is as equally indeterminate as Special effects, but I didn’t see a “blindness” warning, so I prepped my eyelids with petroleum jelly and did my eyebrows a few times and experienced no serious issues. In its pros, it has got to be the best semi-permanent toner I’ve tried as, like most other Clairol products, it’s designed to actually soak into the hair’s pores rather than simply coat the hair follicle, and as an added bonus, it’s considerably less pricey than SpFX and MP. I will make a more detailed post about the pros and cons of other dyes later.
toner: In the last year, I discovered and tried out Wella’s permanent hair toners, specifically T-18 “White Lady”. This is the toner that I use most lately because, as I said, it is permanent, and unlike most “permanent” colourants, Wella products are well-known for being safe, gentle, and sometimes even beneficial without sacrificing the product’s effectiveness. Because it’s permanent, you have to mix it with a developer; the instructions in the box suggest using a 20 volume developer, but in the name of science, I tried it with the last of my 10-volume I had under the sink, and it still worked amazingly well. Like Clairol, Wella is also associated with Proctor & Gamble, though P&G just owns a controlling interest in Wella, rather than outright owning it. Still, if you care about animal testing enough to boycott P&G products, you may want to avoid Wella (as well as Tom’s of Maine, as in 2006, it was acquired by Colgate-Palmolive, a mega-corporation that has also been criticised for animal testing, but is allegedly one of the best companies for working mothers — hrmm… which is more important, women or rats, women or rats…).
