Right, my hair is naturally blonde, a mousy blonde but blonde and I want to go back to blonde but a brighter blonder colour than natural. Anyhoo... I dyed my hair brown about 2 years ago, and then I met up with an old friend and we decided to bleach it back blonde. She has done hairdressing for years and her mum is a hairdresses, but I still wasn't sure about it so I only let her do the top and I ended up with a yellow-ish blonde on top and brown underneath. I kept bleaching it on top and it was going lighter and lighter and I kept it like that for my aunties wedding in July 08. Then straight after I dyed it dark again but it went black. I'm sick of it now its too dark I never meant it to be like this and I really want to go back blonde. Could someone tell me the best way either a) to do it at home or b ) to get it done at the salon, how much it would cost and how likely it is to ruin my hair.

My hair has been coloured a few times, yes, but I change my shampoo and conditioner more or less all the time, have just switched to loreal and my hair is now in fantastic condition. I'm guessing having it bleached could ruin its condition, could you please let me know how much and whether I can get it back to my normal condition.

Thank you FOR EVERYONE WHO HELPS ME SO MUCH xxxxxxxxxxx STRESSED WIT IT NOW!! Rachey xxxxxxx

It's very hard to bleach dyed hair. The better approach is to use a color remover like ColorFix and remove the artificial pigment. Then you bleach the natural pigment as light as you wish.

Unfortunately, some hairdressers simply try to use bleach, or they use Effasol (a "color remover" that is mostly bleach). After that, you over-oxidize the artificial pigment and ColorFix won't work.

A salon would be the best place for this, but even they will have some difficulty.

I would wait a while longer if I were you. See the thing is that now you have color over bleach over color over bleach. I am surprised your hair hasn't broken off completely on the top. I woulg go to a salon and have a professional look at it's condition and feel it as well. They might also do a strand test to see how light you can get it without serious damage. As far as pricing goes, They (hair stylist) might consider it a color correction and that could be more expensive. My advice to you is to stop coloring it if you want to be lighter again and wait a while before lightening it again. Use deep conditiong treatments. Also your stylist might recomenc stipping the color apposed to using bleach, less damage. Well good luck with that.

Hair doesn't "heal" or get better over time. This is a very common misconception. Our bodies heal so people assume that waiting a week will improve the condition of the hair. It doesn't work that way.

Hair has no blood supply -- except in the follicle. Once hair leaves the follicle, it's essentially dead. Chemical reactions that take place in the live cells of the body simply do not happen in the hair shaft. In fact, if the hair weren't dead before bleaching, it would be dead after bleaching.

Therefore, it doesn't matter when you recolor or rebleach. If the hair is in good enough shape to tolerate being bleached or colored one more time, the result will be the same whether it's done after 1 day or 20 days. You can determine whether the hair is in good enough shape by performing a strand test.

Note that this doesn't apply to the new growth, which is undamaged.