5 Early Signs Your Hair is Bleach Damaged & Possible Fix

StanleyLast Updated: August 14, 2021

This post will outline the 5 early signs your hair is bleach damaged and possible solutions to reverse it before it gets worse.

Hair bleaching has become a trend over the past couple of years, and more people are bleaching their hairs to get artificial colors.

However, bleaching always comes with its own problems. While some people manage to get away from severe hair problems after bleaching, it’s pure hair damage for others.

Do you think your hair bleach is gradually damaging your hair?

Well, there are signs to look out for, to be really sure. Here, I’ll show you some of the most common signs of hair that have been damaged due to bleaching.

How Does Bleaching Work?

Like most advanced haircare processes, bleaching is a complex chemical process that I can explain without you ever getting it.

In five-year-olds terms, bleaching your hair lightens it. It simply turns darker hair into lighter hair by messing with some chemicals that make up your hair.

There are two types of melanin in hair, but both are useful in making up the color composition of the hair.

Hair bleach oxidizes the melanin, paling it out or making it colorless. This, in turn, affects the color of the hair, lightening it; think about the pigmentation on your skin.

However, bleach doesn’t usually stop at what it’s meant to do. Sometimes, it also continues to react with the moisture within your hair, drying it out.

When this happens, you start to experience bleach-induced hair damage.

Before we continue, make sure to check out my post on 5 hair care mistakes that stop your hair from growing.

Signs Your Hair is Bleach Damaged

signs Your hair is bleach damaged

We understand that hair damage occurs when bleach overreacts with the natural hair components, forcing them to dry out.

However, how do you know that’s what is happening to your hair?

Here are some of the most common signs of damaged hair from bleach that will help you make a correct diagnosis.

1. Excessive Tangles

Does your typical disentanglement schedule look lazy now?

Your hair might be getting damaged. When you start to experience hair damage due to bleaching, your hair starts to get more tangles than usual, causing you to have to detangle even more often.

This is caused by the absence of the necessary oils that lubricate the hair and keep them untangled.

2. Split Ends

When you bleach your hair excessively, you can only be asking for one thing: split ends.

You know it, it’s so annoying. Your hair becomes too brittle and dry at the ends; think the end of a rope.

While bleaching isn’t the only thing capable of causing split ends, it’s a great contributing factor. If you bleach your hair a lot and you start to experience split ends – it’s a clear sign your hair might be damaged.

3. Dull Hair

Bleaching could make your hair colorful and shiny if done right. However, if anything goes wrong, you’ll have one of the dullest hair in the entire country.

Recall that bleach reacts with certain essential hair minerals to change the natural color of your hair. However, it can also react with the oils that give your hair its natural shine, overpowering them and subsequently killing the natural glow.

In addition, feel free to check out my post on allergic reactions to hair dye signs. I think this post would also help.

4. Frizz

If you use bleach or hair care products that contain a good amount of it, you may notice signs of frizz or unusual dryness. This is very understandable.

For the bleach to interact with the melanin responsible for giving your hair its coloration, it needs to penetrate through the cuticle.

Coincidentally, this cuticle doesn’t only lock in the useful chemicals but also locks in the moisture that keeps your hair smooth and bouncy.

Once the cuticle gets tampered with, you get frizzy hair that is unusually dry and breaks off at will.

Can you repair bleach-damaged hair?

Well, no. Once you bleach your hair to a point where the hair passes off as damaged, that’s all about it. There is about nothing you can do to repair it fully.

However, you can still grow new, unbleached, and undamaged hair if you can put in some effort.

Also, if the sign of damages is still sprouting, you can control it before it fully gets out of hand. Here are some things you can do to recover your hair if it’s growing wrongly due to bleaching.

1. Stop (or at least minimize) bleaching

While bleaching could make you look cooler (arguably), what’s the point if all it ended up doing was damaging your hair?

If you start to notice the signs of hair damage from bleaching, it’s time to stop; or at least minimize it.

Hair that bleaches and stops lives to bleach another day.

2. Avoid Sun-induced Damage

When you start using hair bleaching products, you may want to be wary of how you stay in the sun.

When you apply bleach to your hair, the sun can cause damage to the hair, causing your hair to exhibit the signs of damaged hair.

There are many hydration hair care products that you can use before stepping in the sun to make sure that you’re not exposing your bleached hair to the sun’s harsh rays.

3. Hydrate your hair

There’s one thing you may have to be doing yourself once you start bleaching your hair: hydration.

If your hair is like everyone else’s, it will struggle to naturally moisturize once you start applying hair care products containing bleach.

Fortunately, there are dozens of articles on the internet on the topic, and you can even be overwhelmed with different moisturizing options to choose from.

Coconut and almond oils work magic when it comes to hair hydration. Also, don’t just discard the water you rinse out of rice; it contains a chemical that works wonders for your hair.

If you want to know more, feel free to check out my blog post on how to grow hair with fermented rice water.