Are you ready to change the look of your hair? If you’re thinking about lightening your hair or bleaching it before coloring it, you may be wondering whether you can use a household cleaning bleach, such as Clorox. You may have Clorox sitting in your laundry room right now, and it is really inexpensive. So, can you bleach hair with Clorox? Keep reading, and we’ll share whether using Clorox bleach to lighten your hair is a good idea.
Table of Contents
- Bleach Hair with Clorox
- What Happens if You Put Clorox Bleach in Your Hair?
- How Do You Bleach Weave With Clorox?
- Can You Use Household Bleach to Bleach Your Hair?
- How to Bleach Hair with Liquid Bleach
- What Do You Mix With Bleach to Bleach Your Hair?
- How Do You Bleach Your Hair With Bleach?
- How Can I Bleach My Hair at Home Without Bleach?
- How to Bleach Your Hair with Household Products
- What Can I Use to Bleach My Hair?
- FAQs
- Using Clorox to Bleach Hair
Bleach Hair with Clorox
Can I bleach my hair with Clorox bleach?
While putting Clorox bleach on your hair may technically lighten it, you should never use household bleach on your hair. Clorox bleach is designed for cleaning surfaces and removing stains; it is not intended to be used on hair.
Clorox is made of many different chemicals that can harm your hair or skin if you come into contact with them. These chemicals include sodium hypochlorite, sodium chloride, sodium chlorate, sodium carbonate, sodium polyacrylate, and sodium hydroxide.
If you put Clorox bleach on your hair, it will likely burn your scalp, eyes, and other parts of your face/skin that it comes in contact with. Additionally, Clorox bleach can also really damage your hair. It may even damage the root so much that it causes permanent hair loss.
What Happens if You Put Clorox Bleach in Your Hair?
Putting Clorox bleach in your hair is not a good idea. If you want to get a good idea of what could happen if you use Clorox bleach to lighten your hair, try a test experiment first.
Snip off a small section of your hair and put it in a bowl or glass. Cover the hair with Clorox and let it sit for about 15 or 20 minutes.
Now, you may expect that after this time the hair in the bowl will look a lot lighter, right? Wrong! When you look in the bowl, what you’ll actually see is that the hair is gone. That’s right, Clorox bleach can actually dissolve your hair.
Even if you don’t leave the bleach sitting on your hair for as long as 15 or 20 minutes, it can still be very damaging and drying for hair.
Plus, you risk severely burning your scalp, eyes, or other parts of your body if the bleach touches them.
How Do You Bleach Weave With Clorox?
If you shouldn’t use household bleach to lighten natural hair, can you use Clorox on a synthetic weave?
No, Clorox shouldn’t be used on synthetic hair either. First, the bleach won’t stick to the hair. This means it won’t even be able to lighten it, and you won’t achieve the look you were aiming for anyway.
Second, Clorox bleach can cause the synthetic hair to become very brittle and rough, which clearly won’t be good for styling. Additionally, just as Clorox can dissolve real human hair, if you leave synthetic hair soaking in Clorox for too long, it can also dissolve and get ruined.
Can You Use Household Bleach to Bleach Your Hair?
Bleaching your hair using liquid bleach for hair can be damaging enough. Can you bleach your hair with bleach, such as Clorox?
No! You should never use Clorox to bleach your hair. As we shared above, Clorox bleach contains chemicals that are dangerous for your skin and eyes. These chemicals are also dangerous to inhale and can severely damage your hair.
How to Bleach Hair with Liquid Bleach
If you’re thinking about bleaching your hair with liquid bleach, like Clorox, we’d seriously recommend doing something different to lighten your hair. Like we shared above, using Clorox can be very dangerous and can damage your hair or burn your scalp.
What Do You Mix With Bleach to Bleach Your Hair?
While you should avoid using Clorox bleach to lighten your hair, if you’re determined to try it, you’ll want to be as careful as possible.
You will need to dilute the Clorox a lot to minimize its harmful effects. Use about 2 cups of baking soda with just 2 or 3 tablespoons of 3% Clorox bleach.
How Do You Bleach Your Hair With Bleach?
Again, if you’re searching for how to bleach hair with bleach, Clorox isn’t the safest solution.
However, like we said above, if you’re set on giving Clorox a try, take extra precautions. Follow the steps below if you want to know “how do you bleach your hair with bleach at home” to use liquid bleach for hair:
- Wash your hair and pat it dry.
- Drape an old towel over your shoulders and skin to protect them from the bleach.
- Protect your hands by wearing gloves.
- Combine 2 cups of baking soda with 2 or 3 tablespoons of 3% Clorox bleach in a bowl (do not use a metal bowl since it can cause a reaction with the Clorox).
- Mix the ingredients together (use a plastic or ceramic spoon, not a metal spoon).
- Section your hair and apply the baking soda/bleach paste to your hair. Use a comb to make sure it spreads evenly.
- Be careful not to let any of the paste touch your scalp.
- Put a shower cap over your hair and let the paste sit for about 25 minutes.
- Take a shower to rinse the bleach out with cold water.
- Condition (but do not shampoo) your hair.
- Towel-dry your hair and let it dry the rest of the way on its own (do not use heat).
How Can I Bleach My Hair at Home Without Bleach?
If you want to try to bleach your hair at home, but don’t want to use bleach (or don’t have any handy), continue reading. In the next section, we’ll share some household items that you may have lying around that can actually help lighten your hair.
What Household Items Can You Use to Bleach Your Hair?
Does baking soda bleach hair? Can I lighten my hair with hydrogen peroxide? While both of these can be used to lighten hair, there are also some household items you can try to lighten your hair without using bleach:
- Lemon juice
- Chamomile
- Vinegar
- Sunshine
How to Bleach Your Hair with Household Products
Here are a few tips to follow if you want to try using one of the household products we listed above to bleach your hair:
- Lemon juice: Lemon juice, or even lemon juice mixed with sea salt, can work to make your hair lighter. The citric acid in lemon juice is a bleaching agent. However, for it to be effective, you’ll need to soak up some sun with the lemon juice in your hair.
- Chamomile: Did you know that chamomile tea can lighten your hair? Brew a cup of tea (make it extra strong by letting the tea bag brew for longer than is recommended on the box). Then, allow the tea to cool and apply it to your hair. You can either add some to individual strands for highlights, or just pour the entire cup over your head to lighten more of your hair.
- Vinegar: Rinsing your hair in distilled vinegar or apple cider vinegar can help lift your hair color and reduce dullness.
- Sunshine: The UVB and UVA rays in sunshine can naturally lighten your hair. You can help the sunshine work more quickly by adding some lemon juice mixed with water to your hair before heading outside.
What Can I Use to Bleach My Hair?
“How to safely bleach your hair instead of liquid household bleach” and “what bleach to use for hair” are common questions.
As a recap, some things you can use to lighten your hair at home without using bleach include:
- Baking soda
- Hydrogen peroxide
- Sunshine
- Lemon juice
- Chamomile
- Vinegar
FAQs
What happens if you put real bleach in your hair?
Hair bleach can be very damaging to hair. However, household bleach, such as Clorox is even more damaging and dangerous to use. What happens if you put bleach in your hair? Clorox bleach can burn your scalp and skin, make your hair overly dry, and cause hair loss.
What’s the difference between bleach and hair bleach?
Clorox bleach and hair bleach have completely different ingredients. Sodium hypochlorite makes household bleach an effective cleaner and stain remover. Hydrogen peroxide is the main ingredient found in actual hair bleach. Hydrogen peroxide works much more gently than household bleach to lighten hair.
What happens if you put Clorox bleach in your hair?
Putting Clorox bleach in your hair is not a good idea. Clorox bleach can actually dissolve your hair.
Can you use household bleach to bleach your hair?
You should never use Clorox or household bleach to bleach your hair.
What’s the difference between bleach and hair bleach?
Regular bleach and hair bleach have completely different ingredients. Sodium hypochlorite makes household bleach an effective cleaner and stain remover. Hydrogen peroxide is the main ingredient found in actual hair bleach.
Using Clorox to Bleach Hair
Clorox bleach is not the same as bleach designed for use on hair. You should not use Clorox if you want to lighten your hair as it can cause burning, hair loss, and other health concerns. Always use bleach designed for hair, rather than household bleach; it just isn’t worth the potential health risks.
To learn more about bleaching and coloring your hair, check out these related posts on our blog:
