This is something you NEED to read before using a DIY toner!

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I learned a really good lesson just recently and this applies to DIY hair toner. Before I continue, I must say that I am not a hair expert. I do my research online and often end up doing "hit and miss" experiments on my own hair. I am sharing my personal experience so you would not have to go through all the trouble. But it is important that you do your own research as well.

I have been trying to achieve a super light blonde. Don't ask me why--hehe--I just want to do it. So over the last couple of month, I have been doing several bleaching sessions. Some women achieve this in one day.

I am not going to go to the technicalities of how it is done. To make the long story short, hair bleaching involves bleach power + either 9% (30 vol.) or 12% (40 vol.), which strips the hair of its natural pigment. It is a strong process so in my case, hmmm...I chose not to achieve lightened hair to a  pale yellow in one day

The DIY hair toner I described above worked well for me until the day I had my hair bleached again. Here is what happened.

I went to a salon to get my hair bleached to a pale yellow, finally. So I was expecting to get almost platinum results with my DIY hair toner. The problem was not during the bleaching part because we were able to lighten my hair to the level I wanted it to be. The problem was after the bleach was rinsed.

I asked the stylist to apply the DIY toner on my head. I brought my violet dye with me and my preferred brand of condition. Why did I do that? sad to say...commercially sold hair toners (Wella T-18, Manic Panic Virgin Snow...etc) are hard to come by here in the Philippines. So, what salons would normally do for clients who want to go blonde is dye the hair after bleaching--something I do not want to do after bleaching sessions. And this is also the reason that I am not blaming the hair stylist for NOT knowing the things I learned on YouTube.

Moving on, it was either the stylist was not able to wash the bleach completely out of my hair or it was because my hair was very, very porous and that it still had remnants of the bleach in it, or the hair follicles are still open...etc. that when she applied the DIY toner on my hair, the bleach (or whatever that is left in my hair) acted like a developer for the violet dye.


...and platinum in some parts.

ooops! i left my DIY Toner a little too long and now i have some purple hair. hahaha. nah! im just gonna leave it there. it will wash off eventually :) #purplehair

A post shared by piaya d (@piayad) on Apr 5, 2017 at 8:08pm PDT

So I guess, the DIY Hair Toner is safe to use 2 or 3 days after bleaching if you don't want to end up with some purple tinge somewhere.

In my case, I left it there for a few days. Then I did a bleach wash to remove the purple color and finally used a non-DIY toner instead--Wella Color Charm T18.

What is a bleach wash? I will write about that soon.

Got a tip to share? Comments? Please write it below :)