By Sarah Kinonen, Allure
You know the directions on the back of at-home hair-dye kits? Well, you should really read them. Truly. Because if you don't, things can go awry in a matter of seconds. Just ask YouTuber Stephanie Aird, who was the unfortunate victim of an at-home bleaching session gone wrong.
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In a recently resurfaced video originally uploaded last September, titled, "Noooo my hair is SNAPPING OFF!!!," Aird shares her (truly horrifying) platinum blonde hair-dyeing experience, and we can't help but feel for her.
In the minute-long clip, she reveals the post-bleaching aftermath: stringy, broken hair. So broken that upon touch, platinum blonde pieces literally begin to shed from her scalp. (Yeah, like we said, horrifying.) "What do I do?" she asked the camera. "Everyone always said your hair will fall out, I did not believe them."
Unfortunately, she's right. Breakage — especially in extreme cases like this — happens during the bleaching process, says celebrity colorist Rita Hazan. "It is extremely hard to bleach hair at home — to get ultimate results — without having professional skills or tools," she tells Allure. "Based on the video, overlapping occurred, which resulted in her hair breaking off in clumps. When hair is bleached, it takes out all the pigment out of the hair and it becomes extremely fragile. Unfortunately, when this happens, your hair is not salvageable, there is no treatment in the world that can repair the breaking caused by overlap."
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Hazan says if you're still set on at-home bleaching — which, again, she truly urges against ("Don't do it!") — just know the end result will be based on your current hair color. "If you are already blonde and have overlap, it will cause hair to break. If you are a brunette, bleaching at home will cause hair to turn orange," she says. "Color-correcting at the salon will cost triple the amount to correct, versus getting hair done correctly by a professional colorist."
Now, almost a year later, Aird is sharing the progress on the hair regrowth process and luckily, things are looking up. Sorta. "It did snap off on the fringe, but it started to grow back," she says in a newly uploaded video. "When it's wet and I pull it, it just comes out."
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Perhaps Aird should add one of these conditioning treatments to her blonde hair-care routine for a little extra nourishment? "If hair is very over-processed you can use a weekly repair treatment in your hair several days a week, just be sure not to wash hair too often, letting the natural oils in your hair condition through to the ends," recommends Hazan.
