Magenta's Hair Disaster Part 1 (L'Oreal Super Blonde Prelightener Creme)

Member Name: magenta23

Product:	L'Oreal Super Blonde Prelightener Creme
Date:	21/06/09 (197 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Certainly lightens! Good quality gloves, not a bad price.

Disadvantages: Tangles hair, did not give desired result

The problems with being addicted to dying your hair
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My hair is naturally a mid- dark somewhat boring brown. I tend to experiment with colours quite a lot, and have been everything from red head to black, but never blonde. No offence to all you fair haired people out there, but I'm not a fan of blonde hair but that's just my personal opinion and it certainly would not suit me.

More often than not I go for dying my hair black, but it does seem to fade very quickly and I'm left with a problem. Obviously after a while your roots start to show through, but usually by that time my hair colour has faded, so to just dye the roots with the same colour is not the solution as my hair is no longer the colour I originally started with. So the only choice is to dye it all again isn't it?

What the product is used for
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I remembered this great little product I'd used before when I wanted to go red. L'Oreal Super Blonde Prelightener Creme is intended to be used as a pre-lightener, which is what I had used it for previously, when I wanted to go red. You can indeed use it to bleach your hair completely, but it also states it can be used to strip the hair of any dye previously used. When I used it before, the results were good. I ended up with very light brown hair. Of course, then it had only been temporary as I carried on with the red dye, but this time I thought I'd use it to just strip my hair of the what- was black but now just dark brown hair and go back to natural.

Before you start
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There are measures I take to prevent myself from dying (or in this case bleaching) everything in sight before I start. Firstly I cover the floor with newspaper so any dye that's dropped does not stain the carpet. I've also found that is great after you finished to just chuck all the rubbish on the floor and scrunch all the newspaper into a big ball and throw it all away nice and mess free!

Secondly I make sure I'm wearing old clothes, and have and old towel, hair clips, mirror, watch and comb to hand. I then tie my hair back and cover all the skin round the hairline, ears and back of the neck with Vaseline to stop the dye getting onto the skin.

Gloves are also essential but these are usually supplied in the kit you are using.

As with all hair dying products, this one advises you to conduct a skin sensitivity test before you use the product to dye your hair. This involves applying a small amount of the lotion to a discreet area of skin such as behind you ear, 48 hours before you use the dye. This is to test if you have any allergic reaction to the product, obviously in which case you shouldn't use. If you've seen some of the terrible pictures in the paper recently of a woman who had a reaction to a hair dye, you will understand how important it is to do this every time you use a new product. As I said, I've used this product before however so I didn't repeat the test this time.

Using the product
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I found the instructions for this product very clear. As with most hair dye kits you are given a bottle of colour and developer lotion which you need to mix together to activate. With this you are given two sachets of booster powder to which you either add one or two to the mixture depending on the level of lightening you wish to achieve. I just added the one seeing though I only wished to strip the colour and not bleach entirely.

As I mentioned, gloves are usually provided as they were with this kit, and they were excellent, well fitting rubber gloves. A lot of kits give you thin baggy plastic bag type gloves which are a nightmare to work with but these were great quality.

The instructions give two methods of application depending on the reason for use. For stripping the hair of dye, it informed me to apply most of the product to the lengths, avoiding the roots, and leave for 20 minutes. After the 20 minutes it then says to apply the remaining product to the roots and leave for a further 10 minutes. This is where the gloves aren't so great. Taking off rubber gloves that are covered in hair dye and then having to put them back on 20 minutes later is a tricky operation. Of course you could just sit there and not touch anything for 20 minutes! I think perhaps having a spare pair for this kit would be useful.

After my 20 minutes were up and I'd struggled with my gloves I applied the rest to the roots as stated. Within a minute or so my hair was red hot and itchy. Immediately I rinsed it all off. Even this was difficult as my hair was so knotty by this time, even though I'd combed through the product to ensure even coverage. I applied the conditioner supplied in the kit and it did untangle it rather well but my hair didn't feel as soft and after I'd used my own shampoo and conditioner.


Results
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After drying my hair, what I'd suspected had happened was confirmed. The lengths of my hair was indeed very light brown but the roots had bleached entirely. Now I think about it, it does make sense and had I not applied product to the roots at all, would probably have ended up with the desired result. However, I always stick to instructions with these dyes, and so some of the blame does have to lie with L'Oreal. I am truly amazed at just how quickly the product worked however, and bleached my hair instantly.

So the effect had after using this was the same problem I had before, only more severe. In trying to sort out my brown roots and black hair disaster, I ended up with hugely more noticeable blonde roots and brown hair. Ooops.

Price
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This product cost me £5.99 from Boots. It is the only product I have found that claims to strip hair of previously used dye (probably for good reason) so can't really compare to like products prise wise, however for hair dying products it's standard price. I have only come across it in Boots, but you make be able to buy it elsewhere cheaper.

Conclusion
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As you can imagine, I wish I'd never used it. However, if you are looking to use it for it's main intention of a pre-lightener, and are intending to dye you hair afterwards, then it works well. Also if you want to go blonde this with certainly do the trick. For using it for the purpose I was, all I'd say is be careful and do not put it on the roots even for a minute. Make sure you conduct a test first, as even though I used it before it even had some reaction on me.

Overall, a good bleacher, but not so good if you just want to lighten your hair a little and evenly.

To be continued...

Summary: Be careful!