Okay so it's been over a year since I bleached my hair. I rarely use any heat on my hair (only to straighten my bangs). The last time I dyed my hair black was 4 months ago. So it's pretty much a dark brown now. Last year when I bleached it my hair was also dyed black and it took about 2 bleaches over the course of 2 weeks to get it to a yellow/orange. Then I dyed it bright red. But this time I wanted to go with a pale yellow or platinum. So I've bought bleach powder and vol 30 creme and a toner. I'm just wondering if any of you have done something like this before? I have all these questions running through my mind. I know it's damaging to my hair so I've bought a few deep conditioning products. Plus I don't have to be anywhere special any time soon so I don't care about waiting weeks to a month before I get my final results. Sorry this is long, but any advice or input would be greatly appreciated and I thank you all in advance!

- I've had my fair share of dying my hair. I used to have blonde highlights put in my brown hair and it got fried after I kept putting bleach on bleach. I then went to magenta and then to black. I had to strip it and it damaged my hair until I got it professionally done red, and now I'm sticking to that. I'm scared it'll get fried to the point it'll fall out. D: I'd definitely focus on one color and keep it that for a while because bleaching it is so unhealthy.

Try a few vitamin C treatments first! It can prelighten without damaging like the bleach will and you might be able to get it a lighter blonde than just straight bleaching it from the get go. Try to lighten as much as possible with tough shampoos like head and shoulders and then do like 2-3 vitamin C treatments. Then after both of those, wait a couple days before bleaching and washing your hair. You want your hair to be as greasy as you can possibly handle to reduce how damaged your hair will get. Also, don't leave the bleach on for longer than 10-15 minutes each time you bleach it. I wouldn't recommend bleaching it more than once in a day. Wait a couple days before bleaching it again. You also might just want to go to a salon because they'll know how much they can bleach it before it completely kills your hair.

I had this same problem when I went from a faded deep red to platinum. I ended up having to bleach my hair on 3 separate occasions. The first time they bleached it as much as comfortably possible and they still had to leave it a darker blonde with highlights so that they didn't fry my hair, then I went a little lighter a couple months later, and then went platinum the third time and now I just bleach my roots every 6-ish weeks.

I only have experience bleaching natural dark brown hair, not dyed-black. Unfortunately, my natural colour is so light that I can only get to platinum instead of the white I wanted to get to. Even that much takes several bleachings--I'd say it took three or four times, at first, to get it to platinum. It went from orangeish to gold to light blonde to gradually lighter blonde.

I only bleach about once a month though, so I haven't had to worry as much about hair health. If you're going to do it once a week or so--well, be careful, and test inconspicuous patches of hair ahead of time to see if it gets too brittle. You sometimes hear horror stories of people bleaching too often and losing their hair, though I'm not sure any of them are true.

Honestly, doing as big a change as black to platinum, you should really think about seeing a professional stylist. That big of a change with that much bleach can do so much damage to your hair if not done exactly right. A stylist could also suggest conditioners and other treatments that would keep your scalp happy after bleaching. I suggest Fantastic Sams if you have one near you. They're affordable and at least the one near me has excellent stylists that really know what they're doing.

Thank you all for your responses and I apologize for not replying sooner. I went ahead and bleached my hair. It turned out a brownish-orangish color. From there I dyed it a red shade which at first made my hair almost completely dark brown with red tints when I'm in the sun. After a few washes my hair is now a lighter brown with the red tints more visible. I had to do this because I landed a new job. I have been deep conditioning a few times a week. I think from here I will just let it fade until its lighter and then try bleaching again. Thank you again all of you!