Hair lighteners and bleaches

"Hair lightening," referred to as "bleaching" or "decolorizing," is a chemical process involving the diffusion of the natural color pigment or artificial color from the hair plus the raising of the cuticle making the hair more porous. This process is central to both permanent hair color and hair lighteners. Most hair lighteners and bleaches can make your hair turn gray at a younger age.

Application techniques

Typically, hair coloring is used in one of two ways:

1. One color is applied to all hair on the head, to produce a uniform color effect, or
2. Several individual color preparations are applied to selected sections of the hair, to produce streaks or gradations of color.

The latter technique can be used to create many different effects, from subtle highlights acquired during a day at the beach, to more dramatic looks, such as bold, chunky highlights. The terms most commonly used to describe these techniques are:

* Highlighting, where sections of hair are treated with lighteners, usually to create blond streaks.
* Lowlighting, where sections of hair are treated with darker hair color.
* Foils, where pieces of foil or plastic film is used to separate off the hair to be colored; especially when applying more than one color.
* Cap, when a plastic cap is placed tight on the head and strands are pulled through with a hook.
* Balayage, where hair color is painted directly onto sections of the hair with no foils used to keep the color contained.

Both application techniques can be used with either color treatments that range from temporary to permanent.

Exotic hair colorants

While the majority of hair coloring products are designed to produce natural-looking hair color shades (typically blond, red, brown or black), a minority of hair coloring products are designed to create hair colors not typically found in nature. These are available in almost any color imaginable, including green or fuchsia.

These dyes are typically sold in punk-themed stores (such as comic book and music stores). In the U.S. they are sometimes sold under the brand names "Beyond The Zone", "Clairol Jazzing", "Manic Panic", "Special Effects", "Punky Colors", and a permanent alternative in some colors (like INTENSE infa-red reds and darky inky purples and blues) is available in the U.S. under "Paul Mitchel: Inkworks" and "Chi: InfaReds". Some exotic color shades are blacklight reactive, which suggests that the wearers typically want their hair color to show up under nightclub lighting.

The chemical formulae of exotic colored dyes typically contain only tint, and have no developer. This means that they will only create the bright color of the packet if they are applied to light blond hair. Therefore, the majority with darker hair (medium brown to black) are advised to use a bleaching kit prior to tint application in order to get the full effect of the color. Some people with fair hair may benefit from prior bleaching as well, as the yellow undertones of blonde hair can make blue dye look green, and to make the hair porous to easily absorb the pigments into the hair shaft. With colors like pinks, blues,and greens its extremely important to make sure you lighten the hair to a light enough blonde. Gold, yellow and orange undertones in hair that hasn't lightened enough can adversely affect results.