Hydrogen peroxide: A three percent hydrogen peroxide solution can be a useful alternative to bleach. You can easily obtain hydrogen peroxide at the grocery store or drugstore. Apply it with a cotton swab and leave it on your brows for a couple of minutes before rinsing.
Use 3% hydrogen peroxide to permanently lighten your brows.
Leave it on your eyebrows for anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes, then wipe off with a wet washcloth. Since hydrogen peroxide is clear, you can watch your brows lightening so you'll know when to wipe it off.
Use hydrogen peroxide.
Leave it on for a few minutes the first time you apply it, then wipe it off. If you want, reapply every day, which will result in a gradual lightening of your eyebrows. If your brows are very dark, hydrogen peroxide will turn them a reddish-brown color instead of blonde.
“A gentler 3 percent peroxide is all that is ever used on a brow to either tint, lighten or bleach the brow hair.” Before I applied the bleach, I used a Q-tip to dab Vaseline around the perimeter of my brows to protect my skin, which can sometimes be reactive.
Hydrogen peroxide is an oxidizing agent that helps lighten hair color. To prevent dryness and damage, use a hydrating conditioner before bleaching your hair with hydrogen peroxide. Some side effects of hydrogen peroxide, like hair loss, hair damage, and scalp irritation, have been reported.
Baking soda and hydrogen peroxide
Baking soda can also lighten hair that isn't dyed, but not when it's used by itself. To lighten nondyed hair, you have to use baking soda as a base with hydrogen peroxide. This is a bleaching agent that lightens hair.
It all starts with Sally Hansen's Creme Hair Bleach, which is gentle enough for delicate skin. This can be done with any hair color, but if your brows are already pale, simply leave the face bleach on for less time. If you have dark brows like mine, it's more of a waiting game.
“Eyebrow hair hates to be messed with,” says Pampling. “What many women don't realise is bleaching can make the brow hair brittle and even fall out. So when the brow hair grows back, it often won't grow back the same and in some cases it won't grow back at all.”
Bleach is irritating to skin by nature, so bleaching is a no-go on skin with cuts, abrasions, sunburns, or other inflamed skin conditions. Your brow hair needs to be in good shape, too. "Brow bleaching is ideal for someone who has healthy eyebrow hairs because any type of hair bleaching can be drying," Ninh says.
"Ingredients used to bleach the hair [that include] high concentrations of hydrogen peroxide can cause serious burns," says New York City–based dermatologist Michelle Henry, pointing to studies that say over 50 percent of women who bleach their eyebrows notice local side effects such as redness, scaling, or itching.
Take your spoolie brush and brush through the beginning of your eyebrow. Wiggle the brush around to soften the color on the inside of your eye. Next, lightly brush your brows outward with the spoolie brush. Make sure to blend any clumps of color as you brush.
Because hydrogen peroxide has very strong bleaching properties, it can lighten dark skin areas such as dark spots caused by sun damage, aging, scars or hormonal changes.
Go to a beauty or hair salon and ask a stylist to apply facial bleach, which is first-aid-strength hydrogen peroxide, to your brows in order to lighten them. Your stylist will likely put a few drops of the bleach on a cotton pad, then lightly wipe your eyebrows with the pad to remove the tint.
Wait for about 10 minutes and check them every three minutes after that until the color is completely gone.” To wash out the formula, Scott suggests using a shampoo and water to rinse the bleach and stop the chemical reaction.
Keep in mind, brows grow fast
After you bleach your brows, Elena points out that you'll begin to see your roots in just one week, and you'll see your natural color coming back in about two. Your brows will likely need to be touched up more often than you touch up your regular hair color if you dye or bleach it, too.
The full set of eyebrow hairs is replaced every 6-8 weeks, but this replacement happens gradually. You will lose a few of your bleached eyebrows every day, they'll get replaced with new brows in their natural shade, and your arches will eventually go back to their pre-bleaching color.
Try mixing a lighter concealer with a slightly peachy shade (under-eye concealer is best for this) to give the bleached effect. Try to avoid getting product onto the skin underneath the hair and focus mainly on applying product to the eyebrow hair itself.
On its own, regular hydrogen peroxide from the drugstore won't lighten your hair because it will dry before any chemical reaction can take place. Combining hydrogen peroxide with baking soda, though, creates a paste that can sit on your hair and work magic, lightening it by one to two shades.
Dyeing your hair using hydrogen peroxide means you are using a 'Permanent' dye. This means that the new hair color can only be removed once new hair grows out. This is the case because hydrogen peroxide tackles the hair cortex, which is the innermost part of the hair containing the pigment of your hair.
It's been known for years that hair turns gray due to a natural buildup of hydrogen peroxide in hair follicles, which causes oxidative stress and graying. (Hydrogen peroxide solutions have been used for years as a cheap and easy way to "go blonde.")
Mix 1 cup of baking soda and 2 to 3 tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide in a mixing bowl until you form a paste. Add more baking soda if the mixture is not thick enough. 2. Coat your hair with the paste.