Just realized my mixing bowl was the reason my bleach kept oxidizing too fast

I was working on a balayage at my station in Detroit last Tuesday... had this client with thick dark hair, wanted a honey blonde. Mixed up my L'Oreal with 30 volume like always, but within 10 minutes it was turning orange. Thought it was the developer or maybe I left it on too long. Third time this month. Then I looked at my old metal bowl and saw little scratches everywhere. Swapped to a new plastic bowl mid-service and the color processed clean. The metal was causing the bleach to speed up. Anybody else run into this with old bowls?

3 comments

3 Comments

nora_dixon1mo ago

Keep a separate set of plastic bowls just for bleach services and label them. I use the clear ones from Sally's and replace them every three months or so, they're cheap enough. Even a single microscopic scratch in metal can mess up your peroxide breakdown. Also worth checking your mixing sticks for rough edges, those can do the same thing.

holly_henderson862mo ago

Man, I feel this so hard. I had the exact same problem a few months back with an old stainless bowl I inherited from my first kit. I kept blaming the cheap developer I was testing out, but my blondes were coming out brassy every single time. Swapped to a cheap plastic bowl from the beauty supply store and it was like night and day. The scratches on the metal are basically tiny little reaction sites that speed up the oxidation process, it's a known thing with high volume developers. Glad you caught it before you blamed yourself or your technique, because honestly that's the worst part.

veram992mo ago

Plastic bowls really are the way to go once you figure this out... I ditched all my metal mixing bowls after the same brassiness nightmare and never looked back. Even a tiny scratch you can barely see will mess with high volume peroxide like you wouldn't believe. Such a simple fix but it saves so much frustration and wasted product.