Want Blond Hairs?

It's very nice of you to make this suggestion Salome, but unfortunately the majority of people who try lemon juice on the hair before sitting in the sun do not see any lightening results.

In fact, studies have shown that putting lemon juice on your hair may actually damage hair over time causing it to become dehydrated and even straw-like.  Once hair becomes sun and lemon juice damaged, it can become brittle, break out and develop split ends.

Lemon juice can be very drying.  If you combine the drying aspect of the sun with the general dehydrating principles of lemon juice, you may actually harm your hair while trying to lighten it.  Also, the lightening effect, if there is any, can take a long time to develop and is erratic in the lightening impact.

How is it supposed to work to lighten hair naturally in the sun?

The lemon juice (fresh from actual lemons, not squeezed) is acid based which will help to open the hair's cuticles. 

Once the cuticles are open, hair becomes more receptive to the UV rays from the sun and the oxygen in the air.  This is what is thought to cause a bleaching process.  It is referred to as an acid-catalyzed oxidation.

The very acid which pops open the cuticle is also drying.  So if you put an acidic juice on your hair and sit in the damaging sun, you're only asking for hair trouble.

As you mention, this does not work on dark hair.  It really doesn't work on any hair that is not naturally light to medium blonde. 

Sometimes adding the lemon juice will actually cause the hair, depending upon the underlying base color, to turn red or orange, which also may not be a desired result.

My humble opinion - DO NOT DO THIS!

If you want blonde hair, go to a hair color expert and ask them to add sun-kissed highlights.  Or ask them to advise you of a home hair color highlighting kit you can safely use at home. 

Also, please be careful.  There is a lot of INCORRECT information on the Internet which can cause more harm than good.

Good luck to you.

I have to agree with Lion on this one.

One thing people don't warn you about when applying lemon juice to hair  is the fact that lemon juice increases your scalp & adjacent skin's sensitivity to sunlight.

If you must try this lemon juice on the hair wait for it to dry on your hair and/or skin before going out into the sunlight. 

You can try to avoid getting the lemon juice on your scalp and/or around your hairline if you are concerned about triggering the sensitivity to sunlight, but that is pretty hard to do.  If you do really want to do this, make sure any lemon juice that could have spilled over onto your scalp and/or hairline is 100% dry before you go into the sun.

Overall I agree that this is a bad idea, but people will still want to try it for themselves and just need to be away of any warnings.

I will confess this whole lemon juice + sun = naturally lightened blonde hair is an ongoing pain in my backside.

Why?  Because this hair "myth" may work for some people BUT the long term impact to the hair of people who regularly lighten their hair with lemon juice (lime juice has the same citric acid properties) over time may actually fry their hair as Lion references above. 

What can be damaging with lemon juice?

1.  It has a pH, which is approximately 2.3
2.  The citric acid, which is an alpha hydroxy acid.

Products which a pH lower than 3.5 can damage hair depending on how much and how often they are used. Alpha hydroxy acids can be corrosive.

They may also turn their hair red, orange or some other unwanted color and the lightening may be uneven and/or splotchy.  Then they have a long term damaged hair situation which can take a long time - months or longer - to reverse.

Reducing Bleach

Fresh lemon & lime juice are reducing bleaches (when used in combination with sunlight) or sulfur dioxide, convert the double bonds in chromophore into single bonds, eliminating its ability to absorb visible light.

This process is also known as Redox.  To read about Redox go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redox

Some people swear using lemon juice works for them, others get zero results and some get damaged strands.

I would just say if you want to try it, user beware.  If you damage your hair, please don't tell me about it.  I've been getting emails for years about hair damaged in the sun, from lemon juice, from Sun-In and a combination and it frustrates me because there is no magic fix.

Remember, once hair is severely damaged, there is no instant fix.  It takes time and may in some cases require a big chop. trust me if there was secret or magic pill to reverse damaged hair, I would be selling it.  :-)

Good luck to all.  Great topic.  Thanks so much for all the great input.
Karen Shelton2014-05-24 16:27:12

Wow.  Good info.

I did this when I was in high school one summer and my dishwater blonde hair showed no results.  It did get more dry, but I have fine hair which is pretty much bullet proof.

Karen and others, have you tried this?  Did it work?  What were the results?  Good/bad, blonde or nothing?

[QUOTE=*Chani*]Wow.  Good info.

I did this when I was in high school one summer and my dishwater blonde hair showed no results.  It did get more dry, but I have fine hair which is pretty much bullet proof.

Karen and others, have you tried this?  Did it work?  What were the results?  Good/bad, blonde or nothing?
[/QUOTE]

Hi Chani,

To answer your question...yes I tried lemon juice on my hair when I was in high school.  I have naturally dark blonde hair.  I did not achieve any lightening or streaking results, but it did dry out my hair and it got brittle and started splitting.

I then switched to SunIn which turned my hair orange and even more damaged.  I had to get a lot of my hair cut off after the lemon juice/SunIn summer. 

From that experience I graduated to Nice n Easy and years of box color until eventually my hair got so damaged I had to have a major chop and start over with chin length hair.  That was many many years ago before I learned what not to do to my hair.  :-)

Have a lovely rest of the weekend.