Whether our hair is naturally light, or even if it’s darker brown or black, summer is often a time when our natural shade alters subtly, thanks to the sun’s rays. The results can mean anything from slightly lighter roots and tips to sun-kissed highlights.

Recommended Video But what can we do to replicate the results without jetting off on vacation every few weeks or resorting to bleach? Read on to try some proven natural ways to lighten your hair at home.

The Basics of the Lightening Process

First up, to find out how to lighten your hair effectively (and to avoid any potential coloring mishaps), it’s important to understand how hair color works. Our natural hair shade is determined by two types of melanin (the same chemical that helps determine our skin and eye color) in our hair shaft. The first type, eumelanin, helps make up the black or dark brown colors in our hair, while the second, pheomelanin, is responsible for golden and red shades. Gray or white hair types are the result of an absence of either melanin.

Lightening our hair involves opening up the hair shaft and allowing bleach to remove the natural color that’s in there. This generally means that to achieve lighter hair, we need certain chemicals (think hydrogen peroxide).

Advertisement So, how does hair end up lightening in the summer without any chemical help? Well, in much the same way that UV rays can fade our clothes/towels/outdoor furniture, it can also have a lightening effect on your hair (called photobleaching). Meanwhile, sea salt and chlorine can also have a similar effect. The downside is that frequent exposure to the sun can not only lighten your hair naturally, but also leave it dry and brittle, so this might be a cost too high to pay. Especially when you can easily find a safer way to lighten your locks.