Until recently, I had been coloring my hair with henna for years on and off. Initially, I got some boxed stuff from an Indian grocery in Tallahassee, then switched to their bags of body art henna powder. Tried the stuff from LUSH, found it doesn’t dye my hair as well/deeply as the body art quality stuff. (Here’s a mix of their caca noir and caca marron on my hair.) Ordered “henna for African hair” and itdidagreat job. I haven’t seen my natural hair color without some henna or other stuff in my hair for years, so I had to go back to a photo of me from undergrad as an example. I have naturally medium-dark brown hair that starts out ashy in tone but tends to highlight red and gold with sun exposure.
As for permed/highlighted hair, it shouldn’t be too much of an issue if you get the body art quality stuff; the “henna for African hair” is meant for those who use severe processing on their hair texture, and I’ve hennaed highlighted hair with no bad results. You just have to be careful about where the henna is coming from-- body art quality henna is the only one I’d trust for chemically processed hair.
Good advice here, but I will caution about using too much lemon juice. You really only need a little bit of acid (lemon juice or vinegar) to get the stuff to activate. I used about a cup of lemon juice the first time I did it, and it really dried my hair out and made my scalp feel itchy. Now I use about a tbls of acid and add honey to the mix (about 1/3 cup) and it rinses out much more easily and doesn’t dry my hair out at all. I also add yogurt, but I don’t think I would recommend that for the first time–make the rest of the liquid water.
I mix mine about 12 hours before use, and freeze anything left over. Now that my henna is established, I only do my roots, so one of the 100g packages from hennaforhair lasts me two roots applications. I also wrap my head tightly with saran wrap while it’s working; seems to contain the stuff better than a shower cap. I agree with the poster who said don’t get it on your hands. Also watch your hand while you’re rinsing the stuff out…the first time with all that lemon juice took forever for me to rinse, and my fingernails turned orange and stayed that way until they grew out.
Also, don’t chicken out half way through. Keep it on there at least 3 hours the first time, and preferably 4. If you take it off too soon, the color will be much more orange.
True – pure henna with nothing else in it shouldn’t react badly with chemically processed hair. The problems I’ve heard of arise from using pre-packaged “henna dye” which contains not just henna, but a bunch of metallic salts (and some don’t actually contain henna at all). That stuff will do funky stuff to your processed hair.
I know some people swear by adding things like yogurt, raw egg, and honey, but my understanding is that it coats the hair shaft and limits dye uptake. Also, honey is a natural lightening agent, which may or may not be what you had in mind.
Check the charts at Henna for Hair – for henna you have a time window in which to dye your hair – too soon, and the dye hasn’t released well yet, too late and the dye “demises.” When and how long that window is depends on the temperature of the paste. I do roughly 12 hours at slightly more than room temp – I haven’t looked at the chart recently, but I believe the window at that temp is something like 12-18 hours or so. Since I don’t want the dye to be demising shortly after I put it on my hair, I stick with the 12 hour time.
I mostly just do roots now, which as mentioned is easily done with half a 100g package. Every once in a while I’ll do my whole head, just because I like the conditioning/strengthening it does for my hair; and that only takes 100g, despite what the Henna for Hair site says. My hair is long enough that I should be using 3 times that, according to them, but I’ve found 100g is plenty. I do still do roots first, and then might thin out the remainder a little to work into the rest of my hair, but I always have enough, and sometimes I really have a handful or so left over that I don’t really need (though I’ll squish it in anyway).
If you mix henna with hot water to make your paste, it fades badly within days. You don’t want heat, you want a mild acid (lemon juice, vinegar, whatever). Once it oxidizes (about 3 days after application) it’s on your hair forever.
For me, personally, my roots aren’t really noticeable until they’re an inch or so long – because the dye is translucent, and therefore doesn’t significantly change my color, the line between dyed and not-dyed isn’t that stark. It’s the greys that really show up, which is why I can’t get away with it once it’s longer than an inch or so.
Of course, my hair is a medium auburn color already, so if your natural hair color is light/blonde/strawberry blonde, the root line will be more noticeable.
Yeah, I encountered boxed “henna” before I discovered the real stuff. In high school, I saw a box of it in Sally Beauty Supply, decided to try it out, and ended up with magenta hair; at least it faded out to a more natural red-brown after a couple of months.
I have medium-dark brown hair, and I don’t find that I have anywhere near as harsh of a root line as I did when I dyed my hair with chemical dyes. Here’s a photo of my hair from a few minutes ago; I haven’t dyed my hair since the beginning of January and the exact spot where my hair is hennaed vs. not hennaed is not terribly obvious unless you’re looking up close and under bright light.
Also: Acid Lamp has used the same henna paste in the past to dye his beard; it comes out in a variety of shades depending upon the starting color of the beard hair, but it ranges from brown with red undertones to “Viking Ginger Red” on the palest vellus hairs.
I dunno, I’ve been doing it that way for about 2 years, (got the idea from reading henna for hair forums) and it does not seem to affect die intake for me. I actually would like mine to get a bit lighter–it’s really quite dark now–but it isn’t happening.
Again, I’ve been using mixed-then-frozen stuff for years, and it works exactly the same as fresh.
My roots are more noticeable that that, and I do need to do them monthly or so.
Say I want to use a henna/indigo mixture to color my hair the darkest brown possible without being black. I’m afraid the 2:1 indigo:henna ratio is too light – could I make it more of a 4:1 or 5:1 ratio?
Or does it matter, since my hair is already very dark brown, and henna is supposed to be a translucent dye?
I just don’t want any red in my hair (no offense at all intended to redheads, it would just look bad with my skintone), and yet I don’t want black hair either.
All right, I’m bumping this because I need to dye my hair this week, but I’ll just use drugstore hair dye if I can’t be reasonably certain I’m not going to turn my hair purple with henna/indigo.
So again, if I use a lot of indigo and just a little henna, will that get me the desired really-really-dark-brown-but-not-black?
You need enough henna to neutralize the blue in the indigo, so I’d go 1/3 henna:2/3 indigo if I were you. Or, you can do two processes: initial henna treatment, followed by an indigo treatment with a bit of henna to reduce the potential BLACK reaction you may get.
What’s your hair look like now? It’ll give us a better idea of what you can expect.
I don’t have a digital camera to show you my hair exactly, but I last dyed it this color and it hasn’t faded much. My natural color is a shade lighter than that, and I’m maybe 10% grey.
Edit to add: the color in the linked picture is what I’d like to replicate with henna/indigo.
I would do a strand test first, since the color you’re looking for is so specific. There are a number of factors which will influence the final color, including your starting color and how hard your water is.
That said, I think the only way you’d get red highlights on hair as dark as yours is if you did henna only. With a mix, you either get a warm brown (more henna), or a cool brown (more indigo). I agree with nashiitashii that you’re more likely to go too far in the other direction and end up with a blue cast. So collect some hair from your hairbrush, divide it in two, and try one with a 2:1 mix, and one with your 4:1 and see what happens.
So, does mixing it up too early hurt the dye? The instructions said I could stick it in the fridge if I needed to “hold” it - I won’t be able to dye until tomorrow evening, but I won’t get 12 hours unless I do it tonight. Should I just go ahead and mix it?
It is bright. It’s a nice color, though. No telling what it’s going to be in four days, of course, although I do like this. I’d have to wear makeup more often if this were going to be the permanent color, though - especially with allergy season giving me pink eyes. It’s also very shiny and full of volume. I’ll take a picture when I can.
