Natural Henna Color

I started using natural henna color as part of my effort to move towards more natural methods of hair care.

What Is Henna?

Henna is a plant that grows in hot, dry climates. The leaves are harvested and dried and made into powder. This powder, when mixed with an acidic liquid (such as lemon juice) will dye skin or hair a reddish orange color.

Henna will ALWAYS dye red. If you see henna hair dye products in stores that are different colors, you'll know that this isn't real henna. It is a henna COMPOUND.

Usually these products are full of all sorts of strange ingredients like tree bark and coffee. Don't buy these products, they are highly inferior and usually quite useless too.

Real henna is just the crushed powdered leaves of the plant. The color of the henna powder is brown.

Body Art Quality Henna

You should always buy body art quality henna as this is the best quality, and great for your hair.

Since Henna is just the crushed leaves of a plant, it is wonderfully healthy to use it on your hair.

It is as natural as you can get!

You can use natural henna color on your hair at any time! If your hair has previously been chemically dyed, you can absolutely use natural henna color straight afterward.

You can also use henna as often as you like!

It does not harm the hair IN ANY WAY.

Henna Hair Color

Henna blends with your natural hair color, so everyone's results will be different. If your natural hair color is blond, the result would be a very bright coppery RED.

If your natural color is brown, the color would be a very warm reddish brown.

Naturally dark hair would just take on some reddish highlights.

You can download a FREE ebook called Henna for Hair.

This is a fabulous book, filled with instructive pictures and color charts, so that you can see EXACTLY how henna is likely to affect your hair color.

It also has great information on how to mix natural henna color with other ingredients such as indigo to get different shades such as brunettes and blacks, and cassia for light hair which can bring life and shine back to blonds or mix with henna for warm golds and strawberry blonds.

Cassia can also repair damaged bleached blond hair.

Natural Henna Color - Personal Experience

My experience with using natural henna color was very positive. When I used it, I had not dyed my hair for several months and the regrowth was very bad.

My naturally brown hair has previously been dyed black, so I had the regrowth of natural brown hair as well as some grey hair regrowth (I got my first grey hairs at age 14!, got quite a few now!)

Pictured below - my hair before dyeing with henna.

Making Henna Paste

When you have got your body art quality henna powder, mix a few spoons of powder with freshly squeezed lemon juice. Keep mixing it until you have a paste the consistency of mashed potatoes.

It is best to mix it in a measuring jug so you can see how much you are mixing.

• 100g for short hair.
• 200g for collar length straight hair.
• 300g for shoulder length straight hair.
• 500g for waist length hair.

Cover the jug and leave it at room temperature overnight.

The acid from the lemon juice will release the dyes as it stands, leading to a much richer color.

The next morning, add some more lemon juice to the mix until you have the consistency of yogurt.

Put on some gloves, put down some newspaper in your bathroom (it gets messy) and get to work!

Natural Henna Application

Put on some gloves.

Apply henna to DRY, freshly shampooed hair.

Be VERY generous with your application of natural henna color. It will not just move through your hair like other dyes, you have to physically make sure each hair has been covered.

Be very thorough, keep putting more in, until you are very certain you have covered your entire head very thoroughly.

Then, put a plastic cap on, wipe off any dye marks on your face (if you don't this could stain your skin for about a month! This is also why you MUST wear gloves), and settle down with a good book or movie for 2-4 hours.

I left mine in for 3 hours and it was perfect.

The natural henna color will gradually deepen and you will only see the true color result in a few days.

Below - my hair immediately after the natural henna application.

Since my hair was previously dyed black, the natural henna color did not affect the dyed ends. It only changed the color of my natural hair at the roots.

As you can see the grey streaks became red highlights, and the brown natural color became a rich reddish brown.

Below - My hair one week after the natural henna application - you can see it has darkened to a richer tone.

The henna smells beautiful in your hair, and is totally different to the smell of chemical dyes. It has a wholesome fresh, natural smell.

Henna is great for the condition of your hair!

My hair felt beautiful and looked great. I will definitely be continuing to dye my hair with natural henna color.

However, since it had no affect on the previously dyed ends of my hair, I won't bother to dye all my hair next time, I'll just worry about the regrowth.

Indigo for Black Hair

I'm trying to hunt down some indigo too, so that I can mix it with the henna and dye it all black again!

If you're considering switching to natural methods of hair coloring, then I can highly recommend you give henna a try. Get yourself some gloves and some body art quality henna and you're on your way!

Wouldn't you like to have hair that looks like this?

This is how my hair looks these days since using the MIRACLE SHAMPOO RECIPE found in my Homemade Shampoo Recipes Ebook.

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