Tips for Colouring with Henna

It has been some time since I first wrote about henna hair colouring. I have learned much since then, so here are some handy tips:

1. Purchasing. I bought my Light Mountain Colour the Gray! online at Swanson Vitamins. $6.57/box, plus shipping, which made it work out to much less than the $15 per box I was paying at my local Health Store at the mall. I bought six boxes at once, plus some organic coconut oil, which was also priced better than local stores. Now, this is where I get guilty about shopping online. Why is it that I can buy from the UK and the US, have it shipped by some gasoline spewing transport vehicle through the sky or on the roads, and yet it costs less than my local store in Canada? Even Canadian products.

2. Location. Best place to slop this stuff into your hair is the kitchen sink, over your garburetor (Canadian speak for garbage grinder in the drain). This way, it won't plug up your jacuzzi bathtub (my previously suggested colouring location) with leafy bits and hairs, and won't stain the tub or your legs. When you need to rinse you can fill the whole sink with warm water and plunge away! Uses much less water than filling the bathtub for repeated rinses.

3. Hand protection. Use rubber/synthetic latex gloves instead of the included plastic bag type gloves. Of course you all own a box of disposable gloves that you have left over from the H1N1 virus scare, right? The latex gloves simply fit better.



4. Dispensing the henna. To make it easier to put the henna or indigo slop in your hair, pour it from the bowl into a plastic bag, the sort that you get to bag your vegetables at the supermarket. Tie up the top and cut the corner with scissors, treating it was if it was an icing bag. Start at the crown of your head, slop the strands thoroughly before taking up more hair to slop and add to the main bunch of coated hair.

5. Timing. If you have an important event, don't dye the day of the event. Your hair will be smelly until you do your first post-dye wash. You should wait as long as you can, which means around two days before you have your first post-dye wash.

6. Pillow protection. Sleep on a dark coloured towel that you don't mind getting stained, until you have done your first post-dye wash.

I hope this helps you in your slop fest. Previously I used "dark brown" on my dark brown/red hair, but I am now shortening the indigo stage as I feel that the dye has caused my hair to be darker than it was naturally. The indigo does not wash out as readily as the henna, so I want to avoid overall darkening of my hair.

Yes, it's a load of trouble, but the results are worth it. The white hairs become noticeable again after about 2 months.

Guilt Free Hair Colouring: Part 2, Colora Henna Creme

First, I have to laugh at the name of this product. Creme? As in creme brulee? As in, French cream? There is nothing better to make something sound classier by making it French, n'est-ce pas? Also, this one claims to be a "hair color & conditioner". Wow.

The box claims that this has no ammonia and no peroxide. There is a picture of the henna producing plant on the cover. I wouldn't exactly call it all natural, though. Here is the ingredient list:

Water, Henna Extract, Hydroxyethylcellulose, Cocoamphoproprionate, Dowicil 200. May also contain solvent black 5, disperse blue 1, basic violet 14, basic yellow 15.

I would be more inclined to do a test for an allergic reaction with this "henna."

The instructions are much simpler. Shampoo and towel dry, apply the "creme", cover with a plastic cap for one hour or more, then rinse thoroughly. Simplicity itself. The whole process took about 1.5 hours. For the simplicity alone, I preferred this "henna." But when I had to henna my hair again, I chose the messy Light Mountain "Color the Gray!" option.

Here is why. The Colora did not smell and washed out easily, but a few days later I went swimming. It turned the inside of my white silicon cap light brown! I could not wash the colour off my cap, and months later, despite exposure to chlorine, my cap was never quite be the same white it used to be. With the chemical additives with multisyllabic names and the unknown "solvent black 5", I wasn't exactly sure WHAT was going into my hair. This product is a compromise between real henna and chemical commercial dyes. The box claims to be "coloring your hair with organic colors". I don't know how organic "basic violet 14" is.

It also did not seem to last quite as long as the Light Mountain henna. It washed out after maybe six weeks, and my grays become light enough to be noticeable again. This may have also been a result of my colour choice, mahogany, which is the fourth darkest shade. I could have chosen Chestnut, Brown, or Black for darker colour.

For my next move, I may try to find henna in Little India.

Guilt Free Hair Colouring: Part 1

It wasn't long ago that I said that I would never dye my hair. I would age gracefully. Naturally. Well, that was before The Whitening, also known as the day I noticed kinky long white hairs were popping at a rate too fast for my husband to pluck out of my head while I flossed my teeth.

The search was on for a green environmentally friendly non-toxic alternative to conventional hair dyes. A quick Google search turned up henna as a possible alternative. If I was going to do something as vain as hair colouring, I wasn't about to wash chemicals into the drain to achieve it.

Google's top site was Henna for Hair, which linked to www.hennapage.com. Here I learned about henna. To save you reading time, I will summarize.

Henna is derived from a plant with the latin name lawsonia inermis. Henna by itself is a red-orange dye. The range of colours available is made from mixing henna with other ingredients. One ingredient that can be added is indigo, derived from the plant indigofera tinctoria. This is the same dye that is used to make blue jeans blue.

Henna supposedly penetrates the hair shaft and does not simply coat the hair. You should be able to achieve a fairly permanent effect. My experience did not bear out this claim, as I will discuss below.

Not all henna is created equal. The www.hennaforhair.com site recommended that I buy body art quality henna and mix it myself. As a mother of small children, this option sounded like too much trouble. I did learn, however, that I would need to buy around 200g of henna to cover my medium length hair. Long hair would require 300g and short hair would need 100g. Locally, I could expect to find body art quality henna at the local India town. I just couldn't see myself doing this either. "Hello. Do you have any body art quality henna?" It was a fear of the unknown that led me to make a trip to the shopping mall instead.

A trip to the drug store to buy henna turned up... nothing. There were dozens of different kinds of permanent chemical hair dyes with all the big names, but absolutely no henna products, except some henna shampoo. I was dismayed to finally find henna at my local mall in a Health Store. You know, the kind that sells vitamin supplements, fasting plans in a box, and protein supplements for weight lifters in big plastic jars. You know. The kind of place that I would never set foot in under normal circumstances.

There were no hippies, muscle men, or frighteningly emaciated customers in the store the day I searched for henna. Bingo, there were three different kinds of henna mixes! Two were from the "Light Mountain" company of Twin Lakes, Wisconsin. One was called "Color the Gray!", complete with exclamation mark!, priced at $15 CAD. The other did not claim to "Color the Gray!" so I did not seriously consider it. The last remaining product was from the "Colora" company of Little Ferry, New Jersey. It was the "colora henna creme" all in small caps. In fact, everything on the cover of the box was in small caps. There was a reassuring picture of a plant too, plus the reassurance of "no ammonia" and "no peroxide." This was priced at around $10 CAD. Even more convenient, you can also buy the Colora product at www.well.ca, with free shipping. That online store also carries "Hennalucent" which I have not reviewed for this article.



First I gave the Light Mountain Natural Color the Gray! a whirl. I chose Dark Brown. According to the box, the ingredients are henna and indigo leaf powders, "only the pure botanicals listed above and nothing else." Excellent! Opening the box revealed two bags of powder and instructions with plastic gloves and plastic bag attached to it. The box had a strong pleasant perfume-like scent to it. This was NOT what the powder smelled like, when I opened the bags. I can only describe the scent as being like in a Chinese store, like sandalwood.

After reading the instructions, I was a little scared and a lot intimidated. I was working with a semi-permanent dye! I was going to do this alone! I prepared by putting on a full robe made of dark purple fleece and safety pinning a burgundy towel around my neck. I put vaseline on my ears, neck and all around the hairline as suggested in the instructions. I wasn't about to risk having my clothes or skin turn colour from my sloppiness. The entire operation would be done while crouched in my dry big jacuzzi tub.

What I did not do was a test strand. I am not allergic to anything of any significance and I do not have chemically treated hair. I doubted that anything would go wrong.

There are fairly detailed instructions, but here they are in a nutshell. There are two separate powders, labelled "STEP 1" and "STEP 2". You need to mix the powders with boiled distilled water (distilled being highlighted in bold) to the consistency of yogurt in non-metallic bowls and let them sit for a time to "cure." I used filtered tap water, but I felt that the risk of some unforeseen chemical reaction was unlikely with our great local water supply. I used a plastic spoon to mix in glass bowls. Also, to save time you can mix STEP 1 and STEP 2 in separate bowls, rather than doing them in sequence as you require them.

There are some ingredients you can add to the mixes:

Condition: 2T yogurt or 1 egg
Golden highlights: use half warm lemon juice or chamomile tea
Golden or copper highlights: 3T vinegar or lemon juice
Enrich brown or red: 1t ginger, allspice, nutmeg or paprika
Enhance brown: replace water with old black very warm coffee

You apply STEP 1 to your clean, towel dried hair in sections (using non-metallic hair clips), cover your hair with the provided plastic cap (which I secured with a wooden clothes pin), and leave it on for up to 15 minutes, checking every 5 minutes, applying "intermittent heat." My heat source was a hair dryer on warm setting. Rinse it out with water, then towel dry it. I read reviews of this product online and read a recommendation to fill the tub with water and immerse my whole head and body in the tub of water to help rinse it out. Afraid of getting dye on my skin, I first rinsed off with the shower spray attachment in the tub before filling the tub with water and lying down in the water.

Now, this whole process is INCREDIBLY MESSY. You've got this slop falling out of your hair in clumps as you keep applying more. There is no way to avoid getting this stuff on your wrists and your face, but I found that if I rinsed soon after slopping it on, it didn't leave much of a mark. A wetted corner of the towel around my neck to wipe off slopped bits worked quite well. The clumps fell everywhere, including all over the tub with some bits ending up on the rim of the tub, who knows how. These were easily rinsed off with some warm water later without staining the white tub surface. Also, you have to remember to rinse off your gloves after you've applied STEP 1 because you'll need them again in STEP 2. I ended up getting water down my plastic gloves (too short!), but my hands didn't stain at all since I rinsed after.

STEP 1 was the henna, I think. STEP 2 was probably the indigo, or at least it was in my case.

STEP 2 is pretty much the same as STEP 1. However, it "could take up to 3 or 4 hours to achieve the desired colour" for STEP 2. Yikes!!!

The whole process took me about 3 hours from start to finish, not including curing the powders, but it could have taken much longer had I not had to hurry off to pick up one of kids from school. I cut short STEP 2 just a wee bit. The rinsing took a considerably long time. I tried to wait until the water rinsed fairly cleear, but this meant filling and refilling the tub at least three times. It never did run absolutely clear, but the first shampoo post-dye would take out the rest of it.

You are asked to avoid washing your hair for at least 24 hours. The henna makes the hair smell like wet hay. It is not entirely unpleasant. This smell lingers for days. I did not see any colour transfer onto my pillow, but I did take the precaution of sleeping on a dark coloured towel unti I had the chance to wash my hair.

The package contained 197g of "100% PURE BOTANICAL HAIR COLOR", which was perfect for my shoulder length hair. There was probably enough for longer hair, if I was more careful about application and slopped less.

So, how did it turn out?

The white hairs appear lighter than the other hairs, but they appear like highlights. What I love about this colouring is that it lasts for around 3 months before the colour fades enough to notice the white hairs again. I have dark brown hair with natural red highlights, and less than 1% white hairs. I know that I had previously written that henna is supposedly permanent, but indigo is less so. Perhaps that explains why the colour does not last until the hairs fall out. The gradual fading means that I never have to touch up my roots. Now, I wash my hair almost daily because I exercise heavily, so the colour might last longer for you.

Despite the mess, I feel that the whole henna process was worth the trouble. Any mess was easily cleaned up by spraying down the bathtub and washing my bathrobe and towel. I also take comfort in knowing that henna is "good" for my hair, unlike commercial chemical dyes. Perhaps you could recruit a friend to do a henna night. That might make it easier. It was certainly challenging to slop on the henna without seeing myself in the mirror.

Next, in Part 2, we look at the Colora Henna Creme.