What are Natural Hair Dyes?
What are the natural hair dyes? What is the best natural hair dye? How to make natural hair dye at home? What is the best natural dye for hair? What can be used as natural hair dye? How to prepare natural hair dye at home? And many similar questions are frequently asked by people who want to dye their hair without being exposed to chemicals.
What are Natural Hair Dyes?
As homemade natural herbal hair dyeing methods, you can try one of the 7 different methods below, depending on the color of your hair.
COFFEE
If you want to darken your hair and cover gray hairs, you can try coffee. What you do is brew a strong coffee (espresso works well), let it cool, and then mix it with a cup of Leave-in Conditioner and 2 tablespoons of coffee grounds. Apply to clean hair and leave for about an hour. If you use apple cider vinegar to rinse, it will help the color last longer. You may need to repeat the process several times to see noticeable results.
TEA
Like coffee, black tea can help darken your hair and cover gray hair. If you have lighter hair, there are other types of tea you can use. For example, chamomile tea is recommended for blondes, while rooibos tea may be preferred for redheads. The tea blends best with your natural hair color. You cannot turn blonde hair into brunette or black hair. However, black tea can darken blonde hair, and chamomile tea can lighten it – especially if you sit in the sun.
The longer you leave the tea on the hair, the more pronounced the color will be. You can also get different results depending on the number of repetitions.
The important thing is to make the tea very concentrated. Use 3-5 tea bags (or about the same amount for loose leaf tea) per two glasses of water. You can apply the cooled tea only to the hair or mix it with conditioner (as mentioned in the coffee recipe). If you want to cover grays, mix it with fresh or dried sage, which helps open the hair follicles.
Leave your hair for at least an hour – longer for the color to be more pronounced. Sometimes you can keep the tea in your hair overnight and rinse it out the next morning. Check your color to determine what density you need.
HERBS
Here are some suggestions depending on what your natural hair color is:
Red hair: Try daffodil, marigold, rosehip, and hibiscus to deepen the red shade or add a few red highlights. The effects are cumulative – you will get stronger color if you continue to use the dye regularly. Soak the flowers in water for about 30 minutes, filter, cool and then spray or pour on your hair and let it dry in the sun if possible.
Brunette/dark hair: Rosemary, nettle, and sage are great herbs for dark hair. Mix all three with water for 30 minutes, cool, filter and spray or brush on your hair. Let it sit for about an hour. You can also use the rinse daily after showering. Be patient, it may take a few days to notice results.
Blonde hair: As mentioned above, chamomile tea is good for blonde hair, but you can also try calendula, marigold, saffron and sunflower petals. To hide grays, boil rhubarb root in two glasses of water, filter and pour it on the hair.
Add black tea to the bold colors above to help the color last longer. Catnip is suitable for lighter colors.
BEET AND CARROT JUICE
These two juices can add natural red hues to your existing hair color.
You can use each alone or mix together to get the shade of crimson you want. For a more reddish hue, use more beetroot juice (strawberry blonde, dark red or auburn). Carrots give a more orange-tinged reddish color.
Its application is simple. Just wash your hair with carrot and beetroot juice, massage it and let it dry. You can also mix some coconut oil or olive oil to smooth dry hair. After application, wrap your hair and leave for at least an hour (wear something to protect your skin and clothing). After rinsing off the juice, seal with a spray of apple cider vinegar. If the color is not dark enough, repeat the next day.
HENNA
When asked what natural hair dyes are, the first answer that comes to mind is usually henna. Henna, one of the most popular natural hair dye ingredients, is the powder form of the leaves that come from the henna plant. These leaves have a natural and effective coloring pigment that has been used for thousands of years to dye hair, nails and skin.
Natural henna, on its own, creates a red-orange color, so if you see products that offer other colors made with henna, you’ll notice that manufacturers mix henna with other ingredients to achieve those colors. Redheads and brunettes (somewhat brunette) are the best candidates for henna hair color. Be careful with this – the results may be more orange than you want, so you may want to mix it with chamomile paste to naturalize the colour.
To make your own henna hair dye, mix about one cup of henna powder with 2 cups of lemon juice. You can also add a tablespoon of vinegar to release the color. Let it sit for about 4-6 hours until it thickens. Apply to hair and comb to hair. Wrap your hair in plastic wrap and leave for 2-3 hours before rinsing.
LEMON JUICE
Try freshly squeezed lemon juice on your hair. Let it sit for a few hours. If you sit in the sun, you will notice more shine. Blondes can enjoy even more shiny hair by mixing it with chamomile tea.
Lemon juice is slow-acting, so expect to repeat applications several times before seeing results.
WALNUT SHELLS
If you want to get a dark brown color, walnut shells for dyeing hair are another natural way you can try. Crush the walnut shells and boil them for about half an hour, cool, filter and apply to the hair. If you want to cover up grays, you can use cotton to apply only to the areas needed. Be careful as this paint may stain everything.
To create a intensive dye, reheat the filtered water and boil until it reduces to about a quarter of its volume. Let it cool in the refrigerator, filter if necessary and apply to hair.
To save time, use walnut shell powder instead of walnut shells.
Leave it on for at least an hour (more if you want more color) and rinse. Try to avoid hot water as it will decrease the lifetime of colour. Wash on warm to make the color last longer.
You can also look: How to Use Amla for Hair Greying?
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