Want A Natural Product To Color Your Hair?

‘Natural’ is huge in the beauty world. Like the words ‘clean’, ‘free from’, ‘vegan’, ‘gluten free’ in the beauty sphere these are now aspirations, not adjectives. We are searching constantly, and continually testing with our house models to find the ideal hair color permanent hair color. We can create natural looking color easily, by using great shades, mixing colors together, using more than one color on the head and by stealing other color secrets from great colorists – and more in a later blog on this. But truly natural permanent hair color comes in one shade only…henna. Henna is a fabulous choice for anyone who wants natural. Henna is derived from the leaves of Egyptian Privet, ground into a fine powder and mixed to a paste with hot water before being applied to the hair (or skin where it is used for those gorgeous, intricate semi- permanent Mehindi designs on hands) Henna forms a coating on hair, adding to the underlying color and leaving hair super shiny. What’s not to like? Nothing actually, if your hair is brunette and you like copper. Then why doesn’t everyone use it?

1. Henna turns any grays into bright, bright copper.

2. Henna wears off hair, eventually. Which means that you need to be pretty sure you like it.

3. You can’t bleach henna out. You can try, but the bleach will lighten your underlying hair color before it lightens the henna…making hair more orange.

4. You can cover henna by making hair darker with permanent or semi-permanent color…neither are natural.

5. Black or dark henna sounds like the answer! Except it probably contains permanent hair dyes. If it tells you to skin test 24-48 hours before then it definitely does, and it’s not natural.

So what to do if henna is not for you? If you want to color your hair there are plenty of safe choices, used by millions with no issues. We want natural because we don’t want chemicals to harm us, and we will keep looking for natural pigments. In the meantime, choose a permanent color like Madison Reed that is PPD free and resorcinol free (two ingredients known to be irritants or potentially harmful, especially long term) Just don’t call it natural.