I would totally henna my hair if I knew what it meant.

That's awfully adventurous of you. What do you think it means?

Oh man, chickens are NOT good for hair. Not good for styling, not good for coloring. Do not go the hen route. Seriously.

You know me, occhi, and you know that I'm not really into hairstyles. But you should also know that I'm into chickens, and that I have reasonable taste. So -- please take my advice, and avoid this thing entirely. Run away. Fast, and hard.

I wish I could give you better advice on hairstyles (not that you need it!), but I suck at that stuff.

All I know is, avoid the hens. Seriously.

Fuck. You said "henna," not "hen." I can't read.

My bad. Sorry

There was a girl that I was smitten with when I was in college, and she did the henna in her hair, and I thought she was beautiful. Of course, she didn't want much to do with me, but her hair. It was beautiful.

Hee. This is the least helpful advice thread ever.

I love you people.

I use to henna my hair all the time -- less so now. Was there particular tips you were looking for? I'm assuming you know the process, right? It makes your hair so soft and silky! And slightly red, of course. What's your natural color? Mine is pretty deep black, so it just showed up as red highlights. It's really a pretty simple thing to do (for short hair at least), so I don't have any horror stories to share, sorry. Sometimes, when the mood hit me, I'd steep some coffee grounds in it, or crack an egg in it for extra protein and shine. Helpful?

Yes, helpful.

I've never hennaed my hair, so I guess I'm just looking for... reassurance? I don't know. I've got dark brown hair with reddish auburn highlights, I'd like more auburn in it, and I'd definitely like to try to do something to get rid of the gray that's taking over, because it's starting to make me look older than I am and I'm sick of it.

I don't dye my hair (I think I did it once). I'm worried about it turning out too red. Um... think that's it.

Occhiblu has awesome hair sans henna. And now I will go away.

But I used to have awesomer hair! It used to have more red, and some blond! I miss my old hair. :-(

I've heard that you are not supposed to use regular hair color after using henna, so if you henna and hate, you can't use something else to fix it up. Here's one quote I found:

Henna can improve the appearence of your hair(make it shiny and color it. However it is almost IMPOSSIBLE to completely remove from your hair once it has been used on it except for cutting all affected hair off! It also prevents any other chemical services (ie perms other colorings to be performed) on your hair EVER, until it is cut off.

There are many good products on the market that will do as good of a job coloring your hair, such as Redken Shades EQ and do not have any restrictions on your hair styling plans for your hair, now or in the future.

So, you might want to check it out before you commit.

The thing is, I am too cheap and too lazy to keep up much of a hair-coloring regimen. I feel reasonably on top of things when I manage to get my hair cut once every six months. So it's unlikely I'm going to suddenly have a "I need to be blond, NOW!" sort of moment, and I'm definitely looking for something that fades well, rather than growing out and leaving me with weird roots.

But I get what you're saying about not being able to fix it, if I need to.

I was going to say what taz said.

I used it about 15 years ago. It worked okay- the colors weren't as bright as I hoped. The application was a little clunky- like you'd boiled alfalfa pellets into a stew and then applied it to your head.

They may have improved things.

It didn't show up well enough on my dark brown hair, but it showed up very well on the carpet I dropped it on.

Beware, it dries out your hair quite a bit - well it dried out my hair when i used to do it a while back, but then again i have nappy hair so ymmv.

occhi, here's what my mom has to say about it: She's been doing it for the past 15 years or so.

Make a cup of (depending on how much you need--if you're doing the entire head, from top to bottom, then you'll require more--but if you're just colouring in the top part of your head, like my mom, then one cup should be enough) tea, without adding any milk to it. Add this tea to the Henna, and make sure that the consistency is not too thick or thin. Put the mixture in an IRON bowl (they say it helps to add a richer colour to the contents) and keep it overnight, for at least ten hours. And viola--you can then apply it to your hair. Keep it on for at least two hours, and then shower it off. (My mom told me to reassure you that as far as she knows, and as far as all of the ladies here who use henna--which is ALOT--she hasn't once heard of any side-effects attributed to it, because of its naturalness (except for the redness that it leaves behind over time). But, she's not sure about what taz has mentioned, so you might want to check that out. Otherwise, all engines are go!)

the other thing is it stinks! There are different hennas for different shades, but if you use any of the reddish tinges any grey will show up as quite red, almost orange, particularly later as it fades.
It is a great conditioner and I have had treatments after hennaing without any problems, perm, other colour, etc.

Have to agree on the smell--some people Love it, but it doesn't suit others--and might actually end up giving you a migraine. (I'm speaking from personal experience. As Wilder mentioned, it's a great conditioner, and I wanted to straighten my hair out a bit, and applied it one day, and boy did the smell irritate me.)

Don't use it to cover grey. It stinks too, and is akin to putting cow dung on your hair. And if you don't like it, you're stuck with it until it grows out, which is probably the worst aspect of it, especially if you have (and like having) long hair. More on this here.

and is akin to putting cow dung on your hair

I take offence to that;p

I've done it. It smells yucky and my advice is to make sure you don't have henna-goo on your forehead and ears because they'll go orange, and wear gloves because your nails will too otherwise. Also, if you're a blond like me a neat trick is to add a couple of spoons of espresso to the mix and get a mahogany brown-red color which I used to do. :)

I'm not sure what henna will do to the gray, possibly turn it into bright strands of orange. Doesn't sound too good.

Also, henna too much and your hair will turn into glass that you can break off - or that's what a hairdresser friend said he had some henna horror stories. It's not good to do often, since it forms a layer on your hair rather than goes into your hair. And you can't, or rather shouldn't do other dyes after henna as the result is very unpredictable (though I've bleached away henna and ended up with a yellow-YELLOW-blond that I had to add apricot too so it wouldn't look so awful and brassy - just wait at least 8 weeks, also I had short hair at the time so I could get away with almost anything).

....rather than growing out and leaving me with weird roots.

Oh I missed that. Henna won't wash out as easily as you might think, you'll have weird roots either way. Some "cover gray" dyes wash out way faster than Henna - like the "nice and easy" kind of dyes. Srsly!

(I've dyed my hair red, black, browm, blond, gray, blue, green, lilac, pink, purple, orange, and every shade in between so I speak with some experience on the matter. I'm originally blond though, so any color sticks.)

I used henna for 6ish years, my hair is very thick, there's lots of it and it grew down past my arse in that time. It is a laborious process, but the colour was awesome.

I used 600g of powdered burgundy henna, mixed it with really strong concentrated espresso, lemon juice, red wine and an egg and left it in an iron bowl overnight as hadjiboy's mum suggests. It should be slightly runny, but not too runny, mud - probably the consistency of a mud facial mask. Then, the next evening, I donned my special hairdyeing clothes and gloves, and got out my special hairdyeing towels and pillowcase, before covering my hair with mud, rubbing it all the way through and wrapping the whole lot up in glad wrap then a towel. I slept with it in, and washed it out the next morning. If you get any on your face or skin wash it off immediately or you will have orange stains - I did it without gloves once and my fingernails were bright orange until they grew out. You also have to clean the shower thoroughly afterwards, particularly if you have light tiles.

I think you'll be okay as a brunette for weird roots, but as my fair roots grew they looked green because of the contrast with the red. I needed to dye my hair pretty frequently because of it. It was a fabulous colour though - dark and bright at the same time, and because you do it yourself, and it's mud, it's not an even colour and catches sunlight brilliantly.

I've used henna before with no problems other than that it's extremely messy and kind of hard to put on evenly (I'm talking the powder-type that you mix with water and smush all into your hair).

In your case, I'd really be worried about the gray hairs becoming extremely bright relative to the rest of the hair, and not in a good "oooh, I've got highlights!" way.

If she doesn't show up in this thread, you might want to ping Fuzzbean.

I dated a girl who hennaed her hair. The smell was repulsive. It seriously affected my attraction for her.

My girlfriend (later wife, now ex) decided she wanted some red in her brown hair, so she got a packet of this from the Body Shop. She had me help her get it all into her hair (I even had to use the plastic gloves). About a half-hour later she washed it out, and became aware of the magnitude of the transformation - instead of red highlights, ALL her hair had gone BRIGHT COPPER. Off to the Body Shop the next day for the brown dye to change it back, which was sad, because I thought she carried off the flaming-red look quite well (she's of Scots-English descent). I still remind her of it (twenty years ago, that), and she laughs.

Okay, I think I've spotted something you should check out: Naturcolor, herbal based haircolor. No ammonia, no peroxide, no other ucky stuff, apparently, and damn high rating at Makeup Alley. It comes in first in their Top Picks for hair color. It might be worth looking into. Their web site helpfully provides no information at all, but there is a phone number in the contact link, and I think that if you consider using it, you should call and get their input.

I notice from the MUA reviews I scanned that the color come out a shade darker than expected, and that it seems to be available from Whole Foods. Also, that the N series is the recommended group to use for covering gray, but I notice that the selection is teeny, so you might do best by blending an N color with another color, which is something they could help you with if you call.

I used henna for years with no problem. My natural color is sort of strawberry/dirty blonde - really dirty, so like dabitch, I've been every color in the rainbow. Henna makes my hair kind of a nice coppery color. During my (lengthy)hippie years I used henna exclusively; the kind you mush into mud, although I never let it sit overnight or anything; just mixed it with water,rubbed into head, wrapped my hair up in plastic bags (plastic supermarket bags make great hairdying turbans)and then sat around for an hour, rinse. It always made my hair look, smell & feel wonderful. YMMV and, OK, these were my hippie years complete with sandalwood oil and ass length hair. Also note: this is before I had hardly any grey and yeah, my sources indicate that your gray may get quite a lot lighter than the rest of your hair.

However, you can TOTALLY dye your hair again with other dyes, just wait a couple months and you'll be fine. I never, ever had a problem with my hair breaking off or anything and I even used Manic Panic a couple of times right on top of the henna.

I used to do it all the time, and I think you get best results with darker hair like yours. I think it would look really excellent on you. The smell does go away pretty quickly, but it is a little strong in that "mmm smells like hippies!" way. You have to be sort of careful with it because it's easy to stain your ears red [you can use mousturizer or something to sort of mask those areas] and you should wash it out a few times just to make sure the color is fast before you sleep on your favorite white pillowcase. I found that it actually made my hair less dry not more and washed out gradually over a few months. When I did it regularly, during summertime when my hair was lighter, you could sort of see roots of my light brown hair, but this was mostly when I had dreadlocks and so my hair was a weird explosive mess of a bunch of stuff and I don't think it mattered much. I've been toying with the idea of doing it again but I swim so much I'm afraid it will have some weird interaction with the chlorine.

I think the grey interaction is more something to worry about if you've got like a skunk stripe of grey not the odd strand here or there [I met you and I didn't notice any, perhaps you are doing a good job already!] so I don't think that's likely to be an issue. I'd go for real henna, not some sort of henna-ish product and leave it on for a few hours with your head wrapped in a bag or something [heat supposedly helps, if you have a sit-under dryer that is the best] wash it out and then go out in the bright sunlight and see what you think.

Henna hater here.

In high school, I had brown hair with auburn & blond accents and one prominent gray streak. The one time I used henna, it was... well, the phrase used in my family for this is "The results are unpredictable, and not in a good way."

The blond turned copper. The gray streak went pinkish-red. The auburn was dulled a bit into the general reddish haze. (And I liked red, generally --- I often gave myself a reddish, auburn, or even eggplant color wash.)

The smell did, indeed, trigger a migraine.

I didn't notice the silkiness that others are mentioning, though my hair was always wavy and a bit rough.

The results weren't too too bad, but I like greater precision in hair treatments: I want to know what the results will be before I apply it.

I never used henna again.

It's certainly possible that my previous use of hair color had altered my hair in such a way that the henna didn't take as it was supposed to. Still, I have had many friends who used henna regularly, and I've heard more than one say that it's hard to gauge what the results will be. Several times, a friend has shown up with Surprise Hair.

Surprise Hair is something I strive to avoid. Your level of risk aversion may differ.

From a former graycoverer: my favorite-ever trick for covering the little wisps of gray was to use a bottle of temporary color and a paintbrush. I could paint it on individual strands of hair and get a highlight & lowlight effect instead of the overall color wash you get from massaging the color through the entire head of hair. It's a bit fussy, but the results are worth it, especially as they start growing out.

I think the grey interaction is more something to worry about if you've got like a skunk stripe of grey not the odd strand here or there [I met you and I didn't notice any, perhaps you are doing a good job already!]

Yeah, it's definitely just a few strands here or there. It was kinda cute for a while, when they were short and obviously not "really" part of my hair, but now many of them have grown out to shoulder length and they're starting to bother me (I started getting gray hair when I was 20, so they've been minor annoyances for a while).

Thank you all. Looks like I have much to think about. I kind of hate the idea of really dying my hair with regular hair dye; the one time I did dye it what I hated was that the color just went flat and I lost all the variations that I have in it naturally. I like the idea of what goo said, that henna ends up with more varied, natural-looking tones.

I will look at the Naturcolor stuff you posted, taz, and maybe just make a trip to Whole Foods and see what they have on the shelves.

Or perhaps I'll just start putting lemon juice on my hair and sitting out in the sun this summer and hope my pretty sun highlights come back this year.

And I woke up this morning thinking about this thread, and a line from Tender Is the Night popped into my head:

Her once fair hair had darkened, but she was lovelier now at twenty-four than she had been at eighteen, when her hair was brighter than she.

So maybe I should embrace the lack of highlights.... :-)

I should have added: I'm really not trying to change my natural color, because I like my natural color, I just want to punch up the natural highlights and hopefully convince the gray strands that they're really a different color. (That second photo kind of shows the reddish bits that sometimes show up; that's what I'm trying to get more of, while keeping the dark brown.)

Fuzzbean has been summoned, although she's late to the party and referring to herself in the third person again.

I've been using henna for...two? three? years now, after having used chemical dyes for a while. I usually use strong (five or six tea bags) green tea as the liquid, but sometimes black tea or freeze-dried coffee for a darker color. I'd avoid the coffee. It makes it smell like poop, but it does give a really nice dark red color. Coffee and black tea also seem to make the color stick more to the skin than green tea does (but I haven't noticed a difference in color stickiness on hair). I also usually squirt a couple tablespoons of lemon juice or cider vinegar in to give me highlights.

My natural hair color is several shades lighter than yours and there is a definite difference in color with henna, well beyond just highlights. I can usually go about three months between colorings before the roots start to bug me, although it's not a particularly sharp gradient between the roots and the rest. I do get really natural-looking shades with henna and have had many many people ask me if my hair is naturally that color. I do find my hair to be incredibly silky and soft afterwards, and OMG shiny. I've never had trouble with breakage or dryness. With green tea it's not terribly staining to your ears, but with black tea it's absurd. Gloves and vaseline around the hairline can help a lot.

Oh, and I get mine from the little Indian market down the street from us, except for when I visit Eideteker and go to the Indian market down the street from HIM and buy all the henna they have available (which already has caffeine added so I can just use hot water). In either case, it's about $2-$4 for a packet which is just enough for my upper-back-length hair but I may need to start using one-and-a-half now that it's gone a bit longer. Whole Foods is waaaay more expensive and I doubt it's any better (the lentils I get from Indian markets almost never have rocks in them, and the ones from WF always do despite being twice as expensive).

Um. Feel free to email me with questions. I love my henna!

if you really have to do it, get an (experienced) professional do it for you. also, the smell is really funny, some people just don't like it.

if you really have to do it, get an (experienced) professional do it for you.

Seems like if I'm going to pay someone, I may as well shell out $200 for highlights in the salon.... that's mostly what I'm trying to avoid.

Once in my hippie days some guys came into town and sold us a big chunk of henna that they said was hash.

It took is a LONG time to get over our denial (this is really shitty hash, man) and realize how taken we'd been. It took the gf of one of the guys to explain to us what henna was.

OK I'll go sit with mudpuppie now.

Ha!

I realized this morning that a large part of my insecurity with my hair (and appearance in general) corresponded to my getting my current corporate-y job, which I thought was mainly due to the fact that I work with a bunch of people who make a lot of money and therefore dress better than I do. But there's also the fact that the lighting in this office's bathroom is shitty, really harsh overhead fluorescents that make me look like a hag and that make every gray hair on my head glint with an evil gleam of doom, so.... maybe I don't need henna, but instead need a better-lit bathroom. Or a flashlight or something.

occhiblu,
You look majestic and regal with a warm smile.

You say colour, I say Haircut./
If you're in a corporate-y environment currently, update that hair and get a gorgeous cut.

It will make you feel differently, but it will still be you.

I've watched the transformation of those appearing on 'What Not To Wear' and the psychological transformation of those appearing is truly remarkable. There's something of substance to these makeovers/updates.

Reading about all the natural ingredient colourings folks are using, what of a blackberries and pomegranate combination¿
If they're too acidic, maybe the addition of some kind of ph balancer...
I haven't a Science background, but my sister back in the day used to make her own creams, it was quite simple and cheap. Totally organic.

I wonder why berries haven't been mentioned, but dang they stain. The result on hair¿
I'm curious, and I'd experiment, if I had any hair...

all the best./