How to dye yourself with henna at home

Henna is a natural, plant – based coloring that can be (perfectly) done at home.

Planting henna at home requires skill and good information, like the one we are going to give you.
Before launching experiments at home, let’s lay the foundations. What is henna? Henna is that you?

Pure henna is a green powder derived from the Lawsonia Inermis plant . It is used to dye hair and skin with its characteristic red color. You can also find what they call ‘chestnut henna’ and even black, but to get colored varieties you have to mix lawsonia with other plants, such as indigo . 100% natural henna only has one hue: coppery – reddish, but beware! This does not mean that you can only dye your hair red with it. In any case, the henna acts as a translucent varnish on the hair, and the result will depend to a large extent on your base. In no case does it clarify You must be clear about that -and meridian-. The only thing that lightens the strand is bleaching.

We will tell you how to use henna at home and why it is worth switching to this vegetable dye, compatible with highlights or with conventional dyes.

Why use henna?

Because it is the only 100% natural coloration , based on plants, free of metallic salts or other adulterations. It adds a lot of shine and body to the body since it closes cuticles and helps to change high porosity to medium, and it has the advantage that the ‘cut’ is not noticeable once the hair grows.

Important, of course, to use a good certified and unadulterated henna, such as Henna Morena, Kadhi or Namaste . If you are very expert, you can buy the plants yourself and make the mixtures you want to obtain the desired color.

Topic of interest: gray hair. If you have many or these are ‘hard’ and unruly on their own, you may need two applications of henna to cover them. If you don’t do double coloring, the henna will cover your gray hair with a kind of reflection that you may like, because when it is lighter than the base, it has a wick effect.

How to dye yourself with henna at home

Caution: do not use metal containers or utensils when preparing your henna, the color could be altered.

There are two ways to prepare henna. If you are using pure to obtain a reddish hue, you can mix it with boiling water, tea, or other herbal infusions to make a paste. If the henna contains indigo, you should not heat the water to more than 50° , otherwise the pigments may be corrupted and you will not get the result you are looking for. When the mixture is warm (it has to be the consistency of thick chocolate), you can proceed to put it on your head.

Another option is with the liquid at room temperature. The paste is left covered with plastic wrap, glued to the mixture so that it does not dry out, for about 8-12 hours so that the color is released well. Indigo cannot be macerated because it passes and loses its staining power. This method may vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. When in doubt, follow the instructions on the box or package.

It is applied just as you would (or would be) with any dye: on previously clean hair, dry or wet. From experience, I prefer to do it wet and on clean hair to make sure there is no residue preventing the henna from adhering to the strand with the force of the seas, but this is a personal decision. With the help of a dye brush, you should go striping the hair to cover all the roots, and then the rest of the hair.

Next, wrap the head in plastic wrap or a plastic shower cap. Cover the head with a towel so that it has a greenhouse effect and the henna works better.

You can leave it on your hair for as long as you want as long as you respect a minimum of 3-4 hours.

Once the exposure time has passed, it is time to remove the ‘paste’ with water. With lots of water . It’s literally like rinsing mud, so be patient to rinse everything out. Important tip: do it leaning down and not standing up, while you shower, so as not to leave the walls like the Woodstock festival.

In the next 48 hours you can not apply anything (or conditioner), because you will stop the oxidation of the henna. There are those who look very soft without anything and who have hair like esparto grass. Calm down and hold on, everything will return to its normal course in the next wash (with its corresponding and careful hydration).

The normal thing is that the color darkens a tad in the following days. In around a week or a couple of washes, you will enjoy the final colour.

Although it may seem impossible since everything is so natural and botanical, henna is a permanent dye. If you wanted to remove it, it would be necessary to ‘drag’ it with other plants. And it is best to apply it only 3-4 times a year to the entire hair since, by covering the strand without penetrating it (as conventional dyes do), it can ‘saturate’ the hair and contribute to its breakage, especially if you have it. fine and brittle, as well as ‘stretching’ the curl and detracting from its natural pattern.

If you need to touch up the roots due to gray hair, use it without fear once a month, on that virgin hair that is the roots, and do a ‘henna gloss’ (add henna to the mask and apply it to the rest of your hair) to revive a little color and give more shine.

And if you have dye and you want to switch to henna? Just wait 5-7 weeks for the dye to fade a bit. Many people want to achieve light tones and for this they lighten their hair with dye and later (that same day), they proceed to apply henna or a mixture of plants.