Even though henna is used as a hair dye, it also has particularly good side benefits. These include the thickening of hair, leaving it feeling silky and strong. But this is only achieved if you buy henna in the pure form (or henna that has been mixed with extracts of plants that has been clearly marked or labelled). It is also very important to carry out a strand test before commencing with the application.

This strand testing will indicate two vital things for you:

1) whether or not you are happy with the final color

2) how long the henna has to be left on to achieve that color.

As the henna is more often than not left on your hair for one hour or sometimes even more, it would be prudent to set aside quite a bit of time. What with preparing the henna, doing the strand test, the time taken to apply the henna and finally, the leave-in time, you may need to use a whole chunk of an afternoon to do it all.

What’s the Best Hair for Henna?

Henna seems to work best on dark blondes and brunettes. Naturally dark hair will look amazing with red colored henna highlights.

Gray hairs? Despite popular opinion to the contrary, you are able to obtain great results using henna. Going brunette needs a henna that has been mixed with a brown taken from certain safe plant powders such as clove and walnut. Be aware to use a bit of common sense though – you do not want to be using this if you are sensitive to cloves or allergic to walnuts. If you would prefer to turn your graying hairs blond, try and find a henna that has been mixed with a natural ingredient such as rhubarb root.

Choices of Henna Colors

Red tends to be most used and contain the least amount of additives. Also, if they are of the pure variety (you will have to read the label or maybe do some research on the internet), they are totally safe. Browns and blonde henna are great fun as well.

Henna doesn’t lighten the hair because it will not lift the color as other commercial dyes do. This means you must purchase a shade that kind of matches your own hair color, or is slightly darker. It’s easy for brunettes to go red and for blonds to go a brunette or a red, but there is no way that a brunette can turn blond.

Wise Words of Caution

Don’t use any henna over hair that has been commercially dyed. It’s probably wise to wait for least two months after such a commercial coloring job before even attempting to use henna. You may find that women have no problems at all in waiting for a month only, but this is what a strand test comes in handy for.

A week or so before you plan on using the henna, use a clarifying type of shampoo. This has the effect of helping to strip out all the old color.

Make sure you buy a brand of henna that doesn’t contain any metallic salts. These salts are very unhealthy for you. These could be labelled as compound henna dye on the box, but sometimes they may not even be listed at all.

If this is the case, how can we tell if the henna contains any of these metallic salts or not if it is not listed on the ingredients? One way of finding out is if the strand test you did leaves your hair kind of brittle and dried-out, or you see that the color has taken very quickly, this probably means that it contains these metallic salts, so do not use it.

Black colored henna is fine to use so long as it is been made with Indigo. Try to avoid PPD Black Henna, as this contains Para-Phenylenediamine – a type of dye that has been found to be very harmful.

Which Henna to Buy?

The safest kind of henna available is the so-called body-art type of henna. But apart from this, there are quite a few well-known, safe and well-used packaged hair hennas that have been ethically labelled. You need to use a bit of common sense: if there appears to be ingredients listed on the package that you feel you are unfamiliar with, jot them down on a piece of paper and go home to check them on the internet by running them through a search engine.

Henna doesn’t really have a decent shelf life. Try not to buy it and then keep it in your cupboard forever as it will start to lose its potency over time. Try sealing it and then freezing it, as this way it should last for at least one year.

The Fun Part

Lot’s of women like to compare the preparation of henna to be almost ritual like. This plant-based dye appears as a green powder and has a very odd kind of fragrance, which is rather similar to hay. This smell actually disappears in a day or two.

Let’s assume that you are in possession of a box of red henna (the pure variety). Empty the contents into a cup or a plastic bowl. If you happened to buy the henna in bulk, try and use about one cup full. Do not use any metal utensils, bowls or even hair clips when mixing and then applying, the henna.

You will now need to boil some water and pour it into the henna, just a little bit at a time. Keep stirring until you get a paste kind of consistency. You can add a couple of eggs (pre beaten) if you like, just to keep the consistency a bit sticky. A lot of women tend to add half a cup of strong coffee in an effort to tone down the red just a little bit. If you do add the coffee you will need to use less boiling water as you don’t want your mixture ending up too drippy.

Add some cream, oil or petroleum jelly around your hairline to prevent the henna from accidentally coloring your forehead and ears. Also, do not forget to use gloves to prevent red hands!

You will need to apply this paste to cleaned, dry hair. If this is your first henna treatment, you will need to completely saturate the hair. You will then have to wrap it all up with either some plastic wrap or a plastic bag and to top it all off, you may want to wrap your head in a towel so as not to frighten the kids! We now reach the point where it is absolutely essential for you to have done a strand test. That is the only way you will know how long you have to leave the henna in your hair. It may be anywhere between 20 minutes to 2 hours.

When your timer finally rings, time to get in the shower. As the whole process tends to be messy, try not to make neatness an potential issue or you’ll find yourself going bananas! Just rinse the henna out of the hair – there is no need to shampoo it out. To finish off, use an organic based conditioner. You should find your color lasting for two to three months, except for the root growth.

And that’s it. There will certainly be a whole lot of cleaning up involved, but the bottom line is that you’ll have beautiful, strong, silky, healthy red hair. (Or whichever color you have chosen.) Once you have used start henna for the first time, you may discover that you like it so much that you will never go back to using anything else!

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