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Can you actually get a henna that is light brown without any red or orange? It would be mixed with indigo? Where does the indigo come from?
I thought the Naturtint I was using was non toxic but apparently it isn't.
Henna by itself only comes in red, the shade and intensity of the resulting color depending on 2 factors - the dye content, and the shade of the hair it is being applied to, as henna is translucent. I use henna that is 2.3% lawsone (dye) content, which is one of the highest on the market. I also do full-head applications every 5 weeks or so, so my shade is very concentrated and, thus, darker than you'd get if you applied it to a lighter shade of hair.
If you want brown you can mix it with indigo. Henna followed by indigo on its own, believe it or not, gives you black.
You can buy indigo from the same when store where I buy my henna - mehandi.com. I think they sell the kits that have both the henna and indigo together, or you can buy the 2 substances separately. I've only used straight henna, so I just buy several 100 grams on its own. 500g is like a year's supply for me, because I'll mix up a packet of 100g and that is enough for 2, sometimes 3 applications (SO much cheaper than salon color!!!).
I rarely dry my hair. The only time it gets blown-dry is when it gets colored and she blows it out straight for me and I do enjoy the straight hair for a few days. I have thick, coarse, wavy hair, and I spent too much of my life blowing it dry to be a more acceptable straight and smooth look.
Now I don't care anymore what anyone thinks of my wild hair. I slap some stuff on it, crunch into a sort of shape, and call it a day, and it's in much better condition without all the blow-drying.
My hair is a little curly, and a little fine and very soft — my hair lacks texture. Blow drying increases the softness, so I stopped doing it, too. Product also increases the softness, and limpness. My hair dresser has the technique for blow drying in volume and texture, but I don’t. I can’t use a round brush to save my life.
And frankly, washing it, putting it up in a towel ( I love my old turbie twists, and I’ve replaced the elastic bands a number of times), combing and scrunching yields almost the same results.
I took a picture of myself and I looked at my gray hair plus the colored hair of last year with my natural color peeking thru somewhere...
And I decided it's time to figure this coloring out for myself. I called a salon here in town and they use an Italian product with a low percentage of ammonia. She said the product meets the European standards.
Coloring my hair is a lower risk then if the percentage of ammonia were higher. And the price is comparable to my old salon, maybe cheaper. I was upset with them because I spent over $200 cutting, curling and coloring my hair but all of their promotional advertisement is only for new customers. They lost me because of that !
It's time to take better care of myself. I do have more energy from losing 30 pounds (kept it off too!) last year. I want to take more off this year. This is the first step in looking better and feeling better!
I have a brand new box of hair color in my cabinet and I'm not using it. The temptation is not even there. Tired of the chemicals, and looking forward to see what I'll look like with short, gray hair. Mother's was beautiful; maybe mine will be, too.
The fact is that the older you get, the more fragile in all the systems of the body. I didn't think, initially, I was ready, but I am. Thanks for all your valuable input.
Regarding Jackie, I'm guessing that her lifelong cigarette habit may have also contributed to her developing cancer. I've been dyeing for half my life and am still healthy (fingers crossed), so I'm thinking that cancer isn't caused by just one thing but a combination of different factors including genetics, lifestyle and environment.
When I turned 70 last year, I realized that I was getting tired of enduring 40 minutes of toxic sludge on my head every six weeks in an attempt to hide the signs that I was getting older. That strategy may have made sense when I was still in the job market, but after I retired I started thinking I'd like to go natural.
The only problem is, how to manage the transition? How would I deal with roots growing out? I was afraid of having an obvious line. I thought of wearing hats, but I'm not really a hat person. My stylist suggested growing out a couple of inches and then cutting it off and going super short, but I didn't want to do that, either. I was even thinking of starting a thread here on C-D to ask for suggestions.
Then my hair colorist (not the same person who cuts my hair) suggested putting highlights on the outer layer of my hair only, leaving the hair underneath to grow in naturally. This would disguise the new growth, she said. That sounded like a good idea to me, so I went for it. Here is how it looked after the first treatment in March:
Last week i had the second treatment, and here's how the highlights look now:
Using highlights is one of the best ways to deal with grey hair; both when it is starting and or as a way of coping with instead of more intense coloring.
Blondes and or those with lighter hair colors are best suited to this because from about light brown up highlights make gray hair less obvious. You look at Catherine Deneuve, Hilary Clinton, Goldie Hawn and other "women of a certain age" you see plenty of blondes with very little tell tale grey. It is there, just carefully blended with highlights.
The whole idea behind "tone on tone" hair color (those non-ammonia hair colors meant to deal with small amounts of gray hair), is that if greys are evenly distributed because hair color won't cover them with a solid opaque color, they instead pick up a lighter tone that appears like highlights against rest of hair. This only works where greys are evenly distributed. If you have a solid area of white (temples, around face, skunk's stripe, the effect largely won't work.
For those who were brunettes when younger professionals advise by a certain age to ditch black to even dark to medium brown dye and start working with various lighter shades of brown or even darker blondes to give a highlight effect. This not only softens area say around the face, but makes upkeep far easier. At some point it becomes a fool's errand attempting to keep say medium through dark brown and into black hair "dyed" that color. For many it only takes a few days or maybe week or so before gray hair starts growing out again, and the contrast between it and dark hair color is striking.
Men of course long have used "highlights" to hide grey hair. Rarely do you see any man with a hairline that looks like Eddie Munster (well no one that cares about his appearance anyway). But rather some grey is allowed to remain and highlights are weaved in to hide the rest. When done well the effect is rather natural looking.
I have a brand new box of hair color in my cabinet and I'm not using it. The temptation is not even there. Tired of the chemicals, and looking forward to see what I'll look like with short, gray hair. Mother's was beautiful; maybe mine will be, too.
The fact is that the older you get, the more fragile in all the systems of the body. I didn't think, initially, I was ready, but I am. Thanks for all your valuable input.
I hear you and commend you for making the choice. For me I haven't colored my hair very much over the last 10 years maybe three times. And I just need to keep the gray covered for now. It's hard enough to be older as it is. LoL
4 years ago I colored my hair and when my natural color came in, it was like I had dark hair highlights and I liked it. Last June I had colored my hair and now there is a lot more gray! Oh no not right now. Maybe I'll change my tune sooner than I think but not right now.
I hear you and commend you for making the choice. For me I haven't colored my hair very much over the last 10 years maybe three times. And I just need to keep the gray covered for now. It's hard enough to be older as it is. LoL
4 years ago I colored my hair and when my natural color came in, it was like I had dark hair highlights and I liked it. Last June I had colored my hair and now there is a lot more gray! Oh no not right now. Maybe I'll change my tune sooner than I think but not right now.
At some point many women (and some men) just get tired of being a slave to that bottle, and or making their hair colorist rich, and let things go natural.
If you are someone like Oprah Winfrey who has more money than God, or maybe a film star, entertainer or some career/job where you can write all that salon time off as an expense that is one thing. Otherwise keeping that gray hair away becomes an expensive and time consuming effort. Only brunettes who've become bottle blondes have a similar plight.
This being said unless or until the huge guilt trip laid upon "older" females changes, many won't give up coloring their gray hair willingly. That is long as a man with gray hair is considered "distinguished" while a female is "past her sell by date", hair dye sales will remain strong.
Notice the man in commercial has gray around his temples and so forth, along with looking older than "forty", but no one is telling him to color his hair. In fact the line to get his telephone number forms to the left.... *LOL*
At some point many women (and some men) just get tired of being a slave to that bottle, and or making their hair colorist rich, and let things go natural.
If you are someone like Oprah Winfrey who has more money than God, or maybe a film star, entertainer or some career/job where you can write all that salon time off as an expense that is one thing. Otherwise keeping that gray hair away becomes an expensive and time consuming effort. Only brunettes who've become bottle blondes have a similar plight.
This being said unless or until the huge guilt trip laid upon "older" females changes, many won't give up coloring their gray hair willingly. That is long as a man with gray hair is considered "distinguished" while a female is "past her sell by date", hair dye sales will remain strong.
Notice the man in commercial has gray around his temples and so forth, along with looking older than "forty", but no one is telling him to color his hair. In fact the line to get his telephone number forms to the left.... *LOL*
That's a scream. I'd forgotten how moved I'd been by commercials like that. Just proves how easily manipulated people are, and how businesses will do pretty much anything in the scramble for money. If we'd just stop and analyze what we're watching we'd be better off. Even happier perhaps.
I thought I looked cute today and my dark brown hair looked nice. After many decades of veganism and taking care of my skin, nobody thinks I look 70. (Or so they say) Will I look as good with gray hair? Only one way to find out.
Last edited by KaraZetterberg153; 05-17-2019 at 06:46 PM..
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Solly says — Be nice!
