You you mCare more and more about the makeup of cosmetics, and hair dyes seem to be the most chemical of all. There may be an alternative with natural and vegetable colors. But are they also covering? Can you color your hair naturally white?

The 100% natural vegetable dyes are mainly composed of henna and other dye plants. This is the name of pigmented plants which are used for dyeing fabrics or for cosmetic purposes. We can thus cite indigo which allows dark reflections and blue tones, hibiscus for red and auburn reflections, or even madder for more red reflections.

How do natural hair colors work?

These herbal mixtures provide a lot of care to the hair during the color. But for this to attach, of course, they need a fairly powerful base. It is mainly henna which can be neutral (without coloring effect) or pigmented. It allows the vegetable colors to hang on the hair fiber. The other plants, for their part, provide more or less marked nuances.

But if they can tint, vegetable dyes cannot lighten.

Color nuanced but not covering

Natural vegetable dyes can be effective in coloring gray hair under certain conditions. If they do not allow for 100% dark coverage, they can create a nuanced color. Thus, white hair is masked by a light, luminous color that blends into the hair.

To achieve this result, the color is applied in two stages. In this case, it is therefore better to entrust its vegetable coloring to a professional salon.

Natural white hair coloring without henna

There are natural colors without henna that can hide your gray hair, if you have less than 50%.

However, like other vegetable colorings, it is impossible to completely mask gray hair over time. Nor even to completely change color. A vegetable coloring without henna simply allows you to blend a color into your base.

But this is a good alternative if you really want natural hair color and are worried about henna.

What is henna?

At the origin of the vegetable coloring, henna comes from a shrub (Lawsonia inermis). Its leaves, very rich in pigments, are reduced to powder. This coloring material, widely used in Eastern countries, can color the hair but also the skin.

There is also a neutral henna, which comes from another plant (Cassia auriculata). It is a green powder that cares for the hair but does not color it.

Avantages

Henna coloring is also a treatment for the hair. Unlike conventional hair colors, coloring with henna is therefore a real moment of care. Unless you have dry hair. Henna sometimes absorbs sebum and dries out already weakened hair if you leave it on for too long. Because from one hour to one night, henna can keep for a long time before being rinsed off.

Henna is, in a way, a semi-permanent color. It lasts longer than tone-on-tone hair color, but it will fade over the months. Being more melted in the hair, it limits the root effect of regrowth.

Disadvantages and contraindications

Despite the benefits mentioned above, henna does have a few drawbacks. It starts with the randomness of coloring. Depending on your base and your own shades, the exposure time, your coloring will be more or less intense.

Another problem, and not the least, henna can turn orange on some bases. This is difficult to predict, depending on previous colorings or even a brightening of the sun.

If you buy henna coloring, additionally take a close look at its composition. It happens that commercial henna contains metallic salts. They are intended to enhance the red color in the henna. But they can be irritating and damage the hair. Likewise, some henna claiming to be vegetable contains paraphenylenediamine (PPD), a substance that is very allergenic.

It is therefore essential to turn to genuinely vegetable henna dyes. The composition indicated on the packaging should not be too long in general. The reverse often makes it possible to understand that there is more chemical than vegetable in the product.

It is therefore better to move towards a 100% vegetable coloring.