My Experience With: Henna Hair Dye

At the ripe old age of twenty years old, I have yet to dye my hair. I've never done it, I've just never felt the need to dye it, so I've always just left it alone. However, over the last year or so, I've desperately wanted to do something different with my hair: either cut it off or dye it, and so in order to test this out I decided to do it using henna hair dye.

The reason for this is purely because it's made with natural ingredients and I don't want to do too much damage to my hair. It's also semi-permanent, meaning it will wash out over a few months, and I thought that this would be a good place to start for someone who has never dyed their hair before.

As you can imagine, henna hair dye only comes in dark colours, because henna itself is a dark product. The one I used was from Lush, and theirs come in four colours: Noir (the darkest, almost black colour), Brun (a dark brown colour), Marron (a medium chestnut colour) and Rouge (with redder tones).

I chose to use Brun, since I have brown hair anyway, and the plan was only to go a little bit darker, without going black. I was really looking forward to it and set aside an entire Saturday in order to ensure that I did it correctly. However, after everything, I was left utterly disappointed. I followed all the instructions to the letter, and left the hair dye on for the maximum amount of time that was recommended and then some, and yet it still made no difference to the colour of my hair. If anything, it made it slightly lighter, as you will see in the pictures.

Henna hair dye is an interesting experience to say the least. It will stink your house out, it takes five times as long as chemical hair dye, and to me personally, it didn't make much of a difference. Maybe I should have used the darker dye, or maybe my hair just doesn't take to henna dye, but I certainly won't be using it again.

Before on the left and after on the right! :(

Have you ever used henna hair dye? Did it work for you?