Henna as Hair Color

Henna is a small bush or shrub that when grounded into a very fine powder is used to color the hair, staining skin etc. Women used henna to color, condition and enhance their hair from a long period of time. It is a natural and herbal product subjected to different versions from harvest to harvest that respond differently to different hair conditions and colors.

Henna does not dye your hair like synthetic dyes although it coats your hair with a transparent red color. It doesn't help in lightening of your hair and variety of shades are available such as red, rich brown, dark chestnut and gleaming black.

How Manufacturers Make Different Henna Colors ?
Henna itself doesn't come in range of colors. To stain hair,only tannin dye molecule in henna is Lawsone which is a red - orange molecule. Roots, barks and other parts of henna plant are not used to achieve different colors, only and only henna leaves are useful for hair coloring. To make other color than red chemicals, metallic salts or other plants are added by manufacturers in the henna plant. These mixes are called compound hennas.

Compound Henna Dye
It may damage your hair as compound henna dye contain additional plant dyes, metallic salts and para-phenylenedmine. Pure body art quality henna is good for your hair. Different chemicals added to change the color of henna are may be copper, nickel, cobalt, bismuth, iron salts, lead acetate and silver nitrate. Body art quality henna does not contain metals, metallic salts or lead. It is 100% pure henna used for coloring and conditioning hair.

How to Find Henna Hair Dye Has Toxic Metallic Salts or Not ?
It is a very simple process. Reap some of your hair. Then mix one ounce ( around 30 ml) of 20-volume peroxide and 20 drops of 28% ammonia. Put your reaped hair in this solution and if hair changes its color immediately then that henna dye is a synthetic dye containing lead, copper or silver nitrate.

Some Popular Henna Hair Colors
Henna is mixed with other plant dyes to create other henna hair colors known as "henna rangs". Some of the popular mixtures are :

• Indigo : It creates a dark violet blue color.
• Woad : It is used for hair coloring and produces more vivid blue-black color.
• Walnut : It creates brown color.
• Cassia Obovata : It provides a blonde-gold color and "thickens" hair.
• Saffron : It is used to create blonde hairs.
• Chamomile : It is also used to give blonde color but it is not very effective or permanent.
• Vashma : It is used with henna to color hair black.

From the above defined mixtures various colors are created by mixing them with henna such as :

• Natural red : henna
• Brown : henna and woad
• Golden : henna and sadr (saffron)
• Chestnut brown : henna and woad
• Dark warm brown henna : karchak and vashma
• Black henna : karchak, vashma and indigo

How Does Henna Dye Your Hair ?
The diagrammatic representation of whole procedure is :