hair colour at home

[MSMomsmoney]

I color my hair at home.

I like Nice N Easy.

It works well on gray hair (Im 45)...the color looks natural, and doesn't have that ammonia smell.

My tip would be to thoroughly brush your hair before you color hair, put the color on (roots first if this is a touch up), then comb the color all the way through your hair--make sure you don't miss any spots--and if you have someone else in your home, have them check to make sure you didn't miss anywhere.

Wait 20-25 minutes--rinse and repeat in 6 weeks.

Viola--no grey hair!

And, you didn't spend $120....

[Rebecca]

I always go to the beauty school near me. At least to have my hair cut. And I always get a ton of complements. I did have them color it once, and the students are supervised, but it ended up looking kind of red-orange. I have blonde/brown hair. I don't know what she did wrong but I didn't notice it until I was in the natural light.

Oh well. for $10 total I can deal with orange hair.

[girlfromsouth]

I dyed my hair at home for years, eventually my hair got really angry - all dried out and frizzed and just really unhealthy, so my advice is if you're doing it at home for any period of time, use really deep conditioning treatments regularly. The texture of my hair became just...I mean, I know it's cliche and all but it was basically straw. So horrible.

Now I still splurge at the salon, but I've got it to a color job every four months with a gloss overlay in between. Not as cheap as Loreal (which was my thing and has a great color selection!) - but my hair is much happier.

[amandajane]

I'm wondering, has anyone tried henna products? What do you think of them if you have? I've heard that they are gentler on your hair and contain no nasty chemicals.

I've got grey hair coming through now, I'm 42 shortly. I thought I'd just leave it and grow old gracefully, not sure if I can though, I feel so flippin' old when I look at it!

[Caitlin]

Originally Posted by amandajane

I'm wondering, has anyone tried henna products? What do you think of them if you have? I've heard that they are gentler on your hair and contain no nasty chemicals.

Henna is great, but you have to be sure to use Body Art Quality henna. Some of those pre-mixed packets in the drugstore contain metallic salts, which can mess up your hair if it has any previous chemicals in it (like normal hair dye). Body Art Quality henna does not contain metallic salts, so you can use it if you have previously dyed hair. ^_^

Check out Henna for Hair ~ The art, science, history and traditions of dyeing your hair with henna, indigo and other herbs for great info about dyeing hair using henna.


EDIT: Out of curiosity, what benefit is there for the forum to automatically replace the tidy URL I typed with a long text link using the title of the page I linked to? It kinda just makes me look like a weirdo for writing such a long link. :/

[amandajane]

Thanks Caitlin, that looks like a very comprehensive web site, I'm reading it now.

They talk about this in their faq:

My hairdresser tells me that henna isn’t safe / bad for my hair / needs to be done by an expert.

No such thing. This may be for several factual or speculative reasons, such as:

1) Some brands of henna contain metallic compounds that react with the ammonia activator in synthetic hair dyes. These reactions yield disasters like frog butt green hair, fried and brittle hair, and in some rare cases, the combination of metals and a freshly done chemical job might melt the hair off your head.

No frog butt green hair for me, lol, I'll be going to the local health food shop to do my research I think. Thankfully my hair hasn't been dyed for years so I should be ahead of the game a little :0)