Start To Finish How To Henna Natural Hair

There is a salon up the street from where I live that specializes in henna. Call me the luckiest girl in the world because the thought of giving somebody 10 bucks to do all the work really appeals to me. My first henna* was done by them, I have done a few glosses after that which for me is a lot easier than a full blown henna treatment.

What I love about henna is how it makes my hair feel, I always say I have the finest hair on the planet so I search for strengthening agents as much as I can to give my strand some backbone and so they don’t feel so wimpy all the time.

If you have never henned before this is the post for you, if you are a regular henna head then comment below and tell us about your experience. For our newbies we thought it would be great to give you a step guide, start to finish on how to henna* your natural hair successfully, so keep reading.

Step one – The Purchase

The first step involves deciding what you want to use the henna for and making the purchase. Some of us just want a healthy alternative to coloring grays especially the ones that grow in the most disrespectful of places. For others we use henna as a natural hair strengthener and just benefit from the fact that our hair gets that lovely ‘henna glow’ in the sun.

Either way, make the purchase and make sure that you are buying body art quality henna, which is the purest form of henna. As always there are some unscrupulous people out there who mix henna with toxic metals and salts that aren’t good for your skin and certainly aren’t good for your hair.

The best place to find henna is at your local Indian grocery store or you can always order it online. While at the store you might just come across other Ayurvedic powders that might peek your interest as well, but before we go off on a tangent lets move on to Step Two

Step Two – Prepare the mix

When you mix your dye you need something acidic or at a pH level of about 5.5 to allow for maximum dye release. It is recommended that you use lemon juice, but some have used freshly brewed green tea or even plain water.

Whatever you use, just ensure to test your mix for the proper pH if you are not sure so that you get what you want out of your mix. The point is you want your hair to be a rich dark color rather than a bright orangey color, the richer the color the better the strengthening benefits.

Grab a bowl and a wooden spoon and add your henna* first before adding the liquid. You want to add your liquid a little at a time so that you have more of a thick paste consistency than a watery mix.

The paste will make your mix more pliable when you are ready to apply it to your hair. We aren’t ready to add it to our hair yet, we have to allow the henna* mix to sit in a cool dark place overnight. Leaving henna for a while after mixing it allows maximum ‘dye release’. This is when the active dye molecule in henna, lawsone, is liberated from the fiber and is more readily available to bond to your hair.

Step Three – The application

Listen ladies, don’t play hero with this thing, make sure your bathroom floor is covered with newspaper or old towels, wear your old tie dye shirt from seventh grade and get some good old gloves to protect your nails and hands from stains. You might think you can be careful until the first glob falls and then as you lean over to clean that up, glob two and three fall and before you know it its stains everywhere and you are in the middle of a weird looking crime scene.

If you are just adding henna to a portion of your hair then it makes sense to separate that section and cover the rest of your hair so that you do not accidentally add the dye to areas that do not need it. If you are doing your whole head, you should still section your hair into workable sections to make application easy and to ensure that you do not miss any areas.

You can use a relaxer brush to apply the henna or just get right in there with your hands coating your hair with the paste pining up sections as you go along. Once you have completed all section cover your hair with a plastic bag or wrap it with saran wrap, then wrap a towel around your head and wait for at least 3 hours. The more you henna the easier it will be for you to figure out how long you need to leave it on for. Some women can last as long as 6 hours, which is fine as well, all we are saying is, if you are gonna do all that work, make sure you keep it on long enough to reap the benefits.

Step Four – Results

Rinse your hair as much as your can with water first un-manipulated, allowing the water to remove the bulk of the dye, watch your tub water as you do this. The darker the water the more dye you have on your head, as the water lightens up, you know you are at least close to removing all the excess dye from your hair.

You will probably not get all the dye out the first time, so don’t worry if on your next wash day you may still notice some dye in your shower.

You may notice that your hair feels a bit dry, just use conditioner to soften things up first before you shampoo, so you will condition shampoo and then condition again.

Once you are done in the shower prepare a moisture based treatment for your hair and deep condition for at least 20 minutes. You can just cowash if you want to and skip the shampoo all together it really is up to you either way you want to make sure your hair is moisturized because henna* on it’s own great can be drying.

Four easy steps right? Maybe not but so worth it in the end! Just a couple of things to remember, henna is heavy so for women with fine hair you might find that it can loosen your curl pattern because of how heavy it is. You can opt to just apply the henna to your roots in this case so that you can avoid its loosening effects.

Additionally if you do not like the red tint henna gives then you can always add some indigo powder also found at your local Indian grocer which depending on the amount used will gives your hair a brown to jet black color instead.

If for any reason you do not feel like doing a full blown henna treatment, go for the gloss, this is basically henna* mixed with conditioner, the mix is a whole lot easier to apply and wash out and you also do not feel the drying effects of the powder as much as if you did a full treatment.

You didn’t think we would end this post without an actual demonstration did you? Here is Kitt51181 mixing and applying her henna:

Have you hennaed lately?