Weighing In On the Hair Dye Conundrum. Do You Color Yours?
A couple of days ago we got a note from our friends at Well + Good NYC, one of my favorite sites (which you should bookmark, if you have not already). They said they were doing a piece on hair dye, and wanted our take.
I was delighted to weigh in. From the article, which you should read in full:
Henna-based and vegetable hair dyes are a growing market. “But the problem is that they suck—which might not be their fault,” says Siobhan O’Connor, co-author of No More Dirty Looks, a book and website dedicated to non-toxic beauty. “The real issue is that, for a dye to actually work, some heavy-duty chemistry is in order. We’re asking the product to be foolproof, consistent, stable, and effective. Nature hasn’t—and I suspect won’t—find a way to replicate those factors in a dye.”
(Why do I say things like “they suck” in interviews?)
Anyway, those of you who have read the book (and it seems like a lot of you have!) probably already know about the time I tried low-tox highlights and ended up looking like a skunk. So what do I do now?
I wrote that I intended to continue highlighting my hair on occasion—that it would be the last bastion of my formerly dirty life. But then life got in the way, and at a certain point I realized it had been nine months since I’d touched it—and I was loving the look. I’m fond of the faded-out, lighter-at-the-bottom, rooty thing anyway. But then life got in the way again, and at some point before Christmas, I felt like I needed a little…something. So off I went to the salon for a pick-me-up in the form of “no more than 10! promise?” highlights.
The most important thing about any beauty risk is knowing the facts, which W + G did a great job explaining. So my advice, for those who still want to color is this: “Space it out and know that you’re taking a calculated risk. There are no 100 percent safe dyes that I would recommend using. So be real about that if you’re going to do it anyway.”
What about you? Knowing what you do about hair dye, do you still color your hair?
After coloring my hair (mostly darker) for over 20 years, I finally stepped away from the bottle as of August ‘09. While the texture has improved noticeably (thank you Ctonics!), the color.is.so.boring. My boyfriend tells me I need to learn to love my natural color, but newsflash, short of pulling a Sinead, how do you love unflattering mousey brown locks?? Not a day goes by that I dont think of making an appointment, and I’m starting to think the satisfaction of having chocolate brown locks is worth the risk. But then again, that’s a pretty huge indicator of how powerful vanity & ego can be.
For now, I’ll continue my silly daily struggle & try to be happy that I’m making a responsible & healthy decision for myself, others and the planet. Hey, that last sentence made me feel pretty damn good!
Admittedly, my personal experience with henna is limited, but that combined with my friends’ experiences, I don’t think that henna is a poor alternative to commercial dyes. The exact range of colors available, and the amount of prep-work, and time on hair is more, but it yields very satisfying color results. Oh, the biggest drawback, I suppose is the inability to go lighter.
I’ve had blonde, black with blue, black with silver, purple and dark brown hair. I love the options that come with conventional dyes. I do not love how they fry my hair. It’s also gets very expensive to maintain and for that, I haven’t dyed my hair for a few years. Like Mimi, I have mousy brown – yeuck!
To compensate, I will be buying kanekalon wigs. (I’m also going to shave my head and donate my hair so it’ll give me more options for lengths too.) I’ve got one wig picked out that is black with purple. Perfect compromise I think.
I’ve never colored my hair and never plan on it. It makes me sad that my friends continue to dye their hair and so often!
I started dying my hair when I was about 13, and it has been MANY different colors, my favorite being a bright plum. When I cut my dreads off about 5 years ago I decided that I would let it grow in natural, bc it was prematurely greying and I didn’t want to start getting caught up in that dye-it-every-month-or-look-like-a-skunk cycle, then wind up being one of those old ladies with jet black hair and lopsided fuschia lipstick. Now I’m probably 25% grey, which looks awesome with my dark brown/black hair. There are some streaks around the front, and a scattering through the rest of my hair. It’s flattering and unique, and I’ve received compliments from all sorts of people. I have no desire to dye my hair, clean alternatives or not.
I just can’t give up highlights, my natural color is too blah, but, I stretch it out as long as I can between salon visits. I’m fine with the darker roots look, but when it gets to be closer to dark top half its time to head to the salon. I end up getting highlights about every 5 months.
I’ve never coloured my hair with a permanent dye. My attempts to make my own color look brighter ended with Davines Alchemic shampoo and mask. Now I’ am satisfied with my natural color, but I’am only 25 and have only two first grey hairs. Maybe I’ll change my mind later, but now I’am sure that strands of non-coloured grey hair will come as a disaster. Imagine dark brown hair and grey, non-even strands all over…brr. I’ll look for some healthier coloring alternative, but, yes, I’ll be coloring my grey strands.
http://www.hennaforhair.com
There’s a spot that explains using cassia and indigo for colors other than red. It took some experimenting to get my dye mixture just right, but I like that my hair color is what I want with nothing I can’t get out of my kitchen (besides the henna itself). Plus the condition is so much better! I haven’t trimmed my hair in a year, no split ends, and my hair tangles less than it ever has in my whole life.
The only downside is that a naturally darker color cannot go lighter. There is no natural way to bleach your hair. You can give it golden tones and gloss, but you cannot lighten it.
Like Mimi, I have colored my hair for a long, long time. Sometimes I’d let it grow up to my chin without any dye and then do something radical. I just LOVE coloring my hair, eventhough I’ve had allergies and such problems in the past and have always been aware of the heavy chemestry involved in the process. Henna sucks, in my opinion.
Right now I have let my hair grow like 4 inches without any dye, but today I’m going to the hair colorist to have some highlights. To his amazement I told him I don’t want any of the stuff on my roots. Let’s see how it works.
PS. It’s been a week without soap for me and I still miss it!
I have a really, truly, seriously ugly natural hair colour. It’s an unattractive mousy brown, and I have tried many times to love it, but have never been successful. Needless to say, I’ve been dying my hair pretty routinely for about 10 years now. I’ve tried to stop and right now my colour is pretty close to my natural one (but a much prettier tone) so it make sme feel a bit less guilty. I guess I’m just too vain to stop, regardless of the chemicals and risks. Is that bad? :P
Thanks so much for sharing your super informed two cents (and the word “suck”) with our readers. There are so many ways the ladies of NMDL keep it real! I’m getting lots of emails from people today who swear their at-home coloring kits that use the word “natural” in the name are just that. Too bad all of them so far list suspected toxins on the ingredient deck on the back of the box. Just because it’s “ammonia-free” or “peroxide-free” doesn’t mean it’s free of other potential carcinogens.
My spouse not-so-jokingly tells me I can stop coloring my hair when he is dead. It is true, the grey does seriously age you. I know that if I let my grey grow out, I would look about 15 years older or like some of the old hippies here in my lovely coastal city and neither is a plus. No offense to anyone, but it just isn’t for me. My skin is too pale to wash me out in a pool of grey hair.
I’m starting to go gray, which freaked me out since I am in my 20s. So, in an attempt to fight nature, I bought some brown hair dye and did it myself. Apparently I have a lot of red undertones in my hair since my hair ended up vibrantly red! It took two salon “tints” to get my hair closer to its natural brown shade and now it is all dry and crunchy, and still a bit red at the ends. I learned a valuable lesson and in the end have learned to accept the grays. After all, a few grays in a head of healthy hair looks better than an even-colored but damaged head of hair! Last week I noticed a few new grays, and I was so proud of myself, I just shrugged and said “oh well”.
I’ve dyed my hair a handful of times, though the most recent time I considered it I ended up staring down the hair dye packages for a half an hour and decided I couldn’t do it. It’s funny you mention highlights- the reason I want to dye my hair is that I have naturally occurring reddish-blond highlights that just look bizarre and artificial in my dark, dark brown hair. They’ve only cropped up in the past few years, and I have no idea where they came from, considering they’ve still stuck around during the winter. Oh well, I suppose! I’d rather have some funny looking highlights then cover my already sensitive scalp and hair with chemicals!
I stopped dying my hair over a year ago because I decided to just go gray and not fight it. Turns out, I have a nice shiny brown color and wondered why I was dying it all this time!
Oh, the transformational invocations that hair dye brings forth! Anyone who has dyed their hair knows the anticipatory sensations of lingering close to the clock with muck on one’s head awaiting the external chimera of HAIR. I have dyed my hair a bazillion colours. Currently, all I do with my reasonably dark hair is soak the ends in lemon juice and head into the sun. It renders excellent beach hair that looks quite genuine. I will then put henna on select strands for some red glow.
YEP.
I used to dye my hair the really fun colors- green (due to the cut at the time it looked like chopped spinach), blue, purple, pink, sometimes all of the above. And then for a year or two I would dye my hair a darker brown with some reddish tints. Then it got too expensive…at which point I re-discovered that I get natural highlights from the sun every single summer. Like the difference is dramatic and people would ask me if I had died my hair. Usually they fade by the end of October. So that’s been fun. I don’t think I’d go back to dyeing because I am a lazy, lazy, lazy (broke), lazy person and it is too much bother.
Henna is actually really effective as long as you’re not trying to lighten your hair. Mix it was cassia, indigo, amla, or buxus for various shades ranging from blond to black. I started using it when I got tired of my dyed red hair. I used henna/indigo/amla to get back to my natural dark brown. Two things suck about it, though…you have to leave it on for a really long time, and removal is pain in the ass. Hennaforhair – a fantastic resource – sells some things that are supposed to make henna easier to rinse out, which I’m considering buying for next time. The results are fantastic, though, so I’m willing to stick with it, since I doubt I’ll ever be ready to let my grays out.
As for naturally lightening hair, http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/index.php has a recipe using honey. I haven’t tried it, but the pictures look promising.
The following link was on Yahoo today:
http://health.yahoo.net/articles/cancer/what-causes-cancer-7-strange-cancer-claims-explained
Could it be that we are all just getting a little too worked up about how dangerous these products (hair dye, for example) are…?
Are some people being a little cynical and making money off people’s fears?
I have always been wishy washy about it!
I didn’t start dying my hair till I was in my mid 20’s. I never was very good about the up keep so for the majority of time I’ve got roots.
I probably will not be coloring my hair again (at least for a long while) No future plans anyway for trips to the salon in the near future.
I do have a question though! What you do recommend about hair washing at the salon? I do not have a salon near by that uses natural/organic products. I have finally broke free (8 months ago) and been saved by clean ingredient shampoo (I’m working my way down to the no-poo.) Do you recommend saying no shampoo when I go into get a trim/cut?
Gray hair is a cruel joke. I’ll be dying mine this weekend!
I’m 29 & half of my bangs are grey. I’m letting the color grow all the way out of my hair (I haven’t dyed it since July). Pretty sold on the idea of all-natural hair color at this point, especially since I am shampooing only 2x a week and noticing a great texture and shine on my un-dyed hair bits. I am going to try to see if I might like my natural hair color more now that it won’t be drowning in shampoos and styling products. Working with an excellent hairdresser to achieve an optimal haircut has been one of the key factors in straying away from hair products. I’m trying to work with what I’ve got instead of insisting on changing it.
I actually have huge success with pure henna. I buy mine for 7-8 dollars from Whole Foods. In summer, I usually lighten my roots with lemon so the color will be brighter. In winter I just put the henna on my roots with no prep. My hair, which is a dishwater brown, turns a darker shade of red, but I still like the way it looks. I wash my hair twice a month at most, and just clean it with water and a comb the rest of the time. The color holds up really well, but I usually dye it once a month because of the roots, and that does refresh it a bit. It also leaves me hair very soft and lovely, and eliminates my dandruff. I am sorry it does not work for you! I think the key is to get 100% henna plant. Some of the “henna” for sale has other stuff mixed in – sketchy!
Beka, I also have a lot of red that pops out. A stylist trained to color my own hair many years ago. She also advised me to avoid anything that says “warm” and to make sure to use tones that say “ash” in the description to avoid the red cast as much as possible. So, light ash brown, medium ash brown or dark ash brown might be colors that would be more attractive on you. I used to have to mix medium ash brown and dark ash brown to get to my natural color. The same thing goes for blonds to avoid the brassy tints.
Luckily I can say I was blessed with hair a color that, “some women would pay $100s for,” according to a friend in the hair industry. Even in my teens when I dreamed about having a more “normal” hair color I always feared the dye. I’d seen too many attempts go drastically wrong. My hair is also extremely dry, so I also worried about what the chemicals would do to the texture. The closest I ever got to dying my hair was Color Enhancing Shampoo made by Garden Botanika back in the 90s.
Now I’m all grown up and totally proud of my natural color, so you will probably never, ever find me anywhere near a dye. Although I may be rethinking things if gray starts to set in too early.
I colored my hair for years – all of junior high, high school, college, and the first year post-college. My last dye job had already mostly faded out when I hopped on board the all-natural train and, at first, I missed the rich auburn-chestnut-darker-awesome brown color my hair was when I was dyeing it… But now, 2 years later, it doesn’t even cross my mind anymore. My natural hair color (which I hadn’t seen in nearly 10 years) is what it is and I don’t even think about the other options. Because this IS the only option. I love it!
I’ve dyed my hair at an organic salon, where my hair first was detoxed with mexican clay (?) and then colored with dye from plants. It covered my greys pretty good, but the treatment was time consuming and quite expensive.
Now I use Tints Of Nature, wich is not 100% organic, but really a great way of getting rid of the grey and adding some shine.
http://www.tintsofnatureusa.com/index.html
John Masters is said to be launching a safe hair colorsystem for salons this spring. That sounds exciting!
/Hannah
I’ve been dying my hair since I was very young. Last winter I decided I had enough after I burned my scalp and dealt with hair loss from a cheap box dye. I don’t understand my past obsession with coloring anymore. I finally have my natural hair color, and as it turns out, it suits me much better than all of the dyes I ever experimented with.
I’m 52 and have never colored my hair. I work with women 10 years younger than me that have been coloring their hair for years to cover the grey. I only have a few grey hairs at this time in my dark brown hair. I wondered to myself if the reason they were going grey in their late 30’s and early 40’s was because of the chemical dyes being place on their hair? Just a thought. I also hated the thought of paying to have someone “touch up” the color when the hair grew out. I’m just too cheap! I have admired older women all my life who have had natural looking grey hair, especially those that have it pulled in a ponytail streaming down their backs.
Up until about a year and a half ago I had been dying my hair for the last 10 years. I have had it pretty much any natural color you can think of, in quite an array of combination’s. Then I decided to stop the madness and attempt to go all natural, so I dyed it for the last time as close to what I thought my natural color was as possible and let it grow out (I also cut it pretty short to help with the process, which I’m LOVING). Like many of your posts explain, my natural color is that mousy brown too. But I’m learning to like it! My hair is so much healthier now its kind of amazing. The texture is very different too. It shins and is lustrous all on it own, even with little or no product! Some days I think about trying henna to deepen the shade, but for now I’m just embracing the al naturale! And you know what…it feels good!!!
I have highlighted my mousy dishwater dirty blonde on an off forever. But for about two years inbetween, I was a vivid red head. It was really, really beautiful and incredibly healthy. I had managed to find a salon that uses all natural hair colors. The way they explained it, it was more natural and healthy than henna. I have no idea what was in the dye, but it was always slightly different, it was intensely colored, and it smelled GREAT. She always washed my hair with a totally excellent line of hair products (Sanoll from Austria, more organic is not possible) and closed the cuticles with a cold water apple vinegar rinse. It was not expensive.
I slightly regretted going blonde again afterwards (for my wedding) and the process of getting most of the red out was indeed hell on my poor hair. I might do the color at that salon again if I get pregnant.
Henna does not suck.
After stumbling onto hennaforhair.com I was convinced and decided to take the henna plunge. I’ve had almost every hair colour, so I’m very familiar with different results–both in a salon and from the drugstore.
I need you to know that HENNA IS AWESOME! Not only is my hair a beautiful colour, it is shiny, doesn’t require styling product, and blow dries in 2/3 of the time it used to. Using henna, cassia, and indigo can give you an impressive range of colours; however its true that you can’t go lighter.
Although I’ve switched my hair products to “naturals”, I still shampoo every day and the colour stays strong for a month until I reapply for the roots. I bought enough henna for four months at a halal grocery store for $4. Just make sure you buy the kind that you would use for body art, and not a mystery mixture that looks like a box of regular hair dye.
Just before Christmas I had my head shaved to a number 4 and 3 all over
as I am now allergic to hair dye
the shave took all the dyed hair in one go so I was left with my own silver grey stubble
now have it short and funky and I really like it
can no longer wash it “normally” as am now reacting badly to shampoo too
so I rinse it every day
and I have super soft silver hair
I’d been dyeing my hair for so many years, I didn’t even know what color my natural hair was any more. I’ve been blonde, dark brown, highlighted, and red. I used henna for years to be a redhead and it was fabulous. I can see an issue if you want a subtle tone or something, but if you just want bright red hair, it’s hard to beat. Plus, it doesn’t fade like chemical dye.
Of course, it takes forever and it’s ridiculously messy. Plus, it smells AWFUL. But it does work.
I stopped dyeing my hair about 6 months ago, when I decided to clean up my beauty act. I also stopped using shampoo and conditioner. My hair has never been more healthy or gotten more compliments (backed by weird looks when I say I don’t wash it). The red is growing out, though, so it doesn’t really look so hot at the roots, which are now quite long. I’ve been contemplating picking up a box of dye that’s just closer to my natural color, to ease the growing out process, but I really don’t want to put all the chemicals on my head. It’s a tough decision, but I’ll probably just suffer through.
I tried henna for the first time recently and loved it. I have dishwater brown hair but very fair skin, so the red I got with henna looked really natural. I’d always avoided hair dyes because the chemicals made me uneasy, but when I started seeing greys at twenty-eight, I decided that enough was enough. I ordered a henna bar from Lush, and I’m really pleased with the results (see?)
@Loretta: Until recently, I’d never dyed my hair, and I started getting greys in my late twenties. My sister started greying in her early twenties, and also never used hair dye. It’s all about the luck of the genetic draw.
I’ve had a couple perms in my life and dyed all my hair a couple times. Outside of that, I’ve highlighted my hair probably 3 or 4 times.
About 6 years ago, I decided I didn’t want to marinade my head in chemicals that made my lungs hurt and my eyes water. I’ve not dyed my hair in any way since.
I’ve come to love my hair. It feels soft and silky, and it’s the most delightful auburn color… If I look closely, there are at least 4 different, shiny colors in my hair.
Can’t get that out of a bottle!
Since 2003, I’ve been darkening my hair to black (It’s normally a dark brown that gets golden tips and auburn highlights in the summer), wanting the red back, I had red highlights put in my hair for the first time in Nov ‘07. I had also gone from very long locks to a very short layered cut. My hair was light, curly, and voluminous. Shortly after (probably a month or so), my then-boyfriend mentioned that I looked bald. I didn’t put much thought into it, he can say off-handed things like this often.
About three months later, after my hair had grown out, I was brushing my teeth when I noticed I could see the outline of my scalp in the mirror. I had, indeed, lost a lot of hair. In patches…where the red was.
Seeing as it was my first time lightening my hair, I didn’t know what to expect. The lady had dyed my hair with too much bleach, left me under the dryer for over an hour (close to 90 minutes) and then proceeded to straighten my hair without any protector. I’d never straightened my hair, so I was unaware of needing something on my hair.
Since then, I didn’t dye my hair until this year. I’ve dyed my hair (salon-dyes, no bleach, very light use of peroxide) black and dark brown only. I only now have some baby hairs growing in, they are very soft, very thin, and very fragile, so the dark helps make them more noticeable and me look less like my balding father. This is so hard for me to accept because my hair used to be so thick that those huge fabric-covered scunci’s that were so popular in the 90’s only fit around my hair twice. Now, I can use a baby hair tie, and wrap it multiple times.
I’ve had the Keratin treatment done, and it helped my hair grow tremendously, but is expensive. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.
I’ve been really interested in natural hair dyes, b/c I love the way my hair came out when I dyed it black underneath my beautiful chestnut brown – except it was using a chemical dye! :( That was before I read “Poisoned Nation” by Loretta Schwartz-Noble and really got involved with the Environmental Working Group. Now I can’t bring myself to do it, but thanks to @Bibi’s encouragement I’m totally down to try henna!
Henna is the best! I’ve been using it for almost six months now and I love it. I really wish the author would have gone to some henna websites to see just how many of us have converted over to natural plant hair tints. I never dyed my hair until the grays started to come out. (I really wish younger women would stop dying their hair if they aren’t gray or at least, use henna type of dyes only) I was lucky to have an unusual and gorgeous golden strawberry blonde hair but as a younger middle-aged woman I was/am not ready to be gray. Unfortunately, it has been difficult to get my color in a box and I have had to mix reds with blondes. The good news is that I checked the toxicity level of my last chemical dye and was quite unhappy with the score of 9 out of 10 versus henna which is only a 1 out of 10 on the toxicity scale. This was enough to get me to research henna and do a trial on a wad of hair I had collected from my hair brush. I strongly recommend women do a test before using henna products so you can get the color intensity you want. I have been using a pre-mix from Light Mountain Naturals in Light Red and am very happy with the results. (a mix like Light Mountain Naturals is good for beginners) My hair is shiny with beautiful natural-looking highlights (unlike the highlight created by hairstylists with chemical dyes). My scalp is no longer red from the irritation of chemical dyes and sodium laurel sulfite shampoo. The henna and cassia mix covers my light/white/gray better than the chemical dyes did, however, it does not lighten my increasingly darkening underneath roots and one day, I might change henna colors but for now, the color is great, and the underneath hair is not very noticeable. It’s a shame that the comment of “henna sucks” was made without reporting on the large number of women who love it and will never go back to chemical dyes!