I mostly use natural products and avoid harmful chemicals which is pretty easy except when it comes to hair. I was born blonde but my hair turned to light brown and now it\’s basic brownish grayish mess. I started coloring my hair when I was 7 years old. I remember telling my parents I\’m sick of how I look, I want a change. Pretty weird from a 7 year old I know. Anyway I started with white highlights and over the year I\’ve been a brunette, a redhead, a blonde, mix of different colours and more. I\’d always dye my hair when needing of change.
In recent years I\’ve been jumping back and fourth being a brunette and a blonde. I dye my hair blonde and love it until I get sick of maintaining it and start thinking i can rock being a brunette and then I learn I can\’t. I do this over and over again, thinking I\’ll feel like myself with brown hair and that i\’ll love it. But I always end up paying a lot to get back to being blonde again. I love a light hair colour.
Anyway let\’s get to the point. Last year during first lockdown I found myself debating should I just try to only use plant-based dyes on my hair. They are all natural and even nourishing for the hair, which can\’t be said of conventional, synthetic hair dyes. The only issue is that you can\’t make your hair lighter with plant-based dyes. You can do orange, red, different shades of brown and if you are naturally blonde you can try other shades of blonde. Me loving to use only natural products, dying my hair the conventional way kinda goes against that, but I do love being blonde. I anyway decided to try to make the most of it and summer 2020 I went to a eco salon and dyed my hair reddish with plant-based dye. I liked it, it was fresh and my hair felt smooth and soft. then I got bored and tried the brown colour (see my TikTok video of the process) which I did myself at home. Don\’t use my video as a guide on how to do it though. Anyway I did like being a brunette for a bit and then unsurprisingly I started missing my blonde hair.
This is what they don\’t tell you about plant-based hair dyes. Before going through the process of using them I read some blog posts and articles about it, beacuse I like to do my research and know what i\’m in for. So after all the reseach I did you can imagine how surpsised I was when I learnt that you can\’t dye your hair with synthetic dyes without the previous plant-based dyes still making an impact on the outcome. My hairdresser told me these plant hair dyes with indigo in it are really hard to hide. Indigo soaks into your hair and sticks and then tends to tone the hair to greenish/blueish tones if you try to change the hair colour with synthetic dyes. Apparently henna also acts as a varnish on top of your natural colour which means after using plant-based dyes that have henna or indigo in them you can\’t switch to a synthetic colour and dye your hair different so easily. I was pretty surprised no one had written or talked about it in social media or blog posts. Usually my hair goes lighter really easily but this time it is harder and a longer process but thankfully I have a hairdresser whose worked with \’\’fixing\’\’ hair after plant-based dyes. She\’s good at toning the bad tones such as green to milder tones of grey which are a lot better since she can\’t make the different tones dissappear without cutting out the parts with the plant-based dye.
I am all for using plant hair dyes and embracing your natural hair tones but if you think you might want to change it up after with synthetic hair dyes, I recommend only using plant dyes without indigo or henna in it or thinking twice about it. I don\’t know does every plant-based dye stick like that or just those with indigo and henna in it. Plant dyes are better for your hair for sure, so if you like being a brunette or a redhead plant-based dyes will work fine for you.