The Permanent Cosmetic Hair Dye (Vegetable Dyes, Metallic Dyes)

July 20, 2008 By: arlene Category: Asia, Beauty, Cosmetic, Hair Care, Jewelry, Massage, Nail Care, Skin Care, UK

There are three kinds of permanent hair colourants: vegetable dyes such as henna, metallic dyes such as those used to gradually cover grey hair, and the aniline dyes or oxidation tints, which include most of the colourants used professionally in salons.

The Vegetable Dyes

Henna is the best-known, since its use dates back thousands of years. Taken from the Lawsonia plant, which is indigenous to Africa and Asia, henna varies in colour depending on which country it comes from. It can be strong orange in colour, as Moroccan henna, or a deep red, as the henna that comes from Iran — the most sought-after in the world. The plant is harvested, dried in the sun, and then crushed into a greenish powder, which is what one puts on the hair. It coats the hair shaft’s cuticle a reddish colour.

The standard way of using henna is to add hot water to make a creamy paste and then put this on the hair and leave it for up to one hour. Daniel Galvin, Britain’s top colourist, who is an expert in the use of herbal hair colourings, uses a different method and gets beautiful results. He adds hot black coffee to the powder, mixes it into a paste, and then adds the juice of a fresh lemon and the yolk of an egg. The coffee brings out the depth and richness of the hair colour, the acid in the lemon accelerates the reddening, and the egg yolk keeps the mixture moist and easy to manoeuvre through the hair. Sometimes he also adds some 10 per cent peroxide to lighten the whole effect.

Henna will give brunette and black hair a lovely reddish glow —the darker your hair the more chestnut is the effect. Lighter hair goes Titian. Henna does not do well on mousy hair, as the resulting tone is usually an unattractive orange. It should never be used over a tint, is no good on grey hair, and can be very drying to any hair, so it is better to avoid it if your hair is already dry. Many of the henna products now on the market claim to have henna of many colours, brown, black, blonde etc. They contain metallic chemicals, which coat the hair and are troublemakers if later you want to tint or wave it. Avoid them. The only colour of henna you should use is red which in its natural, powder form, is a pale green.

Camomile, another herbal colourant, has a gentle lightening effect on hair and is wonderful for ‘sun-streaking’ blonde and light brown hair. But you must be patient, for it takes several applications and plenty of time to work. Its advantage over other bleaching methods is that, like the sun, it never brings a brassy or yellow tone to hair. Camomile-bleached hair looks exactly like natural hair with sun streaks. Even a professional colourist can’t tell the difference. It is not useful for brown hair or dark hair, but it will gently lighten red and works beautifully on all shades of natural blonde. The herb also adds shine to the hair. There are two methods of using it. You can make a camomile rinse to use after each shampoo (as the last rinse) by taking 2 tablespoons of dried camomile flowers and tossing them into a pint of boiling water. Simmer for fifteen minutes, strain, cool and use as a final rinse (you can make more at once and refrigerate it for up to ten days). You leave the rinse in your hair and towel it dry. The alternative way is faster in its effect. I devised it as a way of making use of the very delicate British sunlight to lighten hair. I do it about three times each summer to keep my naturally blonde hair bright. Add one cup of dried camomile flowers to half a pint of boiling water for fifteen minutes. Cool. Simmer and strain. Add the juice of a fresh lemon to the infusion plus two tablespoons of a rich cream conditioner. Put it on dry hair, comb through, and then go and sit in the sun (with a sunscreen on your face, of course) until it dries. Finally, shampoo and condition as usual. You can use this method whenever you are going to be out in the sun for a few hours and simply let the mixture dry on the hair. Your hair will be in beautiful condition by the time you shampoo it, at the end of the day.

Daniel has several other herbal tricks he often uses (in fact, he even mixes herbs with proprietary hair colourants for special effects, something no woman should ever do at home). For instance, he boils saffron root in water for thirty minutes and then dilutes his solution to whatever strength is required for use as a water rinse on blonde hair. It gives a vibrant, canary-yellow tone. He uses an infusion of marigolds as a final rinse to give blonde hair delicate yellow tones, and he relies on sage to darken greying hair by adding herbs to a pint of water ( the amount of sage depends on the darkening effect required), boiling for fifteen minutes, straining and using as a final rinse.

All herb treatments except perhaps henna are gentle and not intended for drastic changes in colour.

The Metallic Dyes

These you have no doubt heard about — they are supposed to be the magical cure for greying hair and are often called colour restorers. They deposit metallic dyes and salts of various metals such as manganese, cobalt, silver, and copper on your hair shaft, which gradually darken the hair. But hair dyed this way does not perm well, nor is its condition very good, as this kind of dye tends to make the hair look a dull, flat colour. Metallic dyes have to be removed completely, with the use of a special preparation, several days before waving or tinting with a permanent colourant. Because of their many disadvantages, I think they are best avoided.

Bleaching

Hair bleaching is done with hydrogen peroxide, which affects the hair shaft physically and chemically. Combined with an alkaline compound such as ammonia, it opens the imbrications of the cuticle so that it can penetrate the hair shaft, and then inside the cortex it chemically oxidizes the melanin pigments, fading their colour, thus bleaching out the hair in the process. There are products on the market that are simple bleachers, called lighteners, and they consist of peroxide together with ammonia. Sometimes a ‘drabber’ is added in order to remove the red highlights that come from bleaching darker hair. Bleaching forms an important part of the other permanent tints, which also rely on oxidation processes to work.

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