It’s been a year and a half since I didn’t colored my hair because I wanted to give it a break, but now that I like to wear my hair long again, it bothers me that I have more and more grey hairs. Fortunately, it’s not the entire roots, but I have full on grey hairs here and there and so I wanted to cover them up. I’ve been looking into trying all kinds of natural hair colors and one of my friends told me she uses henna as hair dye and she loves how it makes the hair look. I decided between two brands that keep popping in my Facebook newsfeed and ultimately, I decided for Khadi.

Khadi may seem at first as an Indian brand, but only the ingredients are sourced from India because the products are made (or I should rather say mixed) in Germany. I thought it would take some time to be able to do a review on this hair color / hair dye, but it’s been two weeks and I already have things to say.

Packaging:

The box contains two bags. One is a bag with 100 grams of powder (the color) and a small paper bag with consumables (gloves and a hair cap).

Texture:

This is how the powder looks like, it’s like a brown-greenish mess. it depends on the color, of course. I had the shade Natural Hazel, but other shades are black or red. There are also some blonde shades, but honestly I don’t think they work on hair that is not already blonde. I used the entire bag because I colored all my hair, but you can pour just as much as you need into a bowl if you want to touch up the roots.

Ingredients:

Indigofera Tinctoria (Indigo) ● Lawsonia Inermis (Henna) ● Emblica Officinalis (Amla) ● Eclipta Alba (Bhringaraj) ● Azadirachta Indica (Neem).

As you can see, this is only a mix of plant-based powders, so there are 100% only natural ingredients in this.

Price and accessibility:

Khadi products are available only online as far as I can tell. I got mine from one of my favorite online natural beauty shops, for about 12 euros. It is a bit more expensive than the usual drugstore box hair dye (usually even the best ones are sold for about 7-8 euros).

My overall opinion:

First, I should tell you how to use henna hair dyes. First, the powder is mixed with warm water (not boiling or anything, but it should be hot). On the box it says to have it at 60 C degrees, but I don’t have a water thermometer, so I just use hot water from the tap. I mixed it until I obtained a thick paste, that could be applied with a brush. Some people prefer to use their hands to spread the paste, but I prefer to use a hair brush especially for the roots and then I just use the hands to spread it on the entire length of the hair.

The paste smells really bad. Honestly, it reminds me of cow poo. If you don’t know how that smells, you’re lucky. If you do, well this will be a good reminder. The paste is applied on clean hair (I washed mine a day before) and you leave it on for at least 60 minutes, but it depends how dark you want the color to be. I left it on for two hours. It’s important to put a hair cap on and a towel on top because if the paste dries out, it will be very difficult to remove since it becomes very hard. The plastic cap and the towel help to create some moisture for the hair, so the paste doesn’t turn hard as concrete.

The worst part is to wash it off because it smells even worse after you leave it on for two hours and it’s moist. At that point, I was sure that I didn’t want to use such a hair color ever again. The food part is that it doesn’t stain the skin at all, or the towels or the sink (or shower or where you prefer to wash your hair). It does stain clothes, so make sure to wear some clothes that you don’t regret if they stain. It also doesn’t stain when you wet your hair or you sweat or you get caught up in the rain, so no worries about those types of incidents.

The end result is amazing. The colors is really even and beautiful, the hair is shiny and it just looks healthy. You have to rinse the dye with water only and not to use shampoo for at least 48 hours. That’s not a problem, because I find that it did help with my scalp because the hair doesn’t become oily so fast.

Now, the negative part is that it’s been exactly two weeks since I colored my hair and I noticed today that one of the stubborn grey hairs that I have in the front line starts to show. So, if you wash your hair rather frequently (like I do, because it’s summer and I’m sweating like a pig roasting on the fire), the hair dye does wash off. It’s a shame really, because I like how my hair looks and the color does look natural, with nice natural highlights.

I don’t know if I want to color my hair so frequently because for one, it’s expensive and second, it takes a lot of time to do it. However, this mixture of natural powders does work like a treatment for the hair and scalp and I love how my hair looks (also, there’s a lot less hair fall when I wash my hair), so maybe I will still stick with this and I will do only touch ups from now on. However, I would have liked for the color to last for at least 3 weeks, not just 2. That’s the only negative aspect of this natural hair color because even the time it takes to apply it and the smell is worth it for the end result.

However, I would recommend it if you don’t want to use traditional hair dyes because any hair dye does damage the hair at some level, no matter how expensive it is. This hair dye not only doesn’t damage it, but I noticed that it also helps improve the scalp and the hair. My hair is less oily, less frizzy and it looks shiny and healthy. I also use a hair oil from Khadi once a week, but more on that in a later blog post.

So, for now, I do plan to stick with henna (or should I say henna and other plant powders) for my hair but when I’ll have more grey hair I don’t think that I will be able to keep up with the maintenance.