Yogurt - It Does Work on Henna

[shadowclaw]

At least for me!

After my last henna or two, the first six inches or so of my hair became extremely dark. Traditionally, I've always had slightly darker roots than my length, but as a blonde, the roots weren't too dark. However, with henna, the roots are much darker now. It's especially pronounced when I put my hair into a bun... it looks like I have brown hair with a fake red bun. I attribute this darkening to two things. 1) the first several inches of hair are light years healthier than my chemically damaged length and the henna sticks to it differently, and 2) I have 3 to 4 inches of virgin hair under my henna, followed by a few inches of chemically lightened hair that was pretreated with coconut oil before dying, and thus escaped damage and acts like virgin hair.

So I had three choices before me. 1) continue hennaing as usual and have two toned hair, 2) dye over my length to make it match my roots, or 3) lighten my roots to match my length.

I decided to go with option three, but I wasn't about to try to bleach my hair, so I opted for more natural methods. I first tried lemon juice and conditoner, which did nothing. Then I tried warm mineral oil. Also nothing. I used honey, EVOO, and cinnamon for about 8 hours, and still nothing, although I think it may have lightened my blonde roots a little. So next I decide to strand test household peroxide for an hour. That did nothing. I tried 10 volume cream that my mom has, and that did nothing. I even tried 30 volume cream on a section of hair for an hour, and I still got nothing.

I was considering doing an all out bleach on a section to see if that did anything, when I remembered yogurt. So I went to the store and got some Stoneyfield plain yogurt. I mixed it with a bit of EVOO and plopped it on my whole length and head for two hours and rinsed. I followed with V05 kiwi lime squeeze shampoo mixed with a little baking soda. Somewhere during all that rinsing and washing, orange did come out of my hair, but not much. However, once the hair dried, it did look more orange, and I now have some orange highlights around my root area.

So it seems that the yogurt didn't work 100% evenly, or perhaps some of my hairs just didn't have as much henna built up on them. However, there is a definite difference in color. I currently have another yogurt treatment on my head that I will be washing out shortly. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take some before photos, and I don't have any pictures that will match the lighting conditions of the after photos I took. But here are the afters by a sunny window:

You can see pretty well in this one how my hair gets lighter as you move down.


And here is a picture comparing my ends to my roots (you can also see the blonde coming in). Note the orangey-red hairs on the left side. They weren't there before.


And this is one with flash. This is very close in color to what my hair looked like before the treatment.

[truwave]

It is supposed to be very conditioning for your hair too, so bonus! I've never heard of yogurt lightening hair before. Do you have any sources for this information? I was thinking of adding yogurt to my henna, but lightening is not an effect I'm going for.

[Smokering]

Hmm. I do henna glossing on my roots by mixing the henna with yoghurt and it still stains. I've never noticed yoghurt-honey treatments lightening my hair either. I feel your pain though - my hair is way darker/redder at the top. It's partly because my ends are sunbleached/damaged, partly because I used cheap compound henna for ages and only discovered BAQ henna for rot touchups a year ago. I could always do a BAQ hennaing on my length to match it up a bit, but I don't mind the two-tonedness. I never wear my hair down anyway, and up in buns and things I think it makes my hair look natural. Maybe I only think that because I've always had naturally streaky hair, but hey. It doesn't have the 'fake bun" look... I'm pretty sure..?

[Drynwhyl]

I have the same problem! Can anyone enlighten me how does this work? I have tried honey and cinnamon twice with no good results. I'd really like to lighten my roots ;\

[shadowclaw]

I got the yogurt idea from Nightshade's henna article. It was listed as one of the possible ways to remove henna from hair. I also found a few threads that mentioned using yogurt to remove henndigo and thought it might be worth a shot on straight henna. I don't think it is actually a lightener (although the EVOO is), but just something that leeches henna from your hair.

Unforunately, it is a very slow process! I did four yogurt/EVOO treatments and only went maybe a shade or two lighter overall, with orange highlights popping up. I'm still quite two-toned

[Nightshade]

This did work for me to a limited extent. It did pull out some henna, but there seemed to be only so much it would do, and after my third treatment or so nothing else seemed to happen