Henna Haters Unite!

[redtea]

I wouldn't call myself a henna hater. I did manage to get a really nice color out of it towards the end of my using it by mixing henna and cassia, but it never felt right on me. I don't like myself in darker hair, whether it's red or brown, and henna has a very unnatural shine to it, it almost looks metallic. It always made me a bit self-conscious and nobody ever really complimented me on the color - I only ever got a few strange looks along with someone calling it "interesting", someone asking what the heck I'd done (former boss - that was pleasant), and someone saying something to the effect that they'd like red hair like mine, but more natural.

I spent a LONG time trying everything to get rid of or change the color. I soaked my hair in lemon juice (lightened it and damaged it), dyed it dark brown (brown faded out), dyed it nearly black (black faded out).. and then eventually I got all over highlights and got rid of as much of it as I could. My whole experience with that is here: http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/...ad.php?t=24136

My final thoughts on henna?

If you've bleached your hair, don't use it. It'll come out bozo orange and people on the streets will call you "carrot top" (yeah, that really happened to me).

Henna looks much better on natural, non color treated hair. My roots always looked much better than any of my color treated length. If you have dark blonde hair like me and feel like you have to try henna, stick to a henna/cassia mix. I think my ratio at the end was something like 1/3 henna to 2/3 cassia.

Henna looks really nice on naturally dark hair. I've seen it in person a few times and thought it looked beautiful.

Be sure you have a lot of patience and are willing to chop off many inches and cause a lot of damage to your hair when you decide to get rid of it.

Oh, and it's so much easier if you just decide to accept your natural coloring. It's nice not having to dye my eyebrows every two weeks.

[Nightshade]

Oh I'm sure I could have gotten a better quality of henna if I'd done more research, and my application methods could probably have been better, though I did wrap it as instructed, then put a towel over that. However, this thread was a call to henna haters, which I am even if it's my own fault for making mistakes, so I'm not sure why henna lovers are flocking in to extol the virtues of henna. There have been many threads for that already.

I'm sure it's in part because a portion of the henna horror stories are user error, and in that case, it really isn't the fault of henna, though one is perfectly within their rights to hate it for whatever reason.

Maybe I've just seen too many threads where it's "OMG you mean henna is RED and it DOESN'T WASH OUT??!!!111" to feel that too often people just jump right into henna without reading and are pissed about things (like the red color and permanency) which are clearly spelled out all over the internet.

In your case I'm confident that you're one of a number of people whose hair reacts poorly to henna. Dry hair that breaks off happens, and that, imho, is a legit reason to declare one's hatred for the stuff.

I guess what I'm trying to say is there's two camps- one where henna legitimately didn't work for one's hair, and one camp where (and you may remember this) we had someone extolling their hatred for henna because they mixed it too thick, put it on dry hair, it couldn't be worked in, started to dry, so the person flipped out and raked it out with a brush

One is a more fair reason for declaring hatred than the other in my mind. Much as I love the stuff, I'll be the first to say it's a disaster waiting to happen (or one that did happen) for, I'd wager, more people than not.

[Dreams_in_Pink]

People trust boxed products way too much IMO. I've seen boxed %100 pure coconut oil with all the certificates and stuff on the label, but oil was in liquid state at room temperature. I also saw liquid castor oil which also claimed to be %100 pure.

The henna i bought was for body application. It was sold in a herbs store (whatever you call it). It wasn't boxed or mixed specially for hair, it was meant to be applied on the body. You need to take my word on it because hennaeing IS very popular here in Turkey, way more popular than US. End of that story.

On another note, yes, i read everything online about hennaeing hair. I did exactly what was advised (like lemon juice, i knew it would intensify color and aid in dye release. I wanted red red hair) and I knew it was going to oxidize and go darker in time. But nowhere online did i read that henna might thicken strands and make it less manageable while aggravating dandruff.

Yes, it was my fault that i did not do a strand test. Shoot me for that one, but keep in mind that it's nearly impossible to hear a word about side effects henna might cause.

Bottom line is that i will not henna my hair again. The reason i started this thread is to hear if someone else got bad results from henna the way i did, and let them share their failure stories. I'm not asking for help about henna (there are many threads out there for that) cause even if it conditions my hair wonderfully when applied correctly, i never want that red-black on my hair.

Hey, even coconut oil doesn't work for everyone. Just because %99 of people got excellent results does not mean %1 should try to make it work.

[melikai]

Like Tangerine, henna makes me go "meh". Years ago, I tried cassia and all it did was turn my hair to hay. I get enough of the hay effect with my regular hair.

[bumblebums]

Ya know, all through childhood I watched my mom use henna and indigo to cover up grays and to add body to her hair. When I was old enough, I'd help her apply the stuff on her hair. The collective wisdom of the interweb wasn't there to guide us at the time, but we had centuries of tradition and hand-me-down advice to refer to, so we weren't completely in the dark as far as how the stuff works. It may be new to some people in the west, but it's been used in the old world for centuries. It's not exactly rocket science.

Henna's drying effect is well-known, as is the fluffing/thickening effect. The unpredictability of color is another issue. Henna and indigo are plants, so they are susceptible to spoilage, and they vary from batch to batch. You can't blame all bad results on failure to follow instructions. Just like you have to be prepared for the occasional bug in your organic salad, you have to be prepared for the occasional bad batch of henna.

[serious]

Dreams in Pink,
how green was the powder you used? If it was too green, it probably had some dye added, to make it look fresher.

Last year, my DD's boyfriend traveled to Istanbul and I asked him to buy me some henna there( yes, it's almost impossible to find BAQ henna here where I live ). He bought one kilo of the most expensive henna he could find, as people told him it was the high quality henna on the market. When I saw it , I was totally surprised, it didn't look like henna at all, it was too green! Everything else was
ok, the smell, the stain and all, but it just didn't look right! So I did some research and discovered that it's pretty common the manufacturers add some other dyes in henna, just to make it look fresher. (http://www.hennapage.com/henna/encyc.../greendye.html)
My hair loves henna, but this one, which I use occasionally, always makes it dry and brittle!

I'm not suggesting that this caused the bad result you got on your hair, but, who knows?

[Dreams_in_Pink]

Ya know, all through childhood I watched my mom use henna and indigo to cover up grays and to add body to her hair. When I was old enough, I'd help her apply the stuff on her hair. The collective wisdom of the interweb wasn't there to guide us at the time, but we had centuries of tradition and hand-me-down advice to refer to, so we weren't completely in the dark as far as how the stuff works. It may be new to some people in the west, but it's been used in the old world for centuries. It's not exactly rocket science.

Henna's drying effect is well-known, as is the fluffing/thickening effect. The unpredictability of color is another issue. Henna and indigo are plants, so they are susceptible to spoilage, and they vary from batch to batch. You can't blame all bad results on failure to follow instructions. Just like you have to be prepared for the occasional bug in your organic salad, you have to be prepared for the occasional bad batch of henna.

I was unlucky that my mom (and her mom, apparently) missed on the tradition of hennaing hair. Mom didn't know much except for henna is "good" for hair and it gave a red tint. I was alone with the interwebs I wish there was enough info on what could happen when something goes wrong, as in, listing the risks of using henna. People who make a research over henna would be amazed at how "miraculous" henna is, but in reality, it might or might not work. I really wouldn't have attempted it if i heard a single person saying how frizzier their hair became after henna.

I'm not really blaming anyone for this. Someone should mention the risks of using henna. Because when things go wrong with something permanent like henna, you might even have to chop.

[Dreams_in_Pink]

Dreams in Pink,
how green was the powder you used? If it was too green, it probably had some dye added, to make it look fresher.

Last year, my DD's boyfriend traveled to Istanbul and I asked him to buy me some henna there( yes, it's almost impossible to find BAQ henna here where I live ). He bought one kilo of the most expensive henna he could find, as people told him it was the high quality henna on the market. When I saw it , I was totally surprised, it didn't look like henna at all, it was too green! Everything else was
ok, the smell, the stain and all, but it just didn't look right! So I did some research and discovered that it's pretty common the manufacturers add some other dyes in henna, just to make it look fresher. (http://www.hennapage.com/henna/encyc.../greendye.html)
My hair loves henna, but this one, which I use occasionally, always makes it dry and brittle!

I'm not suggesting that this caused the bad result you got on your hair, but, who knows?

It wasn't too green as far as i can remember. But THAT can be a problem. When i said it was pure, i meant it did not contain metallic salts like henna hairdyes (because almost no-one uses henna on their hair, so why bother?) but it's possible that it could be green dye to make it look fresher.

[Nightshade]

I was unlucky that my mom (and her mom, apparently) missed on the tradition of hennaing hair. Mom didn't know much except for henna is "good" for hair and it gave a red tint. I was alone with the interwebs I wish there was enough info on what could happen when something goes wrong, as in, listing the risks of using henna. People who make a research over henna would be amazed at how "miraculous" henna is, but in reality, it might or might not work. I really wouldn't have attempted it if i heard a single person saying how frizzier their hair became after henna.

I'm not really blaming anyone for this. Someone should mention the risks of using henna. Because when things go wrong with something permanent like henna, you might even have to chop.

I do agree that it's easy to overlook any possible side effects, if you see them at all. I went through a years-long battle to lighten my hennaed hair to copper because even in spite of reading a ton, I never caught that repeated applications would go DARKER (granted this is a few years ago, now I see that warning much more often). So, trust me, I 100% understand how easy it is to look at all the benefits and then get nailed in the end with something that's misery-inducing (the darker red looked TERRIBLE on me, but I lucked out and managed to lighten it up and then switched to a lighter henna/cassia blend at the roots).

That being the case, if there's anything in terms of warnings you feel I should add to the henna article (linked in my siggy) I'd be happy to include them

[Dreams_in_Pink]

That being the case, if there's anything in terms of warnings you feel I should add to the henna article (linked in my siggy) I'd be happy to include them

I think it'd be wise to warn people about how it might irritate scalp when lemon juice is included in mixture. I assume my problem was caused by lemon juice, thinking how henna itself is said to cure dandruff & fungal infections. I used lots of lemon because it was said to intensify red color