question on hendigo maintenance

[Of the Fae]

Hi all!
I'm going to use a one step hendigo mix for my hair soon to make my hair brown instead of regular henna which I have done up until now. I have experience with indigo but never more often than once or twice and never to make a brown which I'm planning to keep.
My question is, how does upkeep work best with this? In my experience indigo will fade somewhat over time and thus I might need to do a full head application more often. How do I then prevent it from getting too dark on me?
And also, how do I do root upkeep without getting a demarcation line or weird color banding?
I don't mind a slight color difference but my natural hair is a light ash blonde and thus quite far removed from the deep henna copper red that is now my base layer.

Thanks in advance for answering!

[lapushka]

I know I said it before, but... indigo? I wouldn't do it, if I were you. I'd keep the red. You can't bleach over it, and get the color out if it fails, because it then will turn green (bleach and indigo give a reaction). It would be a potential mess. Just a friendly warning.

I am all for natural colors, henna: fine, but indigo? I am not touching that ever again in my life!

[Of the Fae]

I've honestly never had trouble with that, but I never use bleach. I used Sun In over hendigo a bunch of times and it was no problem, also did a chemical dye over it (though a month in between!). But to be honest I'd rather not use chemical hair dye at all, it itches and fades way too quickly.

[pullanmuru]

I can only share my own experience trying to achieve consistent mid brown colour with one step henndigo. It didn't work. The indigo would always fade pretty quickly and the hair would turn reddish, and then I needed to do full head application again to get it brown and eventually henna would build up and turn wine color on my length, and the root area was always lighter than the lengths. Henna doesn't fade on my hair. My natural hair is dark ash blonde/light ash brown. I could not make it work but I'm sure other people have made it work. I don't know if you could add katam or something in the ends to tone down the redness once the indigo fades, instead of doing full henndigo.

I personally ended up frustrated and going two step henna/indigo black and few years later having to grow out the whole thing because while indigo faded in one step process, in two step process it's the most permanent dye I've ever encountered. It's impossible to fade or strip off. I've sworn to stay off that stuff.

[Of the Fae]

Welp, it faded very quickly hahaha so it's basically dark red brown right now. Not a bad color at all, prefer it over bright red. However it is clear to me that this is indeed not something that works on my hair sadly. The indigo does wash out and much faster than it previously has. So I have to admit, it's not a good strategy and probably Lapushka was right. I got taken in by the henna for hair ebook I suppose 😂
I'm currently considering just slowly growing it out because I'm, indeed, never going to not have red with henna, so if I want to have a cooler color I should just wait until my own shade grows out.