Did you know I am a cosmetologist by profession?
It seems like an odd fit for me now since I am eliminating as many toxins, chemicals, and synthetics as possible in my life. I still enjoy beautifying though, as well as having my own hair looking good. Thus, the hunt for a natural or, Heaven permit, a completely organic line of hair color.
I started by researching online what natural hair color companies are offering right now. Here are some of the color lines I checked out:
Herbatint,
Mastey Tienture,
Light Mountain Natural,
Naturcolor,
Palette by NatureI eliminated the color lines using henna. Mostly because they would pull too warm and didn't want to have to deal with the aftermath if I didn't like the color. Red is the hardest color to get out of the hair.
Then I looked through the ingredient lists and tried to find the color line that had the least amount of toxins, chemicals, and had the most amount of natural/organic ingredients. I felt like
Palette by Nature would be a good fit, this line has no PPD, Amines, Ammonia, Peroxide, Resorcinol, Parabens, Phthalates, GMO, Gluten, Nano, Encapsulates, Animal Testing, Petroleum Based Ingredients, Dioxanes, PVC, EDTA. It does have 50+% organic ingredients and most everything else is natural. Sounds great doesn't it?
So, I got some of their color in my shade and tried it out. Here are the results:
If you can tell in the picture, it just barely covered my grey hair. You can notice it more to the back of my part. I don't have much grey to cover but what I do have didn't get full coverage. Also, notice what the arrow is pointing to . . . my scalp, my black scalp. The color completely colored any and all dry skin on my scalp. Everyone has dry scalp. Some more than others but everyone has it. This was not good. It would not come off. After about a week I asked my hairstylist to do a scalp treatment on me to scrap it off and that did the trick.
The color itself was not all that bad but the amount of color it provided in the box for one application was not enough to cover my hair root to ends. Now, I do have longer hair but, as a hairstylist I expect enough hair color product to cover chin length hair root to ends in one application. That was not provided in this case.
Something else to note, when I would use any heat on my hair, like when styling, the color would end up on my hands and neckline. Hence, the picture shown below of the color coming off onto my hands. To get rid of this problem I did what the instuctions told me to do in case the color went too dark. It said to use lemon juice and water in equal parts and work into the hair. I did this routine several times and it helped, big time, to keep the color from getting onto me while styling.
To conclude, I was really hoping that this would be it. That this would be the hair color for me because it at first fit the bill so well but, nevertheless, I will not be using Palette by Nature most likely ever again. It was too unpredictable and had too many headaches (colored scalp problem, color releasing when heated) that came with it.
My next natural hair color line to test out will be
Organic Color Systems. Their color seems promising but it does have less than 2% of PPD in it. I was hoping to find a color line completely without any toxins or chemicals in it. We shall see though . . .
Wish me luck! And, if you have found luck elsewhere and would like to share leave a comment!
I am so excited to re-introduce you to Jena DeMarco. If you remember she was a guest contributor for us a while back and did an amazing post on Quinoa. Check it out if you missed it.
