How to Ombre Dye your Locs with Henna Hair Dye

The good news for fans of natural hair dye methods, like using Henna, is that you do have options to achieve the ombre look that are less drying, less damaging to the hair and look amazing.

Henna and Your Locs

Henna is rich in an ingredient called Lawson, which colours Locs without damage, but it does work best when mixed with a slightly acidic ingredient like tea (which can also help with colour adherence.

You need to be prepared to use a fair old amount of the Henna to completely saturate your hair, but don’t rub it in aggressively or it will be hard to get out.

It’s also important to know that you can’t lighten your hair with Henna, you can only add colour to it.  You also can’t use Henna straight after bleach so if you’re looking for lightening you may need to go the old fashioned ‘chemical’ route.

Achieving The best Ombre for Locs

One of our favourite Ombre effects on dreadlocks we’ve seen on Locs is a combo of dark root, and bright ends.  You can also dye the top part of the hair one colour and the bottom a different version for a graduated effect which looks beautiful.

To achieve the look, it’s better to start with the darker part of the hair first.

Using Indigo is a much safer way to darken hair, over the mainstream chemical routes that include paraphenylenediamine dye, which is highly allergenic and damaging to the hair structure.

First apply henna to the areas of your hair that you wish to be darker, following the instructions included in the pack.  Then, make a separate paste with indigo, which will oxidize the orange to black. 

It may take a day or two to reach the full black you are after while indigo takes some time to reach its peak effect. Usually, over two days the indigo will darken and deepen to the black you are after. 

We would advise you to do this before dying the brighter colour, but you can do them at the same time if you want to.

The second stage is to add the Henna for the brighter sections of hair. You can just add Henna as is, and let it deepen for up to seven hours for real brightness, or you can choose one of our shades of natural, organic henna hair dye. 

Following your treatment, using an amla conditioner is advised, especially if your natural hair is 4c and prone to dryness and breaking.

(a beautiful example from Pinterest of the sort of effect you can create)

The advantages of using henna and indigo are, of course, that they are natural. Since they are natural you can feel safe to apply these dyes as often as you like without the fear of damaging your hair or your health.

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