Natural dyes for hair. Can we use coffee to dye hair?

My wife was wondering because years ago I used instant coffee to stain wood.

:shrug:

http://www.hennaforhair.com/ homemade Henna :)

with any number of kitchen shelf-type products. Coffee, tea, Jello, etc.

The difference is one of changing the hair's composition versus merely coating the hair. With regular hair color, the cuticle is opened via most often, peroxide. The open cuticle allows for the color to be deposited inside the cuticle. Most hair color uses aniline derivative tints as the agent for coloring the hair. These aniline derivative molecules expand once deposited inside the hair cuticle, therefore making the color permanent/semi permanent.

When one uses Henna or coffee there is no agent involved to open the cuticle and if the cuticle were open, the molecules of Henna or whatever, do not expand and therefore will not achieve a permanent/semi permanent effect.

:)

That crap's dangerous as hell. http://www.snopes.com/horrors/vanities/henna.asp

The organic henna one buys in health food stores should be safe, though.

suggested it to me and well how would I be able to tell. Try henna if you are looking for something different.

my hair is silver and mostly gone where hair goes when men grow old.

As mentioned above, stay away from the black.

However, coffee is not needed to achieve a shade. There are brown, red, blonde and even clear hennas. What you have to remember is that the hair color will be coated, not changed. For example, if you apply blonde henna to dark brown hair, the result will be a more golden looking dark brown. Conversely, if you apply red henna to white/grey hair, the lighter hairs might reflect the base color -absolute red- resulting in a clownish shade. What one cannot do with henna is lift and deposit. That effect is most easily achieved with 20% peroxide + aniline derivative tints.

Another point. Hennas contain metallic salts These stay long after the shading effect has faded. If you intend to have other chemical treatments to your hair in the future such as peroxide-based color, ammonia-based permanent waves or thio-based straighteners, that henna, clinging to the hair, will be a problem.

What effect are you trying to achieve? Do you want to bring you hair back to its original shade or deepen the gray/white so that it looks more blonde/brown? Have you ever colored you hair before?

I would suggest you go very slow. Try making some very strong coffee. Wash you hair with a nice clarifying shampoo. After you washed out the shampoo, towel dry and rinse you hair thoroughly with the coffee. Get it completely wet with coffee and squeeze out the drippiness. Then apply conditioner to your hair and let that set for about five minutes. Rinse the hair will cool/lukewarm water and towel dry with an old towel because the coffee will stain that towel.

or

Buy a bottle of temporary rinse. Roux. Big grey bottle. Pick a shade, there are I think, at least fifty. Follow directions and see how it goes.

Another note of advice, if your hair is brittle or porous, even the gentle processes I've recommended will have three times the effect.

regular? We have both.
I will pass this on to her. Thanks.

BTW, I never needed to color my hair. It was a mixture of about every color you could imagine. People would notice the colors and comment. I did start life as a strawberry blond. It's now silver with flecks of very dark, almost black hair.

Instant is going to be way stronger and probably funked up with additional properties.

Very strong pekoe or any brown tea is another way. To enhance blonde highlights chamomile tea is good. For red highlights/shade, try a rose-hip tea.

I asked because I had many male clients when I was a cosmetologist. Most them had never had a color process before and the results can be quite shocking if not done delicately and with consultation.

The big mistake when trying to cover gray is overkill. Hair is translucent and comprised of many different shades, naturally. It's best to use deposit-only peroxide-based colors or temporary, coating shades like the coffee/tea/rinse stuff.

Another note, grey and white hair is stubborn. The cuticle is tougher and harder to penetrate. A home tint with tea or coffee may have no effect at all.

It left her with brittle, reddish hair. It took a long time for her to get her natural look back. Right now she is losing hair, most likely from a hormone imbalance.

http://www.nioxin.com

Have her check with her doctor first, of course, but the product is fairly harmless. It's a combination of nutrients, vitamins and subcutaneous cleansers. The point being that one cannot revive a dead follicle but sometimes living follicles are stagnated by too much sebum, chemicals or a compromised immune system. The cutaneous layer of the skin is the one that shows, beneath that is the subcutaneous layer. Nioxin cleanses subcutaneously. Print out the ingredients and have your wife show them to her physician:

http://www.nioxin.com/files/ingredients/Ingreds_1-8/System 2.pdf

I haven't had contact with this product for over tens years, so I am not sure if the formula is still the same but I can testify it worked miracles with all kinds of skin/hair problems, including hair loss from radiation/chemotherapy treatments. What I do know is that it does not require a prescription or that one must be free of heart ailments. Products like Minoxidil carry disclaimers for persons with a heart condition. Nioxin is over the counter and it works, as long as the user uses it on a consistent basis. In fact, I believe they guarantee that after one year of use, whatever hair the user gains, will stay. Minoxidil cannot make that claim.

It was removed by mistake. She's lucky to be alive.

She will see her endo early next month. He might have to make some adjustments to her medicines. I'm betting that is at the core of the problem.

You give her a hug for me. :)

She's a tough bird. She's been dealing with this for about 30 years.

I always called my shade "iridescent everything." Lots of shades/shiny things going on. Some gray, even when pretty young, which gave it that silvery/colory tint.

quickly and mercifully. It reached the level of partial baldness that remains today within a couple years. My eyes did the same thing. I went from reading glasses to trifocals quickly then remained that way.

The silver started in my beard and worked its way up. My mustache, for some reason, has been the last to change.

She always mentions the fact that with all those colors, my "gray line" doesn't show nearly as much; it's almost as if my whole head is highlights, so everything kind of blends in.

I'm still personally hoping for the Emmylou Harris gray hair end result. I love her hair. I know she's got the $$$ for really good stylists, but still...hers is so beautiful. :-)

I've had near-sighted glasses since the 6th grade, but I'm the opposite of you; mine progressively worsened until I was 30. Since then, I've worn a close (it improved twice) prescription since!

Funny how stuff works, huh?

but there may be others - ochre paste for a bright red orange mudhead look,

sun, vinegar or lemon to lighten