Hi, as my hair is damaged from over dyeing it, I love red hair so would henna be OK? I'm gonna have to go for the chop as its breaking so no point carrying on with B red and directions as I'm guessing that's part the problem... But I don't wanna be grey either...
Henna won't cause any further damage but some things to consider are that it builds up over time and gets darker every time you apply it and also that it is very much permanent! For most people the only way to get rid of henna is to grow it out and have it cut off.
You need to be really careful about what henna you get as well as some have metallic salts which means that you wouldn't be able to use any chemical dyes or colour removers whilst you still had any of it left in your hair.
If you use henna just make sure to buy pure body quality henna powder, your results will be better and there are no metallic salts. (Metallic salts aren't in henna naturally, it's only in the processing.). I used henna for a couple years, the colour does build up but covers grey hair quite nicely. My main regret was that each time I touched up my colour I reapplied it full strength everywhere and by doing this the colour darkened. In the sunlight it was a lovely dark red but on pictures it was almost looking black. Ive since read some people do a henna "glossing" which just refreshes the colour and they would only use the full strength henna on the roots. Which if I go back to henna that's what I'd do. It took a few applications in the beginning to get it to a rich henna red, but after that I'd go to glossing.
Basically the henna coats the surface of your hair. It's healthy and makes your hair nice and shiny.
The main thing to keep in mind though is it is very permanent. Even if you bleach your henna'd hair, what happens is the hair underneath the henna coating bleaches but the henna remains intact, so when I tried that I ended up with orange... So I used darker temporary colours and let it grow out. If seems like it's taken forever but I'm finally henna-free. Though now when I look back at my hair while it was henna'd I notice how healthy and shiny it looked....I'm almost tempted to go back!
Thanks Stingle, I couldn't think how to phrase which type of henna to look for so as to avoid the ones with metallic salts! π