I’ve been meaning to dye my hair for absolutely ages but really wanted to use natural dye, which I couldn’t find anywhere. Then when browsing in Lush, I spotted that they sell blocks of henna, which led to me spending my entire bank holiday Monday trying not to dye my entire house red. I thought it would be interesting to document the process. Apologies for the terrible cameraphone photos…

I started today with hair that was a sort of mousy light brown with blonde highlights and more grey than I’d like. I covered the bathroom in newspapers and old towels, dug out all the hair clips I never use and headed to the kitchen for the fun part.

I broke up the henna block into a bain marie (one of those kitchen items we own but never use, which made me feel better about the risk of totally ruining it for all future food uses) set over a pan of boiling water, and gradually added water until the henna had turned into a slightly crumbly hot paste. It’s a bit like melting chocolate but takes a lot longer and a lot more liquid. Also it has a weird green tinge, which I didn’t expect.

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