Is there a natural hair color without henna?

Yes. Radico’s henna-free collection is six shades made without henna: Darkest Ash Blonde, Dark Ash Blonde, Ash Blonde, Wheat Blonde, Violet and Sun Blonde. They are made from certified organic plants and nothing else, and hold COSMOS ORGANIC certification audited by ECOCERT.

Which henna-free shade has no red or warm tones at all?

Four of the six contain no red-pigmented plant of any kind: Darkest Ash Blonde, Dark Ash Blonde, Ash Blonde and Wheat Blonde. In all four, indigo is the only pigment present — it sits alongside amla, bhringraj and brahmi, with colorless henna in three of them.

The remaining two are henna-free but warm on purpose. Violet contains manjistha and hibiscus, which are red-violet pigments. Sun Blonde contains turmeric, which is golden. Both are good shades; neither is the one to pick if warmth is what you are avoiding.

I don’t like the smell of henna. Is that a real thing, or is it just me?

It is a real thing, and it is the second most common reason people write to us about henna. There is a plausible chemical explanation, though we want to be careful about how far it goes.

Published analysis of commercial henna leaf identified 72 volatile compounds in the headspace, of which aldehydes made up between 2.1 and 18.8 per cent — the main one being (2E)-hexenal, a green, cut-grass aldehyde. Separately, a genome-wide association study of 14,604 people, with replication in a further 11,851, found that the tendency to perceive cilantro as soapy is linked to a variant within a cluster of olfactory receptor genes on chromosome 11. One of those genes is OR6A2, a receptor that binds aldehydes.

These are the same class of compound, but not the same molecule — cilantro’s is (E)-2-decenal, henna’s is (2E)-hexenal. And no study has tested whether people who dislike cilantro also dislike henna. So we cannot tell you the two are the same phenomenon. That second study also found the heritability tagged by common variants to be low, around 0.09, so genetics is clearly not the whole story even for cilantro. What we can say is that a strong reaction to a plant’s aldehydes is a documented thing, and that if henna smells wrong to you, you are not imagining it.

Mengoni T, Vargas Peregrina D, Censi R, Cortese M, Ricciutelli M, Maggi F, Di Martino P. SPME-GC-MS analysis of commercial henna samples (Lawsonia inermis L.). Nat Prod Res. 2016;30(3):268–275. · Eriksson N, Wu S, Do CB, et al. A genetic variant near olfactory receptor genes influences cilantro preference. Flavour. 2012;1:22.

Does henna always smell the same? Why is some of it so much stronger?

No, and the difference between batches is larger than most people expect. The same analysis compared commercial henna from different sources and found the volatile profiles differed considerably from one another. Carboxylic acids — the group that reads as sour or sharp — ranged from 3.1 to 29.3 per cent of the headspace between samples, with acetic acid alone accounting for up to 24.5 per cent.

That study set out to compare batches of different geographic origin, so we will not claim it proves anything about age. But carboxylic acids are, in general, what plant material produces as its lipids break down — and oxygen is what drives that. It is a reasonable thing to keep an eye on.

What we do about it. Each shade is vacuum-sealed into its 100 g pouch in the same operation that blends the herbs, so the powder meets very little air between the mill and your kitchen. It is then flown from India rather than shipped by sea, which turns a journey of months into one of days. We hold stock in the United States and reorder when roughly three months of it remains.

And the part you can check yourself: every pouch carries the date it was packed. The dates give it close to five years, but we treat that as the outer limit rather than the plan — our aim is that nothing reaches you more than two to three years from the packing date. We cannot tell you how any other brand handles this. We can tell you that ours has a date on it, and that you are welcome to look.

Mengoni T, et al. Nat Prod Res. 2016;30(3):268–275.

Will a henna-free shade cover gray hair?

Plant color deposits onto the hair rather than lifting what is already there, so the result on gray depends on how much gray you have and which shade you choose. Of the four neutral shades, Darkest Ash Blonde gives the deepest and most complete coverage; Wheat Blonde is the lightest and the most muted.

If you have a high percentage of gray and are using plant color for the first time, expect to build the result over two applications rather than one.

I already have henna on my hair. Can I use one of these?

You can apply them, but they will not remove the henna you already have. Plant color only deposits — nothing in these six can lift pigment out of the hair. The henna stays in those lengths until they grow out or are cut.

What an indigo-forward shade will do is deepen and cool the overall look, so the warmth reads less strongly. If your goal is to remove existing henna rather than tone it down, no plant color will do that, and we would rather say so now.

Does colorless henna contain henna?

No, and it is not related to henna either. Henna is Lawsonia inermis, in the Lythraceae family; colorless henna is a legume. It picked up the name because it is used the same way — mixed with water, applied as a paste, rinsed out. It carries no red pigment, so it takes up space in a blend and lets a lighter shade come out without adding henna’s warmth.

Two different plants are sold under this name, and it is worth knowing which you have. The colorless henna in our hair colors is Cassia auriculata. Our single-herb care powder is Cassia obovata — a separate species. Supply shifted across the industry between roughly 2016 and 2020, so a pouch labelled only “neutral henna” or “colorless henna” does not tell you which plant is inside. Ours prints the botanical name.

One qualification: it is not quite as colorless as the name suggests. It carries pale anthraquinones rather than none at all. Nothing that reads as red — but on white or very light hair, any change at all will show more than it would elsewhere, which is a good reason to strand test.

What is the difference between natural hair color and organic hair color?

“Natural” is an unregulated marketing term. A hair color can carry it while still containing synthetic dyes such as PPD or PTD, ammonia or peroxide, and no third party has to verify the claim.

“Certified organic” under COSMOS ORGANIC is an audited standard. It requires organically farmed ingredients and prohibits synthetic dyes, ammonia, peroxide, resorcinol, synthetic preservatives and synthetic fragrance — and it is checked by outside auditors every year.

Why do so many Radico shades contain amla and bhringraj?

Amla appears in 23 of our 24 shades and bhringraj in 22. The two are there for quite different reasons.

Amla is acidic, and acidity shifts a plant color cooler and holds the orange register in check. That is a measurable, physical job, and it is why amla is a deliberate part of most of our formulas rather than an optional addition — one reason the henna-free shades read as cleanly as they do.

Bhringraj carries no pigment at all, so it can sit in almost every recipe without affecting the color. It is there on the strength of long-documented use in Ayurvedic hair preparations, not because we can show you a measurement of what it does to your hair. That is the honest basis, and we would rather name it than dress it up.