What's In Your Shade
Twelve Herbs.
Yours Uses Four to Seven.
Every shade we make is a different selection from the same twelve plants — no base powder, no carrier, nothing synthetic. Pick a shade to see exactly what is in it, what isn't, and which shade sits closest to it.
Pick a shade
In order of quantity
Not in this shade
Closest shade in the range
Ingredient lists run in order of quantity — a legal requirement, not a courtesy. So the first name tells you more than any of the others, and you can check all of this on the back of the pouch.
The Herb Library
Twelve Herbs.
Only Five of Them Colour.
Every one of our 24 shades is built from this set — no base powder, no carrier, nothing else. What changes between shades is which of these twelve are in the pouch, and in what order.
Tap any herb to see its active compound, the evidence behind it, and where it sits across all 24 of our shades. That last part is the interesting bit: the same herb can lead one ingredient list and sit last on another.
The five that colour
These carry pigment. Everything you see on your hair comes from one or more of them.
The one in between
Named for henna, unrelated to it, and barely a colourant at all.
The six that don't colour
No pigment at all. They shape the paste, adjust its chemistry, or sit on the scalp while the colour processes.
Tap a herb for its compound, its evidence, and where it sits across our range
Two things worth noticing in those numbers. Amla appears in 23 of our 24 shades — more than henna, more than indigo — and it carries no pigment at all. It is there because it is acidic, and acidity changes how the pigments behave.
And hibiscus swings as far as amla does: first on the list in one shade, last of seven in another. The same flower, doing very different amounts of work depending on where it sits.
How to Read a Label
The First Line Tells You
Most of What You Need.
Cosmetic ingredient lists are printed in order of quantity — most first. That is a legal requirement, not a courtesy, and it applies to every herbal hair colour sold in the United States.
Which means the first herb on the pouch tells you what family a shade belongs to, before you look at a single photograph. Here is what each opening ingredient means, worked out across all 24 of ours.
The rule this rests on
Ingredients above 1% are listed in descending order of concentration. Below 1% they can appear in any order. For a powder blend made entirely of herbs, that means the top of the list is reliable and the bottom is looser.
So a herb sitting first is doing more than a herb sitting fifth — and if the herb sitting first is one that barely colours, the shade will be light no matter what comes after it.
First ingredient
Indigo Leaf
Indigofera tinctoria
Expect a brown or a black.
Indigo is the only herb that takes a shade down. Put it first and you are covering henna's warmth with blue, which is how every dark plant colour is built. Expect a green cast at the first rinse and a tone that keeps shifting for two to three days.
Six of ours: Soft Black, Dark Brown, Brown, Light Brown, Copper Brown — and Violet, which has no henna underneath for the blue to cover.
First ingredient
Colorless Henna
Cassia auriculata
Expect a light shade.
Cassia barely tints. When it leads, the herbs that do colour are working on a smaller share of the powder — which is how a light plant shade is made without lightening anything. This is the single most reliable signal on any herbal label.
Eleven of ours, all light: three of our four ash tones, and every blonde except Wheat and Honey.
First ingredient
Henna Leaf
Lawsonia inermis
Expect a red.
Henna on its own gives one colour: warm red-orange. When it leads and there is little else above the herbs that adjust it, that red is most of what you get. Whatever sits second decides how far it is pulled from copper.
Three of ours: Auburn Red, Mahogany and Burgundy. All three put indigo second, doing exactly that job.
First ingredient
Manjistha Root
Rubia cordifolia
Expect a deep red built without blue.
Unusual. Manjistha almost always sits third or lower, warming a red henna has already laid down. Leading with it means the depth is coming from a second red pigment rather than from indigo over the top — a different route to the same darkness.
One of ours: Wine Red, which contains no indigo at all.
First ingredient
Hibiscus Flower
Hibiscus rosa-sinensis
Unusual enough that we won't pretend to explain it.
Hibiscus sits near the bottom of nearly every list we make. Leading with it is rare, and we are not going to invent a tidy story for why. How much hibiscus pigment actually transfers to hair has not been published — so a high position tells you it is there in quantity, not what it does.
One of ours: Honey Blonde.
First ingredient
Amla Fruit
Phyllanthus emblica
Expect something cool, and probably henna-free.
Amla carries no pigment at all — it is the acid in the blend, and acid holds warmth in check. Leading with a herb that doesn't colour means the shade is built to stay cool rather than to go dark.
Two of ours: Wheat Blonde and Darkest Ash Blonde. Neither contains henna.
Second, and the only colour
Turmeric Root
Curcuma longa
A different pigment entirely.
Turmeric appears in exactly one of our shades, and where it does, there is neither henna nor indigo in the pouch. Curcumin is already coloured going on — no oxidation, no green stage, no waiting. It also fades faster in light than either of the other two.
One of ours: Sun Blonde.
This works on other brands too
Nothing above is specific to us. Ingredient order is a legal requirement, and plant pigments behave the same way whoever packs them. Pick up any herbal hair colour, look at the first line, and you can make a reasonable prediction about what it will do.
Indigo first: a brown or black, with a green stage. Cassia first: a light shade. Henna first: a red. If the first ingredient is a herb you have never heard of, that is worth looking up before you mix anything — it is doing more work than everything below it.
We would rather people understood herbal colour and chose well than bought from us by accident and were disappointed.
What the first line doesn't tell you
How much. Order is published; proportions are not. Two shades can list the same herbs in the same order and still land differently — we have two such pairs in our own range, and the difference between them is entirely in the ratios.
What the minor herbs contribute. For henna and indigo, the chemistry has been measured on hair fibres. For hibiscus, manjistha and cassia it has not — we know what is in the plant and where it sits on the list, but not how much of it ends up bonded to your hair.
Whether a name means what it says. "Colourless henna" is not henna. It is a legume, unrelated to Lawsonia inermis — so a shade can list colourless henna and still be genuinely henna-free.
And a common name can cover more than one plant. Ours is Cassia auriculata. Much of what is sold under the same name is Cassia obovata, a different species — the two were largely interchanged across the supply chain between 2016 and 2020, often without anyone downstream being told. Our own single-herb care powder is the other one. If the botanical name is not printed on a pouch, the common name alone will not tell you which plant you are holding.
How 24 Shades Are Made
Three Things Change.
Two of Them Are Printed.
Twelve herbs, twenty-four colours, and no synthetic pigment anywhere in the range. Everything that separates one shade from another comes down to three decisions — and you can verify two of them yourself, on the back of the pouch.
Which herbs go in
The blunt lever. Leave out the herb that makes red and you cannot make a red; leave out indigo and you cannot make a brown. Some of our shades are defined more by what is missing than by what is present.
Two reds, two different sources of colour
Auburn Red
- Henna
- Indigo
- Amla
- Bhringraj
- Hibiscus
- Methi
- no manjistha
Wine Red
- Manjistha
- Henna
- Amla
- Bhringraj
- Hibiscus
- Methi
- no indigo
Four herbs are identical and in the same order. What differs is at the top: Auburn Red builds its red from henna and cools it with indigo. Wine Red has no indigo at all — its depth comes from manjistha, a second red pigment, sitting above the henna instead.
What order they come in
The subtle lever, and the one most people never look at. Two shades can contain exactly the same seven plants and land in different places — because a herb high on the list is doing more than the same herb low on it.
Same seven herbs. Amla and manjistha trade places.
Dark Brown
- Indigo
- Henna
- Amla
- Bhringraj
- Manjistha
- Methi
- Hibiscus
Brown
- Indigo
- Henna
- Manjistha
- Hibiscus
- Amla
- Bhringraj
- Methi
Amla is the acid that pulls warmth down. Manjistha is the root that adds red. Dark Brown puts the cooling herb above the warming one; Brown reverses it — and hibiscus climbs from last to fourth in the same move. Not one plant more, not one less, and the result is a shade you would never mistake for the other.
How much of each
The one we keep. The proportions for all 24 shades are held by one person at our production facility in India, and they are the only part of this we don't put on the page.
Which means there is a limit to how far label-reading gets you — and we would rather show you that limit than let you discover it.
Two shades whose labels are identical
Reddish Blonde
- Colorless Henna
- Henna
- Indigo
- Amla
- Bhringraj
- Brahmi
Light Reddish Blonde
- Colorless Henna
- Henna
- Indigo
- Amla
- Bhringraj
- Brahmi
Same six herbs, same order, two visibly different shades. Everything separating them is in the ratios, and the label cannot show you that. We have one more pair like this in the range — Auburn Red and Mahogany, where the names give away less than these two do.
Two levers out of three are legible to anyone who picks up the box. That is more than most colour products let you check, and it is a consequence of the format rather than a favour: a powder made only of herbs has nothing to hide behind.
The third is a formulation held privately, and we are not going to dress that up as anything else. What we can do is tell you what it does and doesn't affect — it changes depth and warmth, not whether a shade will show on dark hair, not whether it passes through green, not how long it takes to settle. Those all follow from the first two levers, and you can read them yourself.
What's Left Out
Two Herbs Do Most of the Work.
Eleven Shades Do Without.
Henna and indigo are the backbone of herbal hair colour. Henna gives warmth, indigo gives depth, and between them they build most of what a plant can do to hair.
But some people can't use one of them, and some simply don't want to. Ten of our twenty-four shades leave one of them out — and one leaves out both.
For anyone who doesn't want the wait — or reacts to indigo
Indigo is the herb behind almost everything people find difficult about plant colour: the green cast at the rinse, the three-day development, the purple result if the hair dries too soon. Take it out and all three go with it.
It is also the ingredient most likely to cause a reaction. Plant-dye allergy is rare, but where it exists, indigo is usually the culprit rather than henna.
Champagne Blonde
Strawberry Blonde
Beige Blonde
Caramel Blonde
Wine Red
What changes without it
- No green stage. What you see at the rinse is close to the finish.
- It can't stall at purple. There's no slow reaction to interrupt.
- The vinegar trick works. Mild acid helps henna and hinders indigo — with none present, it only helps.
- No cool tones. Indigo is the only blue we have. Without it, warmth is all that's left.
For anyone who doesn't want the orange
Henna gives one colour and one only: a warm red-orange. Every brown and black in herbal colour is that warmth with blue laid over it, which is fine until you want an ash tone — a warm red under a blue reads brown, not ash.
Leaving henna out is the only way to make a genuinely cool plant shade. It is also the only way to make a violet.
Darkest Ash Blonde
Dark Ash Blonde
Ash Blonde
Wheat Blonde
Violet
What changes without it
- No warm cast at all. Not a hint of orange, at any stage.
- Ash and violet become possible. Neither can exist over a henna base.
- It fades sooner. Henna's pigment bonds covalently to keratin; indigo is only held in the outer layers.
- The blue-green stage is more visible — there's nothing warm underneath to mask it, and it takes longer to settle.
Sun Blonde belongs to neither group
It qualifies as henna-free and indigo-free both, but it works differently enough from the other ten that we have kept it on its own. It is the only shade we make where the colour comes from somewhere else entirely: turmeric.
Curcumin is already coloured when it goes on — no precursor, no oxidation window, no waiting. The trade is that curcumin is not light-stable. How fast that shows depends on how much sun the hair sees, but it is a property of the compound rather than something a formula can engineer around.
Sun Blonde
Colourless henna, turmeric, amla, reetha, shikakai, bhringraj, brahmi — seven herbs, and neither of the two that build every other shade in the range.
What that means in practice
- The only option if you avoid both. Whether that's an allergy or a preference.
- Colour is there at the rinse. Nothing develops afterwards.
- Fades fastest in sunlight. Curcumin is not light-stable — how soon you notice depends on your exposure.
- Turmeric stains. Skin, nails, towels. Wear the gloves and wipe splashes straight away.
None of this is unique to us. Any herbal hair colour built on henna will run warm; any built on indigo will pass through green and keep moving for days. Those are properties of the plants, not of a brand.
What differs between products is whether the label tells you which you are holding. If a product says "no henna" while listing colourless henna, that is accurate — cassia is a different plant. If it says "chemical-free," that is not: plants are made of chemicals too. Read the first line, and check whether the two herbs that matter are in it.
The Full Table
All 24 Shades,
All 12 Herbs.
Every blend we make, laid out in one grid. The number in each cell is that herb's position on the ingredient list — and since lists run in order of quantity, a 1 means it is the largest single ingredient in the pouch.
| Shade | Henna | Indigo | Colorless Henna |
Manjistha | Hibiscus | Turmeric | Amla | Bhringraj | Brahmi | Methi | Reetha | Shikakai |
|---|
Scroll sideways for every herb, down for every shade
Reading the grid
Read across for a single shade's recipe. Read down for where one herb sits across the whole range — amla appears in 23 of 24, more than henna or indigo, and it carries no pigment at all.
The first column of numbers tells you the most. Where indigo is 1, expect a brown or a black — or, with no henna beneath it, a violet. Where colourless henna is 1, expect a light shade. Where henna is 1, expect a red.
What the grid can't show is how much. Reddish Blonde and Light Reddish Blonde have identical rows; so do Auburn Red and Mahogany. Those pairs differ only in proportion, and proportions are the one thing we don't publish.
Find Yours
Now You Know
What's In the Pouch.
Every shade has its own page — with the full ingredient list, what to expect over the first few days, and photographs on real hair rather than a swatch. Start wherever makes sense to you.
By colour family
By what you'd rather avoid
Not sure yet? Plant colour depends more on your starting hair than any product photograph can show. First-time customers who don't get the result they expected can have a different shade sent free, or a full refund on the colour. How the assurance works →