Green After Dyeing
Green Is the Process.
Not a Problem.
You rinsed out a brown or a black, and your hair came out green, blue-grey or turquoise. This is the most common thing people write to us about, and it is the one that is not a fault.
Indigo does not arrive as blue. It arrives as green and turns blue over the next day or two, on your head, while you watch. What you are looking at is that reaction running.
Nothing. Leave it alone.
No dryer, no shampoo, no henna over the top, no vinegar, no coffee. The green clears on its own, usually within a day and almost always within two. Every intervention people try at this stage makes the final colour worse, not better.
Copper Brown on grey hair, one hour after rinsing. The white strands are showing the green stage clearly; the darker hair around them is not. Left alone, this cleared to the expected colour over the following day. Nothing was done to it in between.
What the next three days look like
Indigo is the only herb in the pouch still working after you rinse. It develops while the hair is damp, which is why the timing depends on your hair and your air rather than on a fixed clock.
At the rinse
Green or turquoise
Unoxidised indigo. The more of your hair is grey or light, the more obvious this is — there is no pigment underneath to hide it.
Day one to two
Green clears, blue arrives
The cast fades and the tone starts moving towards the shade you chose. This is the part people interrupt by reaching for a dryer.
By day three
Settled
The blue is sitting over henna's warmth and reading as brown or black. This is the colour to judge — not the one you saw in the shower.
How long it takes varies. Damp hair keeps developing; hair that dries quickly stops sooner. In dry air — we are in Southern California — the green tends to hang around a little longer, though we have not measured it against humidity.
What not to do while it is green
Almost every colour problem we hear about starts here. Someone sees green on day one, decides something has gone wrong, and acts. The green would have cleared on its own.
- ×Don't use a hair dryer. Indigo only develops while the hair is damp. Drying it stops the reaction where it is — and that does not reverse. What that leaves you with →
- ×Don't apply henna over it. Henna is orange. Putting it on hair that is still turning blue does not remove the green — it adds warmth to a shade that has not finished.
- ×Don't shampoo it out. Indigo sits in the outer layers of the hair, so washing at this stage removes the blue and leaves the warmth behind.
- ×Don't add coffee, tea or vinegar. None of these speed up oxidation, and acid works against indigo rather than for it.
Why some people never see this at all
The green stage happens on every indigo shade. Whether you can see it depends on what is underneath.
You will see it on grey and white strands, which have no pigment of their own, and on hair roughly two tones lighter than the shade you applied. You probably won't on hair darker than the shade, where your own colour masks it entirely.
Which is why two people using the same pouch can have completely different first days — and why this page exists mostly for people covering grey. Which of our shades contain indigo →
Still Green After a Week?
Then It Isn't the Stage.
It's the Shade.
Everything above this point is about the day or two after you rinse. If it has been the best part of a week and your hair is still cool, green or blue-grey, something different is going on — and it is worth knowing which, because the answers are opposite.
One resolves itself if you leave it. The other never will, because it is the shade doing what it was built to do.
Green that is on its way somewhere
- How longClears within a day, almost always within two. It is already fading by the time most people think to worry.
- Which shadesAny shade with indigo in it — 18 of our 24, and most obviously the browns and blacks.
- What's underneathHenna, waiting to be covered. The blue is still arriving to sit on top of it.
Do nothing. This is the case covered further up this page.
Cool that was always going to stay cool
- How longStill there after three or four days, and after a week. It settled rather than moved.
- Which shadesThe five that contain indigo but no henna at all. Listed below.
- What's underneathNothing warm. There is no orange in the pouch for the blue to land on.
Waiting will not change this. Read on for what will.
The quickest way to tell them apart is the ingredient list, not the mirror. Look for henna on your pouch. If it is there, you are in the left-hand column and time is on your side.
The five that have no henna to warm them
Leaving henna out is the only way to make a plant colour that reads genuinely cool — and the same absence is why a cool cast has nothing to resolve into.
Why these behave differently
In a brown, indigo's blue lands on henna's orange and the two together read as brown. Remove the henna and the blue has nothing to mix with — so it stays a blue, and on white or grey strands it reads as a visible cool cast rather than a subtle one.
That is not a fault. It is the only way a plant colour can be cool at all, and it is why these five exist. Violet in particular is built to be seen; a cool result there is the shade working.
Two more things follow from it. The green stage is more visible on these shades, because there is nothing warm underneath to mask it. And they fade sooner than henna-based shades, because indigo is held in the outer layers of the hair rather than bonded into it. The chemistry, herb by herb →
If you want it warmer than it landed
There are two honest routes, and neither of them is anything you would do in the first two days. Give the colour a week to settle first, so you are working with the finished result.
Option 1 — adjust what you have
A short henna application over the top
Henna is orange, and orange over blue reads browner. A short application — fifteen to thirty minutes — takes the edge off a cool cast without turning the whole thing red.
This is the one situation on our troubleshooting pages where putting henna over an indigo result makes sense. Organic henna leaf powder →
Option 2 — change shade next time
The ash tone that does contain henna
Light Ash Blonde carries henna third on its list — a trace of warmth under the blue, which is exactly what the other four ash tones leave out.
If you liked the depth but not the coolness, that is the one to try. Ash & Bold shades →
Before you put henna on anything
- Test a hidden strand first. Fifteen minutes is not much, but henna is not subtle and you cannot take it back off.
- Henna bonds to keratin covalently. Unlike indigo, it does not wash out over a few weeks — it wears down as the hair does. Add it deliberately.
- Start shorter than you think. It is easy to go back for another ten minutes. It is not easy to remove warmth once it is there.
- Not while it is still green. If it has been less than a few days, you are treating a stage rather than a result. Wait it out instead →
Every Colour Problem
Herbal Colour Goes Wrong
in a Handful of Ways.
Find the one that matches what you are actually looking at. One of them is not a problem at all — and that is the one people most often make worse.
Barely any colour at all? Eight reasons a plant dye fails to take → · Or see the drying test the rest of this rests on: two shades, 1 hour and 72 hours →
Before your next application
Almost everything on this list is about the same thing: indigo is still working after you rinse, and it only works while the hair is damp. Protect that window and most colour problems never start.
Do
- ✓Cover the paste while it processes. A paste that has dried on your head has stopped working, whatever the clock says.
- ✓Give a dark shade the longer end of its time. Longer again if you are covering grey.
- ✓Wrap it in a towel after rinsing and let it dry as slowly as it wants to.
- ✓Add humidity if your air is dry. A humidifier, or a bathroom with the shower run hot for a few minutes.
- ✓Read the first line on the pouch. It tells you what family a shade belongs to before you mix it.
Don't
- ×No dryer after rinsing. Not warm, not cool, not for thirty seconds. This is the one that cannot be undone.
- ×Don't panic at green. That is indigo mid-reaction. Reaching for the dryer because of it is how green becomes red.
- ×Don't shampoo for two days. Water only if you need to rinse.
- ×Don't judge it on day one. An air-dried result is still deepening well after you have looked in the mirror.
- ×Don't pick a shade from a photograph alone. Your starting hair changes where it lands.
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 — so everything on this page applies whoever packed your pouch.
What differs between products is whether the label tells you which one you are holding. Ingredient lists run in order of quantity, which is a legal requirement rather than a courtesy. The first line tells you more than the photograph on the front. All 24 of ours, herb by herb →
If it still isn't right, we would rather sort it out
Plant colour depends on the hair it lands on more than any product photograph can show, and we would rather you ended up with a shade that suits you than a refund and a bad memory.
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 →
Not sure which shade to move to? Send us a photo and tell us what you were aiming for. Talk to us →