Is organic hair color truely organic?

This is a question I was wondering myself...then I went to a color class. During the class someone stood up and ask the same question. I was shocked at the lack of information that was given in the answer. He was on the right track with the answer but it was very vague and not at all helpful.

So here is the information I could come up with...

All hair color contains dyes and chemicals, even the newer colors that are FDA certified. Its just the amount of dye/chemical to organic content. But organic chemicals are either ammonia free or have trace amounts of ammonia.

What does that mean? If you filled a bowl with ordinary hair color, the entire bowl would be man made chemicals. It covers your grey, or helps you be beautiful blond but every part of that color is chemical. Along with the smell and the burning.

When you have an organic color, part of that color is still chemical but a large part is organically made and very gentle. Again, great coverage but gentle on your scalp and the environment.

This is great for clients that are sensitive to smell and or like the idea of organic color.

But the question is are they gluten free? None that I have come across yet. My salon uses an organic color but its built on a wheat protein base. So I cannot use it on myself, I have to severe of a reaction to anything gluten to even try it.

Many stylists will tell you to have your hair highlighted. There are problems presented with this. Grey coverage, getting hair to tone evenly and previous color - by highlighting you cannot finish the process because of gluten being present in toner. It still has to make contact with your scalp even with rinsing out the color. Therefore you cannot trust there will be safety when using a color line with gluten.

Home hair color - the only other option...so I thought.

As I mentioned before I thought it was safer to just color my hair at home. Again, fun results, but how safe is it? Home hair color still contains ammonia, peroxide, para-phenylenediamines, coal tar, lead, toluene and resorcinol. Half of these I don't have the full knowledge of without looking them up. What I do know is if I want to be healthy, this is not the direction.

Even when a client comes in to the salon with home hair color, the hair sticks together when damp, color does not turn out even and when highlighted I cannot always say where it's going to end up. It could be ugly blond or orangey brown.

Henna and vegetable dyes - what do they do?

Henna and vegetable dyes are not a true hair color. They are a hair stain that covers the outside of each hair strain. Not so bad when you think about it, right? Well if you have any grey hair when you add henna now you have grey stained hair. If you have previous color and grown out roots, now you have part color and stained roots. Nothing will match, this process fades quickly and not so naturally. Henna is not to be colored over either, in fact many salons will refuse to color hair that was previously coated with henna. I myself have turned down clients in this situation.

The best is to research salons at will either carry color that doesn't contain gluten or to find a stylist that is concerned with vegan and gluten free products.

In the following week I will be going through many color lines and breaking down which are safe and which are built from wheat protein.