How to Make Red Hair Dye

To get natural looking red highlights, you could go to a hair stylist and spend hundreds of dollars - or you could try some homemade methods to enhance natural red tones in your hair. These natural red highlights are easy to do, easy on your hair, and easy on your wallet!

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Red Kool-Aid or Jello
• Henna
• Rose Hips

1. To use rose hips, boil 2 parts water with 1 part rose hips until the liquid becomes thick. Massage into hair, wearing gloves, and leave for 20 minutes. This mixture can also be added to your shampoo to gradually enhance your hair.

2. Mix henna with a half lemon juice, half water mixture to make a paste. Wearing gloves, apply to hair and wait 20 minutes. Henna will dramatically alter the color of your hair, so you may want to test a small patch before dying your whole head. For upkeep, add henna powder to your conditioner, mix, and use as you normally would.

3. Mix Kool-Aid or Jello with enough water to make a thick paste. Although this is not as strong as henna, it may offer a dramatic hair change - so it's a good idea to do a patch test on a small section of hair before dying your whole head.

Tips & Warnings

• Cloves, beet juice, and paprika can be added to any of the above for an enhanced red color. Grind each, if necessary and add to the paste mixtures.
• Apply heat (from a hair dryer or the sun) for extra color intake.
• Try each of these on a small patch of hair before committing your entire head to a new color!