Friend dreadful reaction to hair dye.

I saw a young lady patient of 35 who always had used the same very popular permanent hair dye for years . She came onto my unit with partial thickness burns to her scalp with large painful weeping blisters . She said she had done a patch test . We had to completely shave her head then clean it thoroughly to prevent infection then put a specialist cream on the scalp . The texture was like the crinkly spinach served with Chinese meals , I thought . Black or very dark hair dyes are the worst . The colour difficult to grow out if you have white hair because of the two tone contrast effect . I use an ammonia / hydrogen peroxide free Daniel Field water colour ( the real one) very infrequently (every 3 months) to blend in with my greying , used to be strawberry blond hair so no roots . Very sensitive skin with psoriasis but this has been fine but you never know . If I got an allergy to it would simply stop using it . It only colours white hair . They give advice if you contact them apparently . My former hairdresser friend suggested Ash Blonde in this colour and I mix in just a tiny bit of soft golden blonde it works for me anyway . Am not sure if this is right but I often see older people with very dark dyed hair who have very much thinning hair and I think that could be due to using strong permanent dyes for many years . White hair actually can look beautiful.

I would honestly advise your friend to avoid ALL hair dye after such an awful reaction. It simply isn’t worth the risk to her health.

If your friend is on social media, there’s a lovely private Facebook page called Silver Sisters with women from all over the world who have embraced their natural hair colour. There’s also another private Facebook group called Curly Silvers which deals with the specific challenges of curly grey/silver/white hair.

I’ve attached an image of my hair while it was growing out a few years ago. My hair and scalp are so much healthier now!

Talked to my hairdresser yesterday about it and she suggested having extensions woven in. Short dark ones at the roots and white longer ones at the point of change so that your friend gets a streaked look, rather like nandad describes in her post above.

Thank you everyone. Kugul thank you for the hairband idea. Also for the positive sounding outcome. Will be telling her about your experience. You sound very much like her.

Would henna work 🤔 ?