The Unknown History of Hair Colour

Don’t you just love to change hair colour? It can give you a fresh feel, change your mood, and even help change your whole wardrobe, creating a new style to match the bright new locks. Now you can do all kinds of crazy things with your hair – from gorgeous balayage techniques to dyeing your hair blue, pink, and all colours of the rainbow. But when did this all start? It turns out ancient women were also into hair colouring and have been doing it for thousands of years! Here’s the history of hair colour you had no idea about.

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egyptians loved to change their hair colour, but mostly did it when the hair was no longer on their heads. Probably a wise choice as most dyes were toxic one way or the other and natural ones washed off pretty quickly. Around 1500 BC the ladies of Ancient Egypt coloured their hair red, blue, green, and even created a beautiful yellow colour using gold powder. Henna was used to hide those pesky grey hairs we still don’t like so much today.

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greeks were largely into dark hair colour and used a specially created permanent dye to achieve the desired effect. Later they came up with a less toxic concoction that used leeches to create the dye. Leeches were put into a lead vessel where they underwent to process of fermentation, turning into a dye. Much later ladies started yearning for lighter tresses and came up with a more pleasant mix of gold flakes, pollen, olive oil, and lemon juice to highlight their hair. As you know, lemon juice does work as a natural lightener.

The Roman Empire

Blonde hair got a bit of a bad reputation during the Roman Empire as this was the time when prostitutes had to lighten their hair as an indicator of their occupation. It was a requirement enforced by law! Most of them just used yellow wigs, but others created a special dye made from ashes of burned nuts and plants to lighten their hair. Gauls and Saxons from the same time period (around 300 BC) coloured their hair all kinds of bright colours mostly to intimidate their enemies during combat.

1500s

What about redheads, you might ask? Well, it turns out they didn’t exist until the Dark Ages, when the appearance of redheads was first documented. It’s believed that red hair colour is the result of a genetic mutation, which happened in Scotland. Well, they do have lots of redheads there! Because this hair colour was so rare and unusual, redheads were pegged as witches for decades until Queen Elizabeth I took the throne rocking her red hair like a real queen. Everyone had to accept that red hair colour wasn’t connected with the Devil after all.