Coloring your hair using commerical dyes can cause damage to your hair, scalp and even your body. If you really want to change the color of your hair try these natural (though not always simple) methods.

Brighten Your Blond Hair

Chamomile is the most popular natural color treatment for blond hair. It removes brown streaks from the hair and brightens dull hair. If you cannot get your hands of chamomile, you can use one almost any flower or herb with yellow blooms. Marigolds, saffron, and turmeric will also work. Prepare the colorant as if you would prepare tea. Just steep about a half cup of flowers in a quart of water.

If you want to lighten your hair a bit, you can use lemons. Squeeze the juice from two lemons and mix it with one quart of water to use as a hair rinse. Dry your hair in the sun for maximum lightening effect.

To use these rinses, you will need a plastic basin to catch the water after you pour it over your pre-shampooed, towel-dried hair. Pour the water over your hair and catch it in the basin. Pour the water in the basin back into the container, and repeat... about 15 times.

Darken Your Blond Hair

To make light colored hair darker, use tag alder bark. It will cover the gray in hair that is light to medium brown and will darken your hair gradually until you get the desired results. Tag elder bark chips are simmered (one-ounce bark chips to one quart of water) and then allowed to cool and use to rinse the hair as previously described.
 

For deeper darkening, the process is quite laborious. You can use walnut hulls, but be aware that this "dye" will stain everything so you have to be careful. To make the dark stain for your hair, you need to crush the hulls in a mortar, cover them with boiling water add a pinch of salt, and soak it for another three days. Next, simmer the hulls in three cups of boiling water (in a non-metal container for five hours adding more water as it evaporates. Then you need to strain off the liquid and return it to the pot and boil it to reduce it to about a quarter of its original volume. Now you are ready to make the dye. This dark natural dye is made using the extract previously made and adding a teaspoon of ground cloves or allspice to the prepared extract. It must then steep in the refrigerator for about a week and giving it the occasional vigorous shaking. It is applied to the hair using the rinse method.

Brighten Your Dark Hair

Henna is a dark powder made from the henna plant that will give dark hair a red or auburn tint. You can purchase this pre-packaged, but you really need to know what you are doing as you can end up with orange hair. Henna can be mixed with chamomile to eliminate over reddening. Henna can be found in health food stores complete with instructions. If the process intimidates you, you should make a weaker solution of henna and use in the same way that you would use a rinse.

Deepen the Color of your Dark Hair

Sage is the oldest and most effective natural way to darken dark hair. A sage leaf rinse will not only deepen the shade of brunette hair, but it will also hide your grays. Sage leaves must be boiled for 30 minutes (or longer if your want a deeper color). The cooled rinse is then poured through the hair 15 times, then rinse with clear water after about 10 minutes. Using this rinse will make your hair get dark over time if used weekly.

Tag alder bark is another popular hair darkening botanical, but it generally produces a lighter tone than sage does, so it is best when used to darken blond hair or to cover gray in locks that are light to medium brown. To make a tag alder rinse, simmer an ounce of bark chips (your health food store can likely order them from an herb supply firm) in a quart of water for about half an hour, then cool and use it exactly as you would the sage rinse I've already described.