Kool Aid Hair Dye

Though primarily a drink mix, Kool Aid also has a secondary side-industry – and that is its legendary use as non-chemical Kool-Aid hair dye! Just don't expect to find a product that is named "Kool Aid hair dye". You're going to need to buy the drink mix, and preferably the version that has not been artificially sweetened.

When not being used as a hair dye, Kool-Aid is a flavored drink mix (packaged in powder form) and is sold all over the world. All you do is mix it with water, put it in the fridge to chill it, and you've got yourself a delicious, usually hugely colorful drink. Popular as it is though, there are people who won't drink it because it contains so much artificial food dye it will change the color of your tongue! (Following an FDA hearing in March 2011, Kraft Foods, manufacturers of Kool-Aid, launched a new advertising campaign to boast the point! Eight colored kiddy tongues to be precise.)

Lots of people have tried to dye hair with Kool-Aid, and there are numerous recipes punted on the Internet. Many have photographs to show their own step-by-step progress. Generally all you do is to mix at least two packs of UNSWEETENED Kool-Aid in a glass bowl with some conditioner, to form a smooth paste. Spread petroleum jelly (Vaseline) around your hairline and on your ears to prevent the dye from staining your skin. Using rubber gloves, work the mixture into your hair, without rubbing it into your scalp if possible. Once you're done dyeing your hair with Kool aid hair dye, wrap your head with plastic wrap and tape it so it stays on for as long as possible – preferably overnight. When you go to bed, put an old towel on your pillow to avoid accidental staining of your bed linen.

When you remove the plastic, you need to wash your hair and then condition it – basically the same way as you would with most commercial hair dyes.

Want to know more about Kool-Aid before it became used as a hair dye, read on... Kool-Aid owes its origins to an American from Nebraska called Edwin Perkins, who was also the originator of good old American Jell-O and a concentrated drink mix called Fruit Smack. The demand for Kool-Aid peaked for the first time in the 1930s, when it was available in six flavors: strawberry, cherry, lemon-lime, grape, orange and raspberry. By the 1950s, Perkins' factory was producing close to 1,000,000 packets of the product a day, even though it was actually a by-product of Fruit Smack, mostly the leftover coloring probably.

The versatile Kool-Aid product gained worldwide notoriety in 1978, when Jim Jones (mastermind of the horrific Jonestown Massacre) and his followers drank a lethal mix of Kool-Aid, cyanide and other prescription drugs (although there are theories that the product they used might have been the less expensive powder beverage, Flavor Aid).

Funnily enough though, Kool-Aid was not originally a sweetened product. This additive was introduced only a few years before the brand was acquired by Kraft Foods in the 1970s, sometime after the death of its founder in 1961. That's something to remember if you’re going to try Kool-Aid to dye your hair: avoid the sweetened colors.

Like so many synthetic beverages, Kool-Aid contains dye to give it color, and so it has become a much talked about drink that you can use to color your hair. Unlike beer and lemon juice that are said to have ingredients that will nourish your hair, all Kool-Aid will do is add some color. Kool aid hair dye gives best results to color light hair. The lighter your hair, the more color it will add. Dark hair will only reveal a minor tint, and that won't last for very long.

Although Kool-Aid is sold according to "flavor", in fact it is the color anyone wanting to dye their hair will be interested in – and there are a good 20 of these, although many outlets stock a mere handful. Kool-Aid colors that can work well as hair dye include:

  • Burgundy which is "black cherry" flavor,
  • Christmas red, sold as cherry flavor,
  • Purple – grape,
  • Darker purple pinks – raspberry,
  • Fire engine red – rockadile red
  • Deep reds – tropical punch,

Most of the other Kool-Aid colors will only work on lighter hair.

To reiterate, when using Kool aid hair dye it is important to use the unsweetened packets as sweetened packets will be much less effective.