Choosing Lavender Essential Oil for Henna Paste

Explanation and Comparison of Lavender Essential oil Choices for Henna Artist

What is Lavender Essential Oil?

Lavender Essential Oil is obtained by distillation from the flower spikes of certain species of lavender. Like all essential oils, it is not a pure compound but is a complex mixture of phytochemicals, in this case including high percentages of linalool and linalyl acetate. Linalool happens to be a monoterpene alcohol great for improving henna stains. 

You can learn more about how essential oils improve henna paste here.

Spotting Imposters

There are far more variations of fake lavender essential oil than the real thing! Two of the most common imposters are the least useful to us. Synthetic lavender fragrance oil is often simply called “Lavender scent,” or “Lavender Oil.” It may smell very much like you would expect lavender essential oil to smell, but the chemical constituents are not the same so it will not have the same medicinal effects or impact henna stain. Diluted Lavender essential oil is often marketed for aroma therapy or massage oil. In this case 90% or even more of the contents of the bottle will actually be a carrier oil such as almond oil or grape seed oil. Obviously this will decrease the dose and effectiveness in therapeutic use, and in a henna recipe those carrier oils can actually work to block the skin from absorbing dye! Other Lavender essential oil imposters may be a little harder to spot. They come from plants that are cousins of the lavender plant. True lavender has the latin name Lavandula angustifolia. Despite what you may have read elsewhere, the latin name Lavandula officinalis is also referring to true lavender. Its just outdated nomenclature. Many varieties casually called “lavender” will have a latin name that starts “lavandula,” but the second part is something else. We only want to use angustifolia or officinalis. Even within this specific variety there is still a surprising amount of choice and variation! We will explore that more later.

Common Use vs Henna Artist Use

As henna artists our use of lavender essential oil is unusual and specific. We shop for different qualities than the average consumer. Most people are looking for high levels of chemical constituents that have been known to reduce inflammation, pain, and to kill bacteria. Of the two largest components of essential oil, Linalyl acetate, does most of that work. We are looking for higher levels of the other one: linalool. More specifically we need it in lavender essential oil varieties that are unusually low in in camphor, which can be harmful in the amounts we use in our paste. 

Long Standing Conventions

As time goes on we take for granted the way of thing because “that’s just what we do.” You’ll hear this about a lot of traditional henna recipes, and unfortunately even with the addition of dangerous black chemicals! Possibly even more surprising is that we do this with modern recipes too! About 15-20 years there was a lot of modern experimentation with henna paste recipes. We learned a lot about paste preservation, which sugars help change textures and avoid cracking, and most relevant here, what essential oils impact stain the most and are safe to use. You can see most of the knowledge in this vein that has become common convention in the henna community. Specific to lavender oil, 40/42 has been dismissed as “adulterated,” which is not necessarily the case as I will explain in an upcoming post. Fine French lavender has been dismissed as sweet but wimpy in regards to ‘terping’ power. High Altitude Bulgarian lavender has been declared the winner for henna artistry. 

A Fresh Look

I was inspired to do some new experimentation when I noticed something in one of my most trusted resources on Essential oils, Essential Oil Safety by Tisserand and Young. We have been operating under the assumption that French lavender was inferior for our needs to Bulgarian lavender, and also that high altitude lavender is much better suited to our uses than other crops. Taking a quick look at the list of chemical constituents of lavenders from different regions, shows French lavender to be substantially higher in linalool, which is the main monoterpen responsible for improving color in this particular oil! Most varieties contain other traces of monoterpens such as terpineol or cineole but these are not even nearly enough to make up for the difference. Hmmmm. A little more research lead me to understand that most French lavender is in fact high altitude lavender. It seemed to me that maybe we have been missing an important option in lavender selection for years!

Let the Testing Begin 

Obviously we need an experiment to check this out. I mixed four 1.5 teaspoons batches of Henna Muse Organic henna powder with lemon juice, and 1 ml each of a different variety of lavender. I used Fine French Lavender, 40/42 Lavender, Bulgarian Lavender, and Hungarian Lavender. Each was applied to the skin of my palm 24 hours after mixing, left to dry, then taped, and left on the skin for 8 hours.

F=fine, 4=40/42, B=Bulgarian, H=Hungarian

Test Batches

Looking closely at the photos below you can see very cleary that the French lavender is certainly not performing less than our favorite Bulgarian! In fact, I’m not sure it translates well in the photo but the French lavender is actually the darkest, followed by Hungarian, then Bulgarian, with the 40/42 showing the lightest color.

It might be easier to see in this shot of the fade. The light is poor quality but you can see that the French and Hungarian stand out here, with the 40/42 all but gone. This is a 15 day photo. Obviously no care was taken to preserve the stain. It was getting tiresome to explain!

A Little More Research

Inspired by science that flies in the face of my habits, I decided to take the opportunity to do some more research. And its absolutely maddening! The common names for Lavandula Officinalis (remember that’s our favorite!) include English Lavender, French Lavender, Lavender, and will even occasionally be called Greek Lavender. BUT Lavandula stoechas, which is not high enough in monoterpen alcohols for our use,  has common names that include Spanish Lavender, topped lavender, and… wait for it… FRENCH lavender. Seriously. And that’s not all. For example France exports more lavender than they produce. All labeled French. But some of it must be coming from elsewhere! The use of the word “high altitude” is not regulated making it very difficult to know what a manufacturer or retailer actually has unless they tell you something specific about how and where it was grown. In fact lavender grown in France is almost all “high altitude” just as much so as Bulgarian. We should be quite familiar with the notion that like wine or henna, counting on a growing location is not enough to really know what to expect every harvest. Temperatures and rainfall can greatly impact a crop. Maybe last year Bulgarian lavender was best and next year French will be. Just like one year we love our Sojat henna and the next year its just not stringy enough. No wonder we’re confused. No wonder we blindly stick with a thing when it works. But I think we can do better!

Conclusion

What I’ve decided after all this testing and thinking and reading is that I am going to be much more willing to branch out and try new lavender sources. I’m going to test each one, and not assume that the region tells me enough. From now on I’m going to test samples of a few possibilities and show them to my customers so they can see exactly what to expect!