Celebrate Holi With Natural Colours, Here’s How To Make Natural Holi Colours At Home

Originally, the Holi colours were created by using bright flowers that blossomed throughout spring. This Holi, you can go eco-friendly and skin-friendly with natural and organic colours.  Play a safe and entertaining Holi by creating your own natural holi colours at home. You can choose to protect yourself, your loved ones and the environment by replacing the toxic unnatural colours with natural homemade colours. Here, beauty guru Shahnaz Husain is telling ways to make homemade natural colours for holi. You can find these ingredients easily in your kitchen or can source from a nearby store to prepare Holi gulal and colours. Excited to try? Scroll down and make your colours.

Why should we play holi with natural colours?

Holi is a fun festival where people simply immerse themselves in colours and enjoy to the fullest. But artificial colours make things go worse. Not only it causes irritation but it can lay a long-term impact on your skin and hair health. There are incidences of people getting cuts, bruises and redness due to fake colours(that contain chemicals, glass powder and other dangerous elements). Thus, it becomes our moral duty to not harm anyone in the wake of holi celebrations. Playing holi with natural colours reduces harm to skin, hair and maximizes enjoyments and lifetime memories.

DIY Homemade natural colours for holi

Let us now tell you how to make best natural holi colours easily at home.

Also Read: Healthy Holi Drinks, 7 Types of Thandai You Can Make and Enjoy This Holi

Yellow colour

It is a very bright colour that indicates vigour, cheerfulness, and life.

• You can prepare this by mixing turmeric powder with gram flour in a ratio of 1:2.
• To make simple and easy dry gulal, all you need to do is crush any yellow coloured flowers, like marigold or yellow chrysanthemums.
• Combine them in water to obtain wet colours or dry natural holi colour as well.

Red colour 

You can prepare red colour by drying red hibiscus flowers or rose petals and then grinding them into powder. Red sandalwood is also a good choice for obtaining a deep red colour with rice flour.

• Put 2 teaspoons of red sandalwood powder in water and boil it.
• Dilute the solution and it is ready to use.
• Alternatively, red pomegranate peels can be boiled in water to obtain a brighter red tone.
• Mix 2 teaspoons of turmeric powder and a few drops of water.
• Add a pinch of lime powder for more shine.

Bran and red hibiscus flowers give a lovely rich red colour when soaked in water overnight. Tomato juice and carrot juice can also be used to obtain the red colour. In order to remove the stickiness, it should be diluted with sufficient water.

Also Read: Holi Food Facts: Interesting Facts About Traditional Holi Dishes That Will Surprise You

Blue colour

A beautiful blue powder can be obtained by drying the Jacaranda flowers in the shade and grinding them.

• Jacaranda flowers bloom in summer. The blue Hibiscus flower, easy to obtain from florists can be dried and powdered just like the red hibiscus.
• The Indigo plant's berries (fruits) can be crushed and added to water to achieve the desired colour.
• A rich blue dye is produced when Indigo leaves are boiled in water.

Green colour

Henna can be used to make both dry and wet green colour, for dry.

• All you need to mix henna with dried green leaves of margosa, commonly known as neem.
• And wet green colour is as simple as putting wet henna on hands just mix it with water.

Magenta colour

Beetroot is good for developing red/pink colourants.

• Sliced beetroot can be soaked in water, boiled, and left overnight for a wonderful magenta and pink tone of colours.
• If you wish to have a darker shade of pink, just dilute the mixture a little bit more.
• Orange-pink color is obtained by boiling 10 - 15 onion peels in half a litre of water.
• If you wish to avoid the smell of the onion peels, remove them before using them.

Brown colour

Brown colour can be easily made by mixing 1 part of henna powder with 4 parts of Amla powder. Kattha or catechu, which is eaten with beetle leaf i.e., pan, when mixed with water will give a brownish colour. 

Alternative DIY Hacks

If you cannot find any of these ingredients, you can buy food or icing colour from the market. Using water and corn starch, you can obtain both wet and dry edible colour ingredients such as yellow, blue, red, green, and saffron.

It is simply to make cornstarch sugar by mixing corn starch and water. Add food colouring in a proportional amount, and then leave it to dry or bake the mixture for 30 minutes at 350 degrees Celsius. The mixture will quickly dry up in powder. Now, enjoy Holi as you have all the natural colours at your fingertips.

Happy Holi!

Image credits- freepik