Where to Buy Henna in the US: Amazon, grocery and craft stores, specialist sellers — and how to avoid the bad kind wherever you buy

Where to buy henna depends on which henna you mean. Powder for hair is on the shelf of every Indian and Middle Eastern grocery in the country; fresh cones for body art are a mail-order product that must be shipped cool; brow henna comes from beauty suppliers; jagua from a handful of specialist sellers and Amazon. This page maps the US sources — Amazon, ethnic groceries, craft stores, beauty supply, pharmacies and specialist online sellers — by what each actually carries and how fresh it is likely to be, and gives the checks to run wherever you buy, because the one thing every source has in common is that the bad products sit beside the good ones. What's in a good product is on the henna guide and the henna kit hub; how to judge a cone's freshness is on henna cones.

Rule for every source: read the ingredient list before the price. Powder: Lawsonia inermis only. Cones: henna, water/tea, sugar, essential oil. Anything that promises black or instant results goes back.

Where each kind of henna is sold

Amazon

The widest selection in the US for every category, two-day shipping, and the daily-refreshed prices on this site. Amazon is also where the worst products are easiest to find, because "henna" is used loosely in listings. The habits that keep you safe: open the ingredient list (it's on the listing or the packaging photos); prefer sellers who describe freshness handling for cones; read the most recent reviews for "arrived stiff" or "faded in three days" (freshness problems) and "black in an hour" (PPD); and treat "natural black henna" as a warning, not a feature. The product blocks on this site are chosen by reading those listings and are refreshed from Amazon's API every day with the date shown; ratings aren't displayed because Amazon no longer provides them to sites like ours.

Indian, Pakistani and Middle Eastern groceries

The most reliable walk-in source for henna powder for hair. Expect Godrej Nupur (usually a nine-herb blend), Reshma, Hemani, and often loose or boxed pure henna, at $3–8 per 100–200 g — the cheapest henna in the country. Freshness varies; look for sealed pouches with a packing date and green (not brown) powder through the window. Around Eid, Diwali and wedding season many of these stores also stock cones, often made locally and often excellent — ask what's in them and when they were made. Some stores near large South Asian communities have a henna artist's card at the register.

Craft stores

Michaels and similar chains carry Jacquard's henna and jagua kits in the body-art aisle: a reliable, fully labelled product line, sold as powder-plus-applicator kits rather than pre-filled cones. Good for a first body-art kit and for jagua; not a source for hair henna or fresh cones.

Beauty supply and pharmacies

Beauty supply stores (Sally Beauty and independents) sometimes carry henna hair color and brow henna kits; pharmacies carry henna hair color occasionally and temporary-tattoo stickers reliably. Neither is a source for body-art paste, and both are the places where "henna" hair products with added dyes are most common — read the box.

Specialist online sellers

A small number of US sellers import body-art-quality henna directly, mill or sift it themselves, print harvest dates, and ship cones frozen in insulated mailers. They are where professional artists buy, and several sell to the public on their own sites and on Amazon. Prices are higher than grocery henna — $10–15 per 100 g of BAQ powder, $3–5 per fresh cone — and the difference shows in the stain. For a wedding, a bridal party or anyone doing more than the occasional design, this is the source; for hair, grocery or Amazon powder is fine.

Buying by need

• Hair color this weekend: an Indian grocery for powder, or Amazon for a blended pack with two-day shipping. See henna hair dye.
• A design for a party next week: natural cones from Amazon with fast shipping, frozen on arrival. See henna cones.
• Learning henna: a body-art powder kit from a craft store or specialist, plus a practice hand. See henna powder.
• A black design: jagua from Amazon or a craft store, never a "black henna" cone — the FDA's warning explains why. See jagua.
• Brows: a beauty supply or Amazon kit with a full ingredient list. See henna brows.
• A kid's party: a natural-cone kit with stencils from Amazon, or sticker tattoos from any pharmacy. See kids henna designs.

How to read a henna listing in sixty seconds

Wherever you're buying, the same six checks apply, and they take a minute. Ingredients: listed, and plants only — Lawsonia inermis for powder; henna, water or tea, sugar and an essential oil for cones. A listing that says "natural" without a list is hiding something or lazy; either way, move on. Color claims: natural henna is one color, reddish-brown; "black", "instant" or a rainbow of colors means dyes. Time claims: hours on skin means henna; minutes means dye. Freshness: a harvest or milling date on powder, a made-to-order or "freeze on arrival" note on cones, and a photo of green (not brown) powder. Reviews: the recent ones, read for delivery experiences — "arrived warm", "stiff cone", "faint stain" — and for the phrase "turned black in an hour", which is PPD. Seller: a named brand with other henna products and a storefront beats a generic listing that appeared last month. Do those six and the price is the last thing you look at, which is the right order.

Buying henna for a wedding or a large event

Volume changes the calculation. For a bridal party, a mehndi night or a class of twenty, buy powder from a specialist and mix your own — a 200 g bag of body-art-quality powder makes eight to ten large cones for under $15, fresher than anything shipped pre-filled. Order two to three weeks ahead, mix and freeze cones a week out, and thaw the morning of. If you'd rather buy cones, choose twelve-packs from a seller who ships fast, order them to arrive ten days before, test one on arrival, and freeze the rest. Budget one cone per full hand or per four small designs, plus a third again for waste and mistakes. For stencils, one sheet with the same motif repeated keeps a group matching; the henna stencils page covers the types. For the bride herself, most families book an artist and let the artist supply the paste — see bridal henna designs for what to ask.

Buying outside the US

Henna sold in the UK, Canada and Australia follows the same logic with different chains — Asian grocers for hair powder, Amazon and specialists for body-art paste — and the same PPD warning, which every one of those countries' regulators has issued. Travelers should be especially wary of henna sold at resorts and beaches abroad; a stall that can't name its ingredients is the same risk in Cancún as in Ocean City, and the reaction arrives after you've flown home.

What it costs, roughly

At the time of writing: pure henna powder $3–8 per 100 g in groceries and $8–14 on Amazon or from specialists; blended hair packs $14–20 per 100 g; natural cones $2–4 each in packs; stencil-and-cone kits $9–30; brow henna kits $10–30; jagua gel $17 per ounce and kits $30–60. The most expensive henna per design is a kit; the cheapest is powder you mix yourself — about a dollar a cone from a $10 bag, against three to five dollars a cone pre-filled and more again inside a stencil bundle. For hair, the arithmetic is even more lopsided: a grocery-store pouch of pure henna colors a full head for a few dollars, and the only reason to pay Amazon or specialist prices for hair powder is freshness and a harvest date, which matter for red results on gray and barely at all for a brown blend on pigmented hair. Buy the cheap pouch for your first brown; buy the dated bag for a red that has to be right. Prices on each product card above are refreshed daily from Amazon with the date shown.