How to make Holi colours at home – DIY natural colours

Holi is the festival of Hindus, signifying the end of winter and the coming of the spring season. During this season, the bright flowers that blossomed this season, make the holy colours. With the vast popularity of the festival, inexpensive and synthetic dyes have created many health hazards and have flourished the market. However, you can easily make your natural colours at home and keep yourself and your family safe, helping keep the environment safe.

Artificial colours cause several Health Problems

Firstly, the Holi festival is a celebration of spring. Thus, the gulal/coloured powders used during Holi was made of plants and flowers that bloomed during springtime. Additionally during the Holi festival, there always remained a possibility of the spread of flu. So people derived most of the raw materials from plants with medicinal properties.

Artificial colours are also toxic to the environment

Artificial colours are harmful to the environment since they are highly structured polymers that are hard to decompose biologically. By choosing to forgo toxic chemical dyes, you can safeguard yourself and the environment and decide to make them with natural ingredients similar to those in the past. Within few minutes, you can easily make gulal at home. All the ingredients are available in the market quickly, and you can enjoy them with your friends and family.

DIY natural colours at home

To make the holi colours, you need to choose the base for the colour. The besan can be besan, cornflour or maida. To start with, make the holi colour with little quantity. Later as per your requirement, you can make your holi colours.

Yellow

To Besan, add turmeric powder and mix it nicely.
Rub this between both palms until they are mixed well. Furthermore, the ratio of turmeric powder to besan is 20:80.
With a fine strainer, sieve it at least two or three times.

Red

Take turmeric powder on a plate and spread it out nicely.
Squeeze lime juice on it. Consequently, the turmeric will turn into red colour due to the acidic reaction of the lemon.
To dry the powder, spread it out in a well-ventilated room away from the sun as it can bleach it.
After it is dried, rub it again between the palms of your hands and sieve it a few times.

Green

To Maida, add Mehendi in equal ratio and mix and sieve a few times to get the green.

You should not add food colouring as it is edible and add it in small quantities. Additionally, remember that food colouring is not natural and hence should be used with care.

Grey

To make a grey holi color, you will need amla (Indian Gooseberry).
Firstly, remove the seeds from the amla and grind them in the mixer grinder to get the juice.
To the cornflour, add this juice and allow it to dry a day.
Later, sieve it thoroughly to achieve the desired result.

Brown

In water, boil 200 grams of coffee powder until the water turns brown. Let it cool.
Mix the cooled brown-coloured water to 1.5 kg of cornflour.
Let it dry for a day and sieve it thoroughly a few times.
For fragrance, you can also add 10 ml of rosewater.

Purple

Take 4-5 black carrots and grate them well in a mixer grinder.
To 250 gm of cornflour, add it and mix them well with your hands.
For fragrance, you can add 10 ml of rosewater and allow it to dry for a day.
Sieve it thoroughly to get the purple holi colour.

Pink

Take turmeric powder on a plate and spread it out nicely.
Squeeze lime juice in lesser quantity on it. Turmeric will turn into pink colour due to the acidic reaction of the lemon.
To dry the powder, spread it out in a well-ventilated room away from the sun as it can bleach it.
After it is dried, rub it again between the palms of your hands and sieve it a few times.

By following the above methods, you can make colourful colours of Holi with all the natural ingredients available readily at home.

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