Grooming Awards 2023: The Best Hair Dyes for Men
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While it’s hard to beat getting your hair dyed by a professional, we know plenty of you prefer to DIY your hair color. And we even embrace dyeing your own facial hair at home. Maybe that’s because it feels less risky to color the beard, and an easier thing for most guys to shave off and start over. In either scenario, it’s important to get the best hair dye to get the results you want—whether the aim is a natural blend that covers gray hairs, or a bright and colorful tone that stands out from the crowd.
Read on for our picks for the best hair dye (for your head hair, facial hair, and sometimes even body hair) from our 2023 Grooming Awards. As for our top prize winner, we chose the True Sons hair dye foam for its ability to target hair all over—head to toe—and do it sensitively with soft, centered results.
Be sure to also read our advice on shopping for hair dyes, so you get the best results and mitigate potential side effects.
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How We Tested
At Men’s Journal, we’re constantly testing the latest products, some of our team with more than a decade of grooming coverage under their belt. Whenever something enters the marketplace, it’s also at our desks, and quickly being tested. Think of us as grooming lab rats; we get to enjoy the spoils when something is really great, and endure the agony when a product isn’t up to par.
How to Shop for Hair Dye
When buying hair dye, whether it’s going to the strands on your head or your facial hair, keep these pointers in mind:
Know the Dyeing Agent
Here’s where you can really test your consumer literacy. It helps to be aware of the key dyeing ingredient in the formula you’re using. Most people won’t have a bad reaction, but most people who experience contact dermatitis (an allergic reaction) do so from the ingredient para-phenylenediamine (aka PPD). So if your chosen product is giving you grief, check the ingredients label for PPD and consider switching to a more sensitivity-friendly ingredient, like hydroxyethyl-p-phenylenediamine sulfate (HPPS) or para-toluenediamine sulfate (PTDS). The dyes that are more permanent and solid-colored (rather than softly blended) are more likely to use PPD.
Understand Permanent vs. Demi-Permanent Dyes
In addition to eyeing for dyeing agents, you should note what type of dye you’re buying, as it will indicate how the results look. You can choose demi-permanent dyes, which are softly blended in (even if the color is a shade of blue or purple), or else you’ll find permanent dyes, which produce solid block-color results. These classifications will often determine how long the dye sets; soft-blend demi-permanent dyes tend to fade out gradually over the course of four weeks, while permanent dyes usually stick around until you cut the hair away. There’s a third category of dyes, too, called semi-permanent, but they are the ones that rinse away after a few washes—like the kind people might wear for Halloween or cosplay.
It’s not always evident which type of dye you’re buying, but look for indicators in the brand’s own marketing materials. If they promise a “soft blend” as opposed to “total coverage,” then you’re probably dealing with a demi-permanent. Reviews and customer-uploaded photos will often help guide you, too.
And don’t assume that you need permanent dyes. Sometimes, permanent dye can be good, like if you want to fill in some grays or translucent hairs on the beard—particularly if you’ve found the right color match. But you’re more likely to get noticed with permanent dyes, if that’s something you want to avoid. Demi-permanent dyes are meant to make it less obvious that you’ve dyed anything, by adding pigment to the grays and lighter strands without turning everything one solid and unnatural color.
Choose the Right Shade
If you’re at the store or shopping online and don’t know which color to choose from the lineup, a good rule of thumb is to always go one or two shades lighter than your hunch. Or, buy two to start, and use the lighter one first. You can always return the darker one if you don’t need it, or keep it as the backup option if need be.
And in order to get the advertised shade, you need to follow the instructions carefully. Wash and dry your hair or beard before dyeing. Wear the dye only as long as it is recommended to do so, never less and never more. Oh, and do a patch test before you apply over everything, which can help warn you of any possible allergy as well as determine if the color matches your expectations.
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The Best Hair Dyes
One quick editor’s note on hair dyes and custom reviews: This is a category of products that can make you either extremely happy or extremely disappointed. Online reviews will disproportionately favor those people who were disappointed, even if the product itself is perfectly fine. Hair dye is a bigger risk than, say, a moisturizer or shampoo. It’s not something you can just rinse away—by design—so hopefully our reviews stand on their own here, independent of those unfortunate (if sometimes moderately amusing) one-star user reviews.
The Best Overall Hair Dye: True Sons Hair Dye 
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True Sons’ primary dyeing agent is HPPS, which is better for all skin types and minimizes contact dermatitis (see our dyeing agent shopping tip above). True Sons offers seven demi-permanent shades that slowly fade over the month, but each canister gives you four to six applications, depending on how much real estate you’re covering.
[$50; amazon.com]
The Best Bright Color Hair Dye: Revlon Permanent Hair Color ColorSilk Digitones 
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Revlon’s ColorSilk line is consistently rated among the best—if not the best—by consumers, and we couldn’t agree more. If you want a permanent pop of blue or purple, then here’s your route to the brightest, most enduring color. (One gripe: Can we get a slime green, and a bright red?) With these, remember that you usually need to double-process the hair, meaning it first has to be bleached and stripped of any pigment before you then add the bright color. So, if you are starting with a darker hair color, you have an extra step to endure—and for that, we’d encourage you to get your hair professionally dyed. At which point, you may as well have the pro handle the hair dye choice, too. But to each their own.
[$4, walmart.com]
The Best Hair Dye for Gray Coverage: Cleverman Hair and Beard Dye 
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Cleverman’s eight shades of demi-permanent dye should last up to five weeks with each application, and provide a thorough, slightly blended finish over grays. You can subscribe to the brand’s kits and save on each batch (at $19 a pop), and save a few bucks if you buy directly from its site. The dyes are also infused with oils of argan, walnut, and baobab to keep strands nourished throughout an otherwise compromising process. PPD is used in the formula, so sensitive skin types should do a patch test before applying everywhere.
[$25; becleverman.com]
The Best Facial Hair Dye: Just for Men Mustache and Beard Dye 
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The recently reformulated Just for Men beard and mustache dye is ever so consistent, and comes in 12 different tones. While results are less softly blended than others on this list, that’s an advantage if you want full coverage and bold results. For some reason, our gaze is more forgiving of block-colored beards than solidly saturated head hair. This permanent facial hair dye is gentler than ever, but as reliable as ever.
[$11; amazon.com]
