Why Indian Men Are Colouring Their Hair in 2026

July 17, 2026

Scroll through this IPL season and you will notice something besides the sixes. Shreyas Iyer stepped out with a platinum blonde quiff that lit up timelines faster than his batting average. He is not alone. Barbershops in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi are reporting a spike in men asking for highlights, copper tones and full colour jobs, not just haircuts. Hair colour has quietly become the biggest grooming conversation among Indian men in 2026.

Dapr.'s take on this is simple. The colour looks great in the photo. What ruins it is everything that happens after you leave the salon chair. Indian hair is naturally denser and holds more melanin than the hair type most colour techniques were designed around, which means it lifts differently, dries out faster once lightened, and shows sun damage within weeks, not months. Nobody selling you the dye job mentions that part.

The Sun Is the First Thing That Wrecks Coloured Hair

Lightened or highlighted hair has no natural pigment left to absorb UV rays, so Indian sun does to it in a month what it would normally do in a year. Colour turns brassy, tone goes flat, and the ends dry out fast enough that you can feel it before you see it. If you are colouring your hair this year, sun protection is not optional, it is maintenance. A lightweight serum with SPF and real UV filters makes the biggest difference here. The Ultimate Hair Serum from Dapr. carries SPF 30 along with argan oil, so it protects the colour while it nourishes the strand underneath.

Heat Styling Gets Riskier Once You Have Coloured

Getting Iyer's quiff shape or any structured colour look usually means a blow dry, sometimes a straightener to smooth the base before styling. Coloured hair has already lost some of its natural elasticity from the lightening process, so the same heat that barely touched your hair before can now cause real breakage. What this really means is: the styling step you used to skip cannot be skipped anymore. A heat protection spray before any blow dry or iron work is what stands between a sharp look and a frizzy, damaged one. The Hair Grooming Spray is built for exactly this, a layer of protection before the heat goes on.

Heavy Hold Fights the Colour, Not the Look

The instinct after a fresh colour job is to reach for the strongest hold product in the cabinet to keep the shape all day. That is usually the wrong call. Thick pomades and waxes sit heavy on lightened hair, flattening the tone and giving it a dull, greasy cast under lights instead of the glass like finish colour is supposed to have. A lighter product does more work here. The Hair Styling Cream gives enough hold to keep shape without smothering the colour, and it cuts frizz on top, which coloured Indian hair tends to pick up quickly in humidity.

This is also why the quiff has replaced the textured crop as the most requested colour friendly cut this year. If you want the full breakdown of how to work with texture and volume, we covered it in detail in How to Style a Textured Crop for Indian Men 2026, and most of it still applies once colour is in the mix.

One more thing nobody accounts for is timing. If you already dealt with this July's usual monsoon hair fall spike, colouring on top of that stress is asking a lot from your scalp. Give your hair a few weeks to settle before booking the colour appointment if you can help it.

Action Points (Save This)

Apply a UV protective hair serum every morning before stepping out. Colour fades fastest in direct sun.
Use a heat protection spray before every blow dry or straightening session. Coloured hair burns and breaks more easily than natural hair.
Pick a light hold styling cream over a heavy pomade. It keeps the tone visible instead of dulling it.
Wash less often and with cooler water. Hot water strips colour faster than almost anything else.
Book root touch ups every 4 to 5 weeks, before the regrowth line becomes obvious.
Watch the ends for dryness. Coloured Indian hair loses moisture at the tips first.