Color: natural tones, vibrant palettes, and custom blends
Color is where synthetic dreads genuinely beat real ones. Real locs lock you into your natural hair color (or whatever bleach and dye does to it). Synthetic fiber comes in hundreds of shades, and there's no reason a single dread can't incorporate four of them.
Natural and transitional colors
These are the blacks, browns, auburns, blondes, and grays that blend convincingly with natural hair. They're popular with people who want the texture and length of dreads without the high contrast of a vivid color. A brown-to-auburn ombre set on medium-brown hair can look very close to grown dreads. Natural colors also tend to photograph more neutrally, which matters if you want the dreads to disappear into your everyday look.
Vibrant and fantasy colors
Pinks, purples, teals, fire gradients, galaxy blends. This is the part of the catalog that gets the most attention. Kanekalon fiber holds dye differently from human hair, so the manufactured colors tend to be saturated in a way that's hard to achieve with actual bleach and dye. A cobalt blue synthetic dread is a different thing from blue-dyed hair. It's consistently, deeply blue from root to tip without fading in the wash.
Custom blends and ombre
Most orders at Velveteen Dreads involve some amount of color mixing. A blend is two or more colors carded together before the dread is made, so they're distributed throughout the strand. An ombre transitions from one color to another along the length, either gradually or with a sharp break. You can describe a blend in plain language ("forest green into dark brown" or "three shades of pink from pale to deep") and we'll translate that into fiber.
Tinsel and wraps
Tinsel is a fine metallic fiber mixed into a dread for shimmer. Wraps are yarn, thread, or braiding cord wound around a section of the dread for a decorative band effect. Both are options on any set. They're especially useful on accent pieces where you want one or two dreads to catch the light differently from the rest.
