On Friday i decided to take the plunge and bye my hair, the ends had got really light (naturally) and i wanted to go back to a darker Brunette. I was stalking the aisle in the local boots trying to decide which one to go for, normally i will stick to a £6 option and go Nice and Easy, but i thought to myself, i will spend £15 on a lipstick without second though, i really should spend more on my hair dye, so i was drawn to the L'Oreal Preference Mousse Absolue, which at £10.99 is a lot more than i normally spend. This is hailed as being the first reusable hair colour but really caught my eye was the array of colours, i wanted to go chocolate brown and they had three colours that fitted the bill, i went for 425, which claims to be Rich Dark Chocolate, i took this over the iced chocolate as i wanted real depth to my colour.
So when it came to putting it on i was pleasantly surprised to find you didn't need to mix it, you just needed to shake the can and change the nozzle, all very easy. It is a mousse formula, which i can say from previous experience i wasn't that excited about, when i last used a foam it burnt so badly i had to wash it off about 15 minutes but i can report this didn't sting or burn at all but it does have a really strong smell, i felt like i was choking on it at points and i was in the garden doing it, so if you do this inside, open all the windows, you will need it. I found the can slippy to hold so i ended up wrapping it in kitchen roll so it wouldn't get away from me.
It says that this can will do 2 application for short hair, one application and a touch up for mid length hair and one application for long hair. Well i can tell you now this really isn't true, i had mid length hair and i ran out, while my hair is really thirsty, i just found that this didn't really coat my hair that well, it still felt dry and not covered so i had to keep going over it to try and get everything covered, i did get it all covered in the end but there are areas where it hasn't taken as well and my previous light colour shows through, which left me a bit disappointed.
When washing it off it left my hair feeling awful, i've never experienced anything like it and i have been dying my hair for 14 years, after rinsing it out for felt like forever my hair still felt full of product and really rough, it turned out that all the dye hadn't come out and i was left with dye on my hair line and parting (even though i throughly washed it) it was so bad i could rub it off with tissues so had to jump back in the shower and use shampoo to fully clean my hair, again this has never happened before.
The end result? I'm not actually happy with the colour at all, it is really red toned and not chocolate or rich or deep at all. The colour is quite flat and my hair feels awful, really lank and lacking any life, when normally after i've dying my hair it is full and glossy looking. And as already said it has failed to fully cover my hair.
Overall verdict? I wouldn't purchase this again, i feel like it was a bit of a waste of my money and shows that sometimes the more expensive a product doesn't truly reflect the quality. I will leave it for a few weeks to let me hair settle but then i will be dying it again and going back to Nice and Easy as they get the job done at half the price.
