Clairol Shimmer Lights Shampoo

Colour treated blonde hair may sound easy, but it really can be a pain in the behind. I personally prefer cool ash blonde tones over warm golden tones but I sometimes find my ash tones, turning golden. That is a huge no-no in my books. I did my research and looked all over the place for something that would help solve this problem. This was the result and here is the review!

Shimmer Lights claims to tone down your hairs brassiness, maintain ash-toned colour, and leave hair shiny with no residue. Some pretty big claims for this giant purple bottle. First off, you do get a decent amount of product for what you pay. I believe mine cost 12$ and some change at Sally Beauty Supply. The instructions are easy and as follows:

Apply to wet hair. Lather, rinse and repeat. For additional brightening and colour, leave second lather on for 3 to 5 minutes. No patch test required. 

Simple and easy enough! I had read and watched some reviews where the people were leaving the product on their hair for over 30 minutes. I tried that, and it really started to burn. It also turned my hair purple, more on that below.

The product itself is this thick, gooey purple stuff. The smell is something that is hard to describe. I really think it smells like old dish soap - that gum that you used to chew, Thrills! It's really pungent and is one of the reasons I'm so hesitant to leave this stuff on my hair for extended periods of time. 

As for the extreme purple, when you put it on your hair, your hair will be purple. This stuff leaves my shower a mess! Purple suds every which way! The longest that I've left the product on my head for was around 15 minutes. In that time, I found that it did turn some strands a light purple colour. In return however, the brassiness was gone. I find that this works best on super light blonde hair. Some of my darker blonde strands didn't really look much different after a few uses. 

I haven't really noticed much of the brassiness being toned down. Eventually my hair still turns this weird golden colour and I'm forced to dye over it with some ash blonde colour. I think the only real solution for this is a toner, something I'm nowhere near experienced with.

So would I buy this product again? Probably not. I think the cons outweigh the pros. The smell is something that is just so off-putting to me. I also don't think it works the wonders that it claims it does. Does it leave my hair clean? Yes. 

Recently, I've switched to Lush's Daddy-O. Opting for something that is 100% natural and smells amazing sounds much better to me, even though I need to pay a few dollars more. I think when Clairol says this product is for blonde and silver, they mean really light blonde hair. If you fall into the white blonde/silver category, perhaps this product will work for you! In the meantime, I'm going to continue to find ways to prevent my hair from going brassy, one product at a time!