Category Archives: Hair
Haircare: Wella Professionals Blonde Recharge Shampoo & Conditioner Review
I’m always excited to try out new Wella Professionals hair products because I had a wonderful time with their Enrich range last year. So I was definitelywas eager to try out their Blonde Recharge range. Intended for use on all blondes (natural, or otherwise), the Invigo Blonde Recharge uses pigments within the product to prevent hair from yellowing and to eliminate brassiness.
I’ve always been quite curious about purple shampoo (and this one is DECIDEDLY purple) and how the pigments could affect blonde hair. I’ve even heard horror stories about how if you used too much purple shampoo you could somehow tint your hair purple. With all that in mind, I still decided to move forward with using this shampoo every day on my hair for over a month. And I can happily report that my hair was never tinted purple! I was left with happy, healthy hair, but the colour variance relied mostly on the conditioners.
There are two conditioners in this range – a warm blonde one and a cool blonde one. I tend to think my hair is quite warm, yellow even, so I was curious how these two conditioners would work to shift the tone of my hair.
I used the Warm Blonde for two weeks straight, and while my hair looked and felt great, I noticed no change in the colour of my hair. That could be because I am already quite warm though!
When I switched to the Cool Blonde, I noticed an immediate yet subtle difference in my hair. My hair definitely took on a slightly ashy tone – as if it was more of an icy blonde. I don’t think the difference was dramatic however, and I really only noticed the colour shift in certain lighting.
You can see the pigments in the swatch shot above. The shampoo is incredibly dark! But I promise it won’t stain your hair whatsoever. The warm blonde conditioner is obviously more yellow in tone, and the cool conditioner is more of an electric lavender.
It’s hard to provide photos of my hair and use them to compare from day to day conditions because the way my hair looks varies a greatly depending on lighting conditions. For example, cool lighting will make it look more ashy, and warm lighting will make it look more golden. While I don’t think the colour pigments in the product had much overall effect on my hair (if they did do anything, they were very, very subtle changes), I can vouch for Wella products. They feel good on my hair and they always make my hair very, very content.
The products featured in this post were sent to me for consideration.
Wella Enrich Haircare Review
As a blogger, I tend to have my staple haircare and skincare favourites, but there’s always a few times a year when a product or two shows up that causes me to stray away from my usuals. Sometimes it’s a good thing, and sometimes it’s (very) bad thing. But I’m always so, so glad when it’s a good thing like these haircare products by Wella!
Wella is a totally new to me brand – while I had heard of them , I had zero experience with the brand. When I posted about them on Instagram stories, I had a viewer/reader tell me their mom used the Wella brand back in the 60s – I had no idea they’d been around that long!
While Wella has a whole bunch of different product ranges, the ones I’ve become familiar with are in the Enrich line for fine to normal hair (they also have one for coarse hair as well). The Enrich range is intended to volumize your hair, which for me, at this point in time, basically means not to weight it down. My hair is exceptionally long at this point and almost nothing will volumize it outside of backcombing, so when I was trying these out I just wanted it to feel like my hair was bouncy – and it definitely was. I didn’t feel like my hair had any extra weight to it and it was definitely not greasy either (one of the ways I know a shampoo or conditioner combo is bad for me is if my hair feels as if it hadn’t been washed as soon as I get out of the shower).
While I really liked the shampoo and conditioner, the product that really delighted me was the Enrich Moisturizing Treatment. It’s essentially a hair mask, but one that only requires you to leave on your head for five minutes. I always get annoyed when a hair mask indicates you need to leave it on for 20-30 minutes! I want to moisturize my hair quickly in the shower while I’m washing my face and shaving my bits – I don’t want to stand there like a nonce while the mask works itself into my hair!
Of course, I half wondered “well how good is this hair mask going to be if it only takes five minutes?”. That thought was quickly put to rest because this is hands down the best hair mask I have ever used. It is super concentrated and thick – you barely need any product at all (which is a slight relief since the tub is on the small side!). It sank into my hair incredibly quickly and my hair felt like absolute BUTTER when I was rinsing it out. Almost unbelievably, there’s no heavy residue left over from it either!
Final Thoughts
The one thing I didn’t get around to mentioning is that the scent on these products is to die for. The shampoo and conditioner smell lovely and rather neutral, but it’s the hair mask that really set me over the edge in terms of scents – it smells WONDERFUL! Fresh, clean… and there’s something in there that reminds me of my childhood.
So the products work great, they smell lovely and they don’t leave my hair feeling heavy – all huge wins in my book. I’ll definitely be picking up the Moisturizing Treatment whenever I run out!
Wella‘s Enrich range can be purchased on chatters.ca and on ulta.com.
The products featured in this post were sent to me for consideration. Post contains affiliate links.
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Haircare: Moroccanoil’s SMOOTH Range
I don’t talk about a lot of haircare stuff on here or in my videos. My hair, much like my skin, is fairly undemanding – I get it cut maybe once a year, I can style it without issue, it’ll hold a curl for days on end, and, maybe the most important point to highlight – it’s not dyed either. So for that reason, I tend to find that most haircare products work just fine on me without having to tinker around much with product combinations. For the most part, if a product says it’s going to do X on my hair, then it usually does!
So for this reason I don’t tend to be that interested in haircare products – since not much makes a difference in it. But, there are products out there that appeal to me (for whatever reason) and it can be fun to talk about those, and that’s where this post comes in. I was sent a bunch of items from Morrocanoil‘s SMOOTH range, and I was eager to try them out.
My initial reaction was that these smelled far too heavily of the argan oil that’s in it (which I tend to despise), but I found that with day to day wear I ended up enjoying the scent because it never clung to my hair too heavily. I hugely appreciate that the shampoo and conditioner come in different coloured bottles which makes it easy to grab the right one! I’m a daily shower/hair-washer and I found that these two worked out just fine for that. I never felt like my hair was heavy or weighed down, and I might even say I had less greasiness by the end of the day.
The Smoothing Mask was a once a week kind of treatment for me. It’s super thick and luxurious, but once again didn’t leave my hair feeling heavy (huge bonus). In combination with the Moroccanoil SMOOTH Shampoo and Conditioner, this worked out really well – but I can’t say that I noticed a difference on top of what the shampoo and conditioner were already doing for me.
The Smoothing Lotion is part of the SMOOTH range and was a great leave-in styling aid, but you really don’t need much. The first time I tried it I put a big glob, which wasn’t nearly as effective as distributing a smaller pump throughout my hair. I felt it helped retain a hold a little bit better than normal, but also helped me comb through the tangles in my hair after a shower without having to use an additional leave-in conditioner.
The Molding Cream is part of their STYLE range and I was really unsure how to use this at first. I have long hair that doesn’t require a ton of tweaking in the front layers since they’ll just slide all around throughout the day. But, I found that this worked out great to tame any flyaways I may have when I put my hair up in a ponytail. I’m not usually after a super polished look for my hair, but taming flyaways does work out really well for some looks, so I found that after I’d yanked my hair back into a ponytail, I could smooth on a little bit of the molding cream along the top and sides of my head and it held everything down. You may need to touch up a bit throughout the day, but it really did help to keep those little punks in place.
Perhaps the most important thing I can say about this collection is that I didn’t realize this was the smoothing range until I sat down to write this post. And when I think back to the last week, I actually opted to wear my hair down every single day for work. This is a rarity for me as I far prefer to put it up every day at the office so I don’t have to deal with staticky hair getting all in my face while I’m at my computer. And I’m realizing now that I never once felt like I had a face full of static-laden hair, which encouraged me to continue wearing my hair down all week. Honestly, it’s a bit of a shock to me to put these pieces together and I can only attribute that to this Moroccanoil SMOOTH range. I don’t think you need all of the pieces from the range though – the shampoo and the conditioner seemed to manage my hair just fine!
You can buy Morrocanoil‘s range of products at sephora.ca or sephora.com.
The products in this post were sent to me for consideration. Post contains affiliate links.