Fairytales and Following Trails: Olia Hair Colour

Last time I had to bleach my roots, I was feeling super lazy. Instead of mixing up bleach I just used box dye and it worked reasonably well, but I was also too lazy to tone it so it was super yellow and icky. Add to this the fact the my ends were pretty close to white from being repeatedly dyed purple and you'll see I had some pretty uneven hair tone happening. Now I have a job interview tomorrow which I only got a call about on Monday, so it was fairly short notice and I didn't want to go with my hair looking the way it did. I spoke to my hair dresser friend and she suggested a couple of dyes I could try but when I went shopping, none of the stores I went to had the shade I needed in the brands she suggested. So I decided to go ahead and try the new Olia hair colour by Garnier. It has no ammonia, which was the primary draw for the brands my friend suggested, so I figured I'd give it a bash.

So, I'll do somewhat of a review I guess. I chose the Light Blonde (9.0), although in retrospect I may have gotten a better result from Blonde (8.0), but I was worried about going darker than I wanted so I decided to err on (what I felt was) the side of caution.

The box contains developer cream, colour cream, a plastic bottle for mixing and applying, a tube of conditioner and a pair of gloves. I mixed the developer and colour creams together, sectioned off my hair and began applying. My hair is pretty short and quite fine and there was enough for my head, but not really any extra. If you have long or thick hair I'd recommend getting a few bottles if you're doing your whole head. Application was pretty easy but I didn't like how thick the mixture was. It felt like it made it harder to spread it out through my hair and have it penetrate through to coat everything evenly, although the plus side to the thick formula is obviously no drips. I suppose it did the job of coating my hair though and I think the result is pretty even bearing in mind how uneven it was to start with.

Box contents

The product smells quite nice. A lot of dyes get up my nose and have a burny chemically smell to them, but this one smelled sweet, and even after the full 30 minutes on my head it still didn't smell bad. It didn't irritate me scalp or feel uncomfortable, it did tingle a little, but compared to how bothersome I find most dyes this one was extremely mild. After washing it out I actually found that my hair felt really dry and straw-like, which was the only negative in my opinion, but even then my hair was fine and felt normal again once I had conditioned it.

I'm pretty happy with the result. I think it has worked pretty well. It slightly lightened my roots and slightly darkened my ends so my hair doesn't look so uneven. Its still a bit patchy but there's only so much you can ask of these box dyes really! I do think my hair looks better overall than it did before, and that's what I was going for.

I've taken some before and after shots, though as usual I couldn't quite get the angle and lighting precisely the same between the two so the comparison is not 100% perfect. I've done my best though!