Professional vs packet – why?
Four Reasons Professional Hair Products are Better for Your Hair
When it comes to caring for your hair there’s a big difference between professional hair products from a salon and the ‘stuff’ you can buy at the supermarket. Despite the glossy advertisements, celebrity endorsements and the high paying television time slots, those supermarket brands of shampoo, conditioner, mousse, oil and gel – aren’t as good as you might think.
I know I could be considered biased because of my experience in hairdressing, but it’s true. Here are four reasons professional hair products beat what you can buy from the supermarket or chemist shelves.
1. Good ingredients make for great hair
The ingredients that go into your hair care products are really important for the health of your hair. Just like the food we eat and our body’s health. One of the main villains with cheaper hair products is that they contain too much alcohol, which can really dry your hair out.
The alcohol in some shampoos can dry your hair so much that it’s more difficult to manage and more prone to breakage. Silicones are also a major factor and many can have long lasting effects on your hair. We talk about those below ……
Professional products have good quality ingredients that will make your hair look and feel beautiful.
2. You’ll get vibrant colour and shine
When your hair is coloured using a quality product in salon, you get a colour that is perfectly suited to your hair type and complements your skin tone. Plus the colour holds its vibrancy and lustre for much longer than shop bought colours. Make no mistake, Hairdressing is a science. There are many many molecular differences in the products that are found in professional brands as oppose to those you pick off the shelf.
Supermarket hair colours are one size fits all, but your hair is unique to you, so you need a unique colour mix. There are so many variables that come in to play when we are selecting your ideal colour. Including your % of grey, hair texture, maintenance and your existing colour history to name a few.
You’ll never get the hair colour pictured on a box, and you’ll never match a friend’s hair colour. Off the shelf is risky business.
3. Professional hair care products last longer
Better quality ingredients mean better performance – professional shampoos clean better than Martha Stewart! And the better all your products are from shampoos and conditioners, to styling formulas, the less you need to use. So the professional product will last much longer, go further, and do a better job, than supermarket brands making the price very comparable in the long term.
4. Real protection, hair health and optimum results
Salon products give the best protection for hair that is heat styled with a blow dryer or straightening iron. (And let’s face it, who can live without their hair straightener?) Professional products contain silicones that help reduce how porous your hair is (so it doesn’t frizz after styling), decrease the amount of moisture lost from inside your hair (to keep it healthy), and lubricate your hair for smoothness (and less tangles). Supermarket products attempt to do this, but don’t get the same results.
Ever wondered what we really mean when we talk about supermarket brands creating ‘build-up’ on your hair? Let me explain. There are many different types of silicones but the biggest difference here are long chain and short-chain silicones.
Long-chain silicones are cheaper to manufacture and therefore appear in supermarket product lines. Picture lots of long chains that wrap themselves around your hair shaft. This may give you the feeling of having instantly smooth, silky hair, but be warned. It is a mere band-aid effect. They layer themselves and don’t release easily from the hair making it very difficult for anything else to penetrate your hair including colour molecules and regenerative treatments. The results are unpredictable colour – I have seen colour not take at all and simply slide off the hair completely when applied! It also results in an inability for reparative treatments to get inside the hair shaft to do their work.
Short-chain silicones are water-soluble and the excess releases from the hair shaft meaning you get optimum conditioning and restorative benefits. Prescribed treatments literally go deep into the hair shaft repairing your hair from the inside out. Colour molecules penetrate deeper and last longer …. No build-up occurs!
So next time you pick something off the shelf when you’re grocery shopping, think again! To really look after your hair, get the best look possible and have beautiful healthy hair, choose the professional products.