03 Feb Review: L’Oreal Paris Debuts New Sublime Mousse Healthy Look Haircolor
BREAKING NEWS: The hottest hair color trend of the season is Illuminata. See the technique and photos HERE!
In this era of instant gratification, we want Twitter-speed results. This surely, applies to your hair color, right?
It seems that L’Oreal Paris heard your cry and answered in the form of its latest hair-coloring offering: the new Sublime Mousse, which is no ordinary mousse or foam, but a truly sublime one.
(Dictionary definition of sublime for the classic nerd is: : “to elevate or exalt especially in dignity or honor”).
So, in other words, consider your hair coloring experience elevated. Knocked up a notch. The Sublime Mousse Healthy Look Haircolor is a lighter-than-ether airy mousse that is mess free and easy to apply as shampoo. Gray hairs are instantly covered.
How do you use it? You rotate the pump bottle to mix the formula,and dispense the foam into your hand and massage it into the hair like shampoo. There are 12 shades of permanent hair color in this collection, each as unique as you. At a recent event, we saw the model’s shiny, glossy locks and were impressed. This is truly one knockout mousse!
This retails at the beginning of March 2011 for $9.99 at mass retail and drugstores everywhere.
MUST READ: You must check out interview with celeb colorist Frederic Fekkai where he shares tips to get salon-like hair color results at-home.
We know that mousse and foam are two new innovations in the hair-coloring department of late, and we’re curious to know if you like them. Are you a fan? Check out these before and after photos of the new Clairol Natural Instincts haircolor. And check out the latest innovation from John Frieda with the Precision Hair Color Foam. And if you’re looking to cover gray, check out our review of the Garnier HerbaShine Hair Colour with Bamboo Extract. And find out why this new hair color from Couture Color Luxe Blend Creme Hair Color retails for $30 !!
In case you make a hair coloring mistake, check our quick fix post here.
Plus check out our post on the hottest hair color trend for Spring/Summer 2011, Ombre Color Streaming HERE.
And check out our post on the hottest hairstyle trends for Spring/Summer 2011 HERE.
– Charu Suri
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Gab
Posted at 12:18h, 13 JuneI used the sublime mousse pure dark brown number 40. before i tried this product, i looked at other reviews and saw that most of it had very negative comments. I dyed my hair 2 days ago. To be honest, the mousse dye isn’t that bad. i heard that a lot of people were saying it made their hair dry. This is the first time i’ved dyed my hair. i straighten my hair a lot.so my hair is already damaged but my hair before i dyed it was never like straw. After using the dye, my hair still isn’t like straw. I think it depends on the type of hair you have. Also, if your a person who dyes their hair a lot then i’m guessing you hair WILL be like straw. the only downfall is, the colour. the colour hasn’t come out like it had on the box. it comes out darker than it should. also in the light it looks like the number 56 dye. It gives it a maroony brown colour. But i guess after a few washes it might go a bit lighter. I would say this product is good for beginners as its super easy.
Lynn
Posted at 17:22h, 13 JuneNot happy with this product. It’s been a week and the gray is already back. On top of that, I went to the salon to get highlights and they told me (after a strand test) that the foam is really bad for your hair and binds differently than other drugstore product. And they can’t get the color to lift out, so I was denied service for highlights. So I’m now stuck looking really crappy. I was told to use clarifying shampoo and come back in a month. My summer is ruined. 🙁
jmk
Posted at 14:42h, 23 JuneNightmare. First hair coloring product to give me an allergic reaction. Felt my face go numb after the first 5 min. After all that…my hair feels like straw. (Only had dye in for short time before desperately trying to wash out!). Wow, scariest experience ever with a hair dye. Obviously will never use this again!
Lindsay
Posted at 04:05h, 25 JuneOkay. So I read all the REALLY mixed reviews on here and I decided I had to try this product. I know that sounds really silly, but I feel like I am a good candidate for an unbiased opinion!
To begin with, I have very healthy, thick, shiny hair naturally. When I was in my teens, I used to dye my hair pretty frequently because I loved to change up my appearance. Since college, I’ve toned that down quite a bit, because I love the look and feel of my hair naturally too. And so now I usually dye my hair once every six or seven months.
Alright, here goes: I chose Golden Medium Brown
I opened the box and pulled out a large bottle of foaming developer, a small bottle of color, a foam pump head, a long, skinny bottle of conditioner, and instructions.
The conditioner is a little yellow, but feels creamy and smells nice.
The color itself before being poured into the developer is sort of honey-colored, but with more red tint.
The foam coming out of the bottle was a reddish-brown, but quickly turned dark once it hit the air.
The only thing I was under-impressed about with the contents are the gloves. They are kind of crappy, and stuck inside the instructions.
The Process:
Mixing is easy. Application is even easier. I have no complaints about the ease of this product.
I will say, with regular product, I usually require two packages, even with short hair because my hair is so thick. With this one, I literally saturated my hair with foam and still had plenty left over. I was very pleased about this.
20 minute check-in:
My hair looks very red right now. And I am tempted to wash it out and rock a Christina Hendricks look. But I really want to give this product a fair chance, so I am going to leave it in for the full amount of time.
In the shower:
The dye came out like it was NOTHING. I was almost worried that it hadn’t colored my hair!
Addressing the dry-ness…well. I have to admit. After reading all these comments, I was hyper-sensitive to the issue of dryness. And after washing out the dye, my hair did feel dry. So I used a little extra conditioner and left it on for 2 minutes before mixing it with some warm water and making sure I saturated every single strand. I am pleased to tell you that this method, or the conditioner works, because my hair no longer feels dry.
My hair wet is very, very dark and reddish at the roots. I am not displeased with the colors, and they aren’t starkly contrasted or anything. But my roots are a little more red than the rest of my hair. Fine by me, my hair is naturally a red-brown anyways.
Dryed, Styled, and Finished:
My hair is not dry and feels like it normally does. The color of my hair looks like it does on the package, only a little more red, which is understandable considering I had red in my hair to start. No patches were missed that I can see, so coverage is great!
I would like to add that it did not stain my forehead, ears, or neck at all. It just wiped away. Awesome!
Overall and Sidenotes:
Overall this dye was great! This is the first time I’ve colored my hair completely by myself without the expert help of my mom or friends. I am glad it was so successful.
I do want to address the smell. It is not so bad when coloring, but when blow-drying, the chemicals smell like a soured dish rag. The conditioner does a little to help this, with it’s perfume-y scent. But be aware that when you are blow-drying, the scent is very pronounced, so I would tread carefully about where you go right after it’s been colored.
As for the color, when choosing a color be aware of all the nuances of color in your hair!! You may *think* it looks exactly like it does on the box, but you may have undertones of red or ash that become more pronounced when colored over. That is all I can offer to help you. For me, the color looks great! Maybe just a smidge darker than what is on the box, but that is very subtle. Otherwise it is just the red that makes it look so different.
On my roots, and places where my hair is thinner than others/less stacked it is more noticably red. So I think women with thinner hair with red undertones should not use ANYTHING with “Golden” in it. Look for “Cool” “Iced” or “Ash” to balance out the red in your hair unless you want it to be more auburn.
I would give this product and 8.5 out of 10.
I’d really like to see better gloves and a better conditioner. And of course, there is the smell. But honestly, this is better than any other dye I’ve ever used when it comes to ease of application. And the color looks great. As long as it holds up to the test of time, I would be more than willing to use this product exclusively.
(Although maybe next time I will try nice ‘n easy or John Frieda and write a review on that)
EricaVee
Posted at 02:47h, 02 JulyI just used this product tonight.
I used L’Oreal Feria for years, and it is a really wonderful dye. I no longer use it regularly because it’s pricey and it was a little harsh on my scalp. I would probably still use it if not for the cost, to be honest. The color is gorgeous and the conditioner is great, so I already have expectations in place for a L’Oreal product.
I’m young, so no gray, and I’ve been dyeing my naturally dark brown hair blue black for years. I read all the bad reviews, but went ahead using the product anyway–I figured that black would be hard to mess up, and even if it went wrong, my hair has taken a lot of hits over the years.
Application went well. I used a LOT of product, and I kept going even after my hair was saturated. I didn’t want the product drying prematurely. Then I massaged really well to make sure I got everything. So far so good.
One thing that was strange–why does the pump come with a cap? You’re not going to use it, since you can’t keep already-mixed hair dye. It seems like a waste of plastic–maybe they could save that money and provide better gloves?
Anyway. I did “massage” once during the waiting time. Not because my hair looked like it needed it or anything. Just because the instructions said so. The color wasn’t foamy anymore, but the it wasn’t dry, either–it had kind of just un-foamed and turned into a normal liquid. It did foam back up when I massaged it. Hair felt crunchy, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the color getting dry or from damage.
The dye was turning reddish-brown out of the bottle, and then a little bluish. I’m not sure what color it would turn if you put it on, say, light blond hair.
Time to rinse out. It seems like it took forever to rinse, but I did use a lot of product and I was also using the hose attachment on my kitchen sink. 😛 While I was rinsing I did notice, like others, that my hair didn’t feel like tangled-up hay the way it normally does after coloring and before conditioning.
The conditioner smells lovely, very close to Bath and Body Works’s Pink Cherry Blossom scent. It didn’t seem to work as well as other box dye conditioners–even the Feria conditioner, which is a L’Oreal product too.
I kept the conditioner in for a while–maybe five minutes or something. When I rinsed, it didn’t feel damaged, but it didn’t feel silky, either.
After blow-drying, it was definitely black. Like I said before, black seems hard to mess up. So no problem with the actual color. But my hair looked really dull. It got shiny when I finished it with a flatiron, but still seemed kind of frizzy, and not as soft as it could be.
I’m placing the blame with the conditioner. Like I said, my hair actually felt really great right after rinsing out the color. And my hair also dried really quickly with a blowdryer, which is a sign that the dye helped rather than hurt–my hair is very porous from so much dyeing and normally takes forever to dry.
I guess I won’t really know what to make of the dye until after I wash and condition with my normal TRESemmé conditioner. I suspect it will be lovely and shiny. I don’t know what’s up with L’Oreal–they have also changed the Feria conditioner for the worse, and now this! Feria conditioner used to be amazing, I say bring it back and bundle it with this product, too.
My final verdict: Good black dye. Use more product than you think you need to and really work it into your hair. Substitute your own conditioner; maybe save theirs for a time when your hair doesn’t need the moisture quite as much, because it does smell nice.
I can’t really speak to the whole “color too dark” issue, seeing as I was going for black anyways. I’ve heard that other brands of foam color also come out darker; it makes sense, since foam is concentrated. Let’s see if the hair color companies find a way around it, because the application really is much easier than traditional box dyes. Luckily for me, I’m always after the blackest black possible. 🙂