Product Review: Clairol Natural Instincts

My rule of thumb with all beauty products is that no one should be able to tell you're using a beauty product. I personally would much rather hear "you have fantastic skin" instead of "what a fantastic foundation!" Which leads me to my secret beauty confession. I dye my hair. Most people don't know this - especially because I dye it my natural color. Ever since I was a little girl, my hair turn hypercolor in the summer. It gets really blonde. Which looks ridiculous come fall when my dark roots start growing in. I was in a wedding in October where my bun was literally a different color than the rest of my head and all the bride's relatives insisted it was a hairpiece. So every fall I dye my hair back to its normal brown shade. Because everyone thinks of me as a brunette, no one notices the change.

I always perform the coloring myself - mostly because its cheaper and I'm not doing anything drastic. I don't have to worry about touch ups, or grow outs or whatever. This year I decided to tweak my normal brown just a bit by adding a little red to it. Still - nothing drastic. I went for a red brown from Clairol because - well, I had a coupon for Clairol.

What: Clairol Natural Instincts
How Much: $8 - $11
Where to buy: Target, grocery store, pharmacy.....
Review: On the plus side, I've been walking around for about 2 weeks now with "red hair" and only one person's noticed. I've had dinner with parents and friends, yet none of them have said anything. When I mentioned it to my mom she said "you know, I did think you'd done something with your hair, but I couldn't figure out what." For me, this is a sign of success. The process was easy enough to use - single application, wait, rinse, condition. The only thing I didn't like about it was that you had to use the strand test to determine the time to leave the product on. Perhaps this appeals to some people, but not me. I want you to give me a time so I'm not running over to the test every 2 minutes, rinsing off the 7 hairs to determine if they're the color I want before putting them back in the mixture and waiting another 2 minutes. Maybe if I were going from blonde to brown this would be easy, but when you're dealing with degrees of brown it difficult to say "aha, yes, we have acheived the result!" Especially when you're rinsing the hairs every few minutes.