So I’ve had this product for almost a month now, and I’ve been using it to wash at least once a week. I figured I’ve given it enough time for me to write an honest and accurate review of it. Here is a pic of the product of which I speak:
First thing’s first. This stuff SMELLS AWESOME. I know the scent of something shouldn’t be your biggest concern, but for me if I don’t like the smell of a product there’s no way I’m going to want to use it consistently. The smell is pretty coconutty.
Ingredients are as follows:
Here are the ingredients in order:
- Deionized Water
- Decyl Glucoside (Sugar Beets)
- Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil*
- Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea Butter)*
- Aloe Vera Leaf Juice
- Vitamin E
- Melia Azadirachta (Neem) Seed Oil
- Sodium Lauroyl Lactylate (Coconut Oil)
- Panthenol (Vitamin B-5)
- Rosemary Extract
- Silk Protein
- Lonicera Caprifolium (Honeysuckle) Flower (and) Lonicera Japonica (Japanese Honeysuckle) Flower Extract
* Certified Organic Ingredients
All good stuff, nothing that is on the “bad” ingredient list for Natural hair. The price is also VERY reasonable. I paid $9.99 (plus tax) for it at the local Target, and I have a feeling it will last me until like the end of the year. In the picture above that was after like 5 or 6 washes (one day I used it to wash my hair 3 times in a row trying to figure out a WNG, I think I talked about it in a previous entry).
If lather is important to you, then you will LOVE this stuff. A little more than quarter sized amount is enough to get you a nice lather all over your head the FIRST time you shampoo. You know how sometimes with shampoos you don’t get a really good lather out of shampoos until the SECOND time you do it. Not with this stuff. You get awesome lathering EVERY time you use it.
The only thing I did before washing my hair was pre-poo overnight with EVOO. Since this is a sulfate-free shampoo I didn’t have to do any of the diluting stuff I’ve heard other people do to their hair. This shampoo does NOT leave your hair stripped at all. In fact, I think I could get away with not conditioning afterwards and just going straight to my leave-in and some EVOO for WNGs. I’m not going to TEST that theory (LOL), but I think I could get away with it.
Additionally, if you want to revive your curls, this shampoo will DEFINITELY do it for you. While washing my hair after the first rinse I can feel curls popping all over the place (especially in the back where my curls are tighter). It’s a wonderful feeling. The bottle says that you can use it for detangling, and I will say that the bottle isn’t lying. I like to rake my fingers through (not a comb!) to get any shed hairs I may have missed detangling the night before.
When I rinse my hair out it feels REALLY soft. For those of you who watch Rachel Ray, you know how she’s always talking about “smell-a-vision”? Well I wish computers had “feel-a-vision” because my hair feels so wonderful after using this shampoo. I think it does what it says it will do. I think there was an accompanying regular conditioner or hair milk type thing, I may have to go back and get some of that. If just the shampoo is as moisturizing as I find it to be, it may be even BETTER if I use it as a set.
Which brings me to another point, this product DOES work well with others. I don’t think you will HAVE to purchase it in a set of other SheaMoisture products if you don’t want to.
Here’s my hair after my first use of the shampoo, this was BEFORE I used any type of conditioner:
Here’s my hair on the 22nd after washing with the shampoo and DCing with my ORS/Honey/EVOO mix:
My hair loves this stuff (oh and in the second pic, that’s water running down my forehead, not a vein or something. LOL). If you click on the pics I think you may be able to see larger versions.
So basically I give this shampoo 5 Afros out of 5 (LOL). I recommend it to anyone with curls and thick hair. There is not one thing I dislike about this shampoo. It’s also excellent for your scalp.
