Review: L'Oreal Sublime Mousse

Two weeks ago, I bit the bullet and picked up a box dye from Boots. It wasn’t the first time I have dyed my hair, but it was a much redder colour than I have ever gone before and I was doing it myself

Since I was doing it myself, I knew I wanted either a mousse or a mask (I didn’t trust myself to use a bottle!) so I ended up getting the L’Oreal Sublime Mousse dye in the shade 565 Hot Brown (£6.99).

Following the instructions

After putting the colorant into the developing cream and then attaching the pump, it was time to mix the solution. The instructions clearly say do not shake but instead rotate. I spent a few minutes rotating the bottle in a circle in my hand but when I looked at the solution, it wasn’t mixing at all. I looked at the instructions again and saw that the diagram had the bottle with an arrow pointing from the top of the pump towards the floor. I tried doing this, ‘rotating’ the bottle so that I was holding it upright in my hand and then upside down, and back upright again. This isn’t really what I would describe as ‘rotating’ but after a few minutes, it looked as though the solution had completely mixed so I was ready to go.

The instructions dictate that if dye comes out in a liquid form you are not to use it, but instead wash it away and continue to pump some squirts until you get a mousse. The first pump came out in a mousse for me, so I didn’t have to waste any (yay!).

I applied the mousse to my roots, carefully trying not to miss any patches, before going through and applying it to the ends of my hair. Applying the dye took 30 minutes which, for a first attempt, I am quite impressed with, especially as I have quite a lot of hair.

I left the dye on for ten minutes longer than the instructions say (40 minutes as opposed to 30) as I really wanted my hair to take the dye and be the colour on the box.

The colour

After I washed the dye out, I was quite disappointed as my hair didn’t look red. I let my hair air dry and still struggled to see the colour as it was drying though when I looked in the mirror the next morning, I could see the red where the light shone on it.

Typical to most dyes I have experienced, the colour didn’t match the box, even where I had virgin hair (i.e. my roots that hadn’t previously been dyed). It was a lot darker than the box but I had anticipated that, hence why I went for the brightest red available.

Two weeks later and the dye has faded further, which again I had expected. However, I can still see the red in it although it is predominantly brown. I actually quite like my hair colour at the moment, though I would like for it to be a little bit more like the colour on the box.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I am actually quite impressed with the dye as a whole. There were a couple of aspects that could be better - I found that the dye or conditioner didn’t leave my hair feeling silky soft the way other dyes have done - but there were a lot of positives, including the fact that the gloves were stretchy! I have dyed my hair before with other dyes and most of the time the gloves provided had no elasticity, were hard to get on and made my hands sweat. The gloves provided in this dye, however, were very comfortable to put on as they were quite stretchy and also they didn’t make my hands feel too hot.

Probably the biggest positive I had in regards to this dye is that it didn’t drip. I don’t know if this is because I was super careful about getting such a dark colour all over our light bathroom or if it was because of the mousse texture of the dye but I only had about four or five spots in the sink in total and none on the floor.

Another positive is that I only used one box! Every other time I have dyed my hair, even when I had shorter hair, I have always had to use two lots. I prepared and bought two boxes but only ended up using one. It was quite a stretch and I only just covered all of my hair thoroughly but I was quite liberal with applying it at the start so I could have easily used it a bit more sparingly on my roots and a bit more freely on my ends.

Quality: 8/10

Application: 8/10

Appearance: 9/10

Value: 8/10

Formula: 9/10 - minimal drips!

Likely to buy again: 6/10 - I will use the spare box I have but will then probably try out other mousses/masks to gain some comparison, but I will try to remember this specific dye

Overall: 8/10

Have you ever used this dye before? What did you think of it?

- Taisie ♥ | Bloglovin ♥ Twitter ♥ Tumblr ♥ Pinterest ♥ Instagram