Review: Garnier Olia Oil Powered Permanent (hair) Color

In the past, over at the other blog, I did quite a few hair color reviews, including this random observation about gloves.

This week, I tried a new hair color, Garnier Olia.

For the past few months, I've been getting my hair color at Whole Foods. I tried Naturtint as well as a henna-based colorant. While the results were adequate, they weren't vibrant. My hair stayed a reddish shade of mostly brown, and I like my red hair to be pretty red.

Because hair is what it is, and mine isn't in the best shape, any color will fade after a few weeks. That's why I need it to start out even a little bit over the top so that when the initial *bang* of color washes out, it's still... well, red, to beat a dead horse.

I am trying to avoid ammonia or anything else that's going to strip or dry out my hair. The henna dye lies on top of the strand, which means it washes out, albeit slowly. I'm starting off with pretty dark brown hair naturally, so that makes it even more stubborn to color.

Thus, I tried this.

It comes with a weird squirt application bottle, the developer, the color itself, conditioner, and a pair of, get this, BLACK gloves.

Fancy! Actually, it's nice because when I color my hair, it usually looks like I'm wearing gloves to avoid leaving proof that I violently murdered someone.

The dye mix was thick and did not drip. As soon as the mixture was activated, I knew I was on the right track. The dye began to turn a very dark pinkish orange-red, which I prefer to having it turn purple, which means that it's more of a dark auburn and not the look I want for summer.

There's nothing hugely radical about this hair color, but I appreciate that they didn't try to go the foam route which has been the rage recently. In my experience, it's difficult to use all of the foam and it's messy. I was also pleased that it was as thick as it is and didn't drip.

The end color was exactly what I wanted, but I ran into one issue: because the dye was so thick, I somehow managed to miss some pretty overt spots toward the right side of my head, near the bottom of my hair. I decided to take advantage of the fact that ombre is a fad and just leave it... 

Until a few days later when I decided to go one step further and actually color the bottom layer of my hair purple. Now, it looks like this. The pretty, bright red is courtesy of Olia, which I will definitely purchase again. Only I'll be careful to comb though to make sure I don't miss anything else.