Whoa! This is What the Wrong Shampoo Can Do to Your Colored Hair

Anyone who’s paid a small fortune for the perfect dye-job knows the struggle of having it fade too soon. (Raise your hand if you’ve ever had to deal with dull, lackluster color only a few short weeks after your trip to the salon—not fun.) Which is why using the right shampoo really, really matters. Still need proof?

Rachel Trach, a salon owner from Canada, posted a video to her Facebook page showing what can happen to your hair when you don’t use the right shampoo. For her experiment, Trach compared Unite 7Seconds Shampoo and what appears to be  TRESemmé 24 Hour Body Volume Shampoo. After pouring each product into a separate glass of water, Trach adds a piece of presumably color-treated hair…and the results are kind of horrifying.

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In the glass with salon shampoo, the water remained clear, but in the glass with the drugstore version, the hair is stripped of its color, turning the water into the equivalent of grape Kool-Aid. *Gasp* Now, we totally get that you don’t want to watch your hair dye wash down the drain along with all your hopes and dreams. But before you go throwing out your beloved drugstore shampoo, let us explain what actually made this happen.

One of the main ingredients in the TRESemmé shampoo used for this experiment is Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLES), a surfactant, which is a type of ingredient responsible for making your shampoo foam. While surfactants are common in a lot of beauty products, you pretty much want to avoid it like the plague when you have color-treated hair, or else you’ll end up washing away all the money you spent at the salon. The Unite shampoo used in this video is specifically made to protect your hair against color-fading and doesn’t contain SLES. While not exactly an equal comparison, the video definitely proves a point. Your best bet to prolong the life of your hair color? Make sure you’re using color-safe shampoo, like TRESemmé Color Revitalize Shampoo or Color Proof SuperRich Moisture Shampoo. So go wild at your next appointment…we know you’ve been dying (hah!) to try out the vibrant hair color trend.

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