Professional salon products vs. store brands

      I am a licensed professional cosmetologist and have been since 2003, so for the past 10 years hair has been my main focus. I have made it my business and I love what I do. I started this blog because I am asked ALL the time about hair. So with that being said, let's just dive right in to the main focus of this blog, professional salon products vs. store brands. Before I begin, let me just go ahead and state that I am not going to promote any one product over another, so I am in no way benefiting or profitting from this in anyway, this is simply me passing along information that I have been trained in.

      Salon products are professionaly diagnosed for your hairs specific needs and is going to be more suited to you than something you have picked up off your local store shelf. General use shampoo (this is a shampoo you would buy for your whole family to use) won't fix your partner's dandruff issue, your babies cradle cap and your frizzy, dry ends. Did you know that 80% of us misdiagnose our own hair types and purchase the wrong products?

     Price is a good indicator of quality when you are trying to choose your hair care products. Higher priced products contain better quality ingredients and contain more of them. A good example is essential oils, in the salon brands they are going to be more pure and more of them as opposed to store brands that use non-pure versions. If you buy really cheap versions, you are going to get exactly what you pay for.

     When you build a house, you always want to make sure that you have a good strong foundation. The same holds true for your shampoo and conditioner, that is the foundation for your hair and a good hairstyle. Shampoo should ALWAYS be follwed by a conditioner. This is because shampoo is negatively charged and conditioner is positively charged thus helpting to restore the acid mantel and protect the hair.

     Professional brands use gentler surfactants (this is a type of soap used in shampoo) in concentrated amounts, this means you will use far less product than a grocery store brand to achieve the same result. Surfactants are the most important ingredients in shampoo, because they clean and they create the lather. There are three different kinds of surfactants:

1. ammonium laurel sulfate
2. sodium laurel sulfate
3. sodium laureth sulfate

     Sodium laureth sulfate is the most expensive of the three, but it is the most gentle. Salon brands most usually use sodium laureth sulfate.  Ammonium laurel sufate is the harshest. It strips the hair of very important and necessary oils and will strip chemically enhanced color from your hair. It is also the least expensive, so most store brands will have ammonium laurel sulfate. Long story short; laureth is good, laurel should be avoided at all costs. 

     Speaking of costs, I was recently asked by a friend about the costs of salon products. Did you know salon products are more concentrated than store brands, so a bottle of salon brand is going to last much longer than store brands. In the end, you are not spending anymore (if any) for salon brands compared to store brands.