Charles Worthington Heat Protection Spray (Charles Worthington Heat Protection Spray)

Member Name: Mrs-LT

Product:	Charles Worthington Heat Protection Spray
Date:	22/02/09 (71 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice smell, nice coloured bottle, leaves hair shiny

Disadvantages: Not as good as other brands

This was one of the products I received in a pampering goody bag that my friends made up for me after the birth of my son. I was given the 50ml bottle from the Takeaways range (miniature travel sized products) which costs £1.61 in Boots. The full size will cost around the £5 mark although I have never bought it as this lasted me ages and I tried lots of other heat protection products in the meantime - I am a product whore and rarely stick to one brand for any length of time!

While I am generally not a fan of the Takeaways range as they cost almost £2 and tend to last about 2 minutes (the shampoos especially), this is definately one worth buying. It lasted months and the bottle is tiny! So it was £1.61 well spent. It is also ideal for taking on holiday because I take full size shampoo and conditioner therefore when it comes to styling products I have to downsize or ditch them to save precious suitcase space.

It comes in a lovely purple bottle with white lettering, other than the product name which is in orange. It is dispensed with an atomiser spray which is ideal and easy to use and direct.

You use this by spraying it liberally on each section of hair before using a heated appliance.

I found the instructions a bit confusing as they say 'Wash, dry, style as normal' before mentioning using the product so this gave the impression you wash, dry and before using it, which clearly does not make sense. I used it all over finely before blowdrying and then on each section before straightening.

It is enriched with moisturising rice protein to help protect hair from the daily damage of heat styling. I think a heat protection spray is absolutely essential if you use heated stylers such as straighteners or curling tongs on your hair regularly as this helps to limit the damage they do.

It also contains humidity resistant styling agents to smooth frizz, maximise the staying power of your finished style and transform hair's managability and shine.

I don't think it reduced frizz at all, nor did it seem to make any tangible difference to the staying power of my style or my hair's managability. It did leave it lovely and shiny though, and I noticed the difference on a couple of occasions when I forgot to use this product before styling.

I think maybe the key here is that it claims to do too many things all in one go - it is OK at a couple but not at them all. Perhaps it tries to hard to be a jack of all trades, and ends up a master of none.

It has a lovely scent - light and fresh and not like the chemical smell that lots of heat protection products seem to have. I really liked the fragrance when I sprayed this on my hair and it did not hang heavily on the air or catch the back of my throat like others do.

What I did not like is that it made hair dry and stuck together in clumps (kind of like cheap hairspray) if you used any more than the lightest spray, despite the bottle advising you to spray it liberally on each section. I presumed all heat protection sprays must be like this but after trying other brands I discovered it was only this one.

I did think this was a good product until I tried others (Trevor Sorbie and Lee Stafford to give a couple of examples) then I realised that in comparison with them it is not that great. It did leave hair shinier and smelling nice but I would not say it made a big impression on me.

Summary: Don't waste your money on a full size bottle until you know whether you like it