Not the highlight of my week (Multi-Lights Kit)

Member Name: DaisyMarie

Product:	Multi-Lights Kit
Date:	01/08/08 (1104 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great conditioner, easy to mix products together, mixing "box" is well designed

Disadvantages: See review!

Ok, so I saw the advert for the new Garnier Multi Lights Kit on the telly - now called Garnier Nutrisse Cream Multi Lights Kit - they have changed the name and box for some reason! And I have dark brown hair and have been thinking of getting some highlights for a while to lighten up my hair for the summer.

So, when I saw this product £1 off in Superdrug - it is usually £4.99 but was down to £3.99, I decided to go for it! I bought Kit number 4. There are 4 different kits now, which the website describles as:
Kit 1 - Medium Blonde
Kit 1+ - Extra Light
Kit 2 - Light Brown
Kit 3 - Red/Copper/Auburn
Kit 4 - Dark Brown

I haven't quite worked out what the Kit 1+ is, because I gathered from the website it was for extra blonde hair, but on the box in the shop it said for any hair colour! Anyway, I bought Kit 4 for dark brown hair.

In the box you get a mixing bowl, 2 gloves, a 20ml bottle of developer milk, a 10g sachet of multi lightening powder, a 10ml sachet of conditioner with avocado oil and an applicator brush.

Instructions:
The instructions are pretty simple - first make sure your hair is damp, then put on the gloves and mix the developer milk with the lightening powder. The "patented applicator wand" is kinda useful as one end is a stirrer/mixer. You then select a strand of hair, scoop the brush into the cream and sweep the brush through the hair starting 1cm from the root. You carry on like this until you have highlighted all the hair you want, then when you have finished applying, leave for 20 mins or 30 mins for a stronger colour. You then rinse your hair with warm water and shampoo, and then apply the conditioner sachet for 2 minutes. Rinse your hair and thats the end of the instrustions!

My experience:
The mixing was easy because the mixing bowl you get is a plastic square with a small and a large compartment. The small compartment is so you can rest the brush in there, which I really liked as there is nothing worse than having nowhere to put something that had hair dye on it in the middle of you application process and end up staining your bathroom sideboard or whatever!

The brush was awful, they hail it as an easy to use patented applicator but really, I dont know why they spent the time and money patenting it! It looks and feels like the hairbrushes you get for barbie dolls - a few plastic bristles and thats it! It did not hold the hair dye and when you swiped it through your hair you got uneven blobs of it here and there. In the end I just applied it with my fingers and smoothed it evenly over the strands.

The leaflet has images of different hairstyles and how you should highlight them - the options are - a bob cut, a layerd cut, long curly hair or short cropped hair. None of these seemed to really fit my hair but I opted for the layered cut which told me to frame my face with thin strands of highlights. This is what I tried to do, but it ended up looking like I had highlighted the whole top layer of my hair rather than individual sections.

One major problem with this stuff is that it can take a long time to apply if you want specific areas to be highlighted. It took me about 15mins to highlight all the areas I reqired, and then you are supposed to wait 20mins before washing it off. The problem being that if I did this, some of my hair would have had the dye on for 35 mins, and some for just 20mins. Even as I was finishing my hair, I noticed some areas were very light, this panicked me because I didnt want them to go that light (or any lighter for that matter) but I couldn't rinse my hair yet as other strands hadn't changed colour. I then decided to go for the fiddly process of using a wet flannel to try wipe the highlighter cream off strands that were very light. In the end I just gave up because none of my other strands looked like they were ever going to get lighter.

So, I had my shower and rinsed my hair. The conditioner on the other hand, was lovely. It was really fruity and made my hair so unbelievably soft! I wish I could buy it in a bottle but they only do it in the hair colouring packages at the moment.

Now I shall come to the second major flaw with this product - the instructions are very specific that you should only put the product from 1cm away from the scalp. Now I have the problem of having "roots"! This is the worst thing, because you cannot put the product any nearer to the scalp with the applicator brush because it is so useless, and if you try to apply some with your gloved hands, you find you get the colourant all over other hairs. So, you can either end up with a large lighter patch surrounding a highlight, or have your roots a much darker colour than the highlights.

This was the final straw for me and I decided I shall not have another attempt with this product as its not worth the risks of messing up your hair with splodges and patches!

I also noticed that it is quite hard to get the product spread evenly on the hair, so you end up with lighter or darker patches along the strands.

All in all, not a great look!

I shall probably update this review in a few weeks to describe if it fades quickly or lasts a long time (it is supposed to be permanent)

Summary: I would not recommend this to potential buyers