Say Goodbye To The Long Red Hair! (Pantene Intensive Care Masque - For Coloured and Highlighted Hair)

Member Name: karenuk

Product:	Pantene Intensive Care Masque - For Coloured and Highlighted Hair
Date:	04/05/03 (457 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: nice smell, easily available, well trusted brand name

Disadvantages: Doesn't last long enough

As those who regularly read my opinions will know, some six months ago, I began dyeing my hair. It’s been purple, blue and varying shades of red ever since. It became a bit of an obsession really and I once dyed my hair twice in one day!

This was, in hindsight, rather silly and my hair is now in a terrible state. When I went to the hairdressers in mid-January, the stylist warned me that a patch of hair at the back of my head was so brittle that bits were breaking off. Taking her advice, I had a few inches taken off the ends and didn’t dye it for a month.

I have resigned myself to going back to my natural colour (allegedly dark brown, but it’s been a while!) and a harder cross to bear is that I know I will need to have my hair cut really short soon. The brittle, dry patch is getting worse and the long-term condition of my hair is important.

I have been trying to make amends to my poor desperate locks by spending lots of money on specialist hair products to rehydrate and repair my dry, damaged hair. Some have been better than others, but they have all been much more expensive than the conditioners I would buy before.

The latest one to be put to the KarenUK test is the Pantene Pro-V Radiant Colour Moisturising Masque. I bought this from Boots for £3.95 (but only because Amazon don’t stock toiletries!). I spent quite a while scanning the shelves looking for something around £4 (I had vouchers to spend) that would rehydrate hair that was dry and dyed.

The Moisturising Masque comes in a 150ml tub. The one for Radiant Colour is in a creamy coloured container. The directions are to use after shampooing, applying ‘liberally’ to damp hair, leave in for three minutes then rinse off. So nothing too taxing there, although the three minutes do drag. (It’s a good time to cleanse and moisturise your face!)

The contents of the tub smell nice – a kind of gentle, fruity scent. The
masque itself is quite thick, white and creamy. It feels nice on your fingers and is easy enough to put on your hair, being thick enough not to run off and disappear into the bath! It is also pleasant massaging into your hair and it feels like it is helping to put some much needed moisture back into it.

After rinsing off, the first test of its effectiveness comes when I try to brush my haystack into some kind of tangle-free order. As anyone who has seen my unbrushed hair will know, I have a patch at the back which sticks up like a hen’s tail unless it has some serious attention. If Offy thinks her horns are bad, she should see this! I had to buy some hair gel just so I could be seen in public!

The Pantene Pro-V Moisturising Masque performs quite well in this department. My hair is relatively easy to brush through, leaving only a few stubborn tangles which inevitably result in chunks of red hair coming out.

After blow-drying (slightly – don’t want to damage it even more!), it feels soft and silky and easy to run my fingers through. You wouldn’t even know about the bad patch at the back either.

So it does its job and improves the condition and manageability of my hair. You just know there’s a ‘but’ coming, don’t you? Well, overall, although it is a good product and I would use it again, there are a couple of drawbacks.

The 150ml tub lasts me four washes usually, which would mean just over a week of hair washing and £4 a week is a lot of money! Obviously this depends on the length and condition of each person’s hair, but mine is currently shoulder-length and – technically speaking – “in a hell of a state!”

It’s also not the best product I have used. I was very impressed with the balm from Regis salons – the only inconvenience being it is available solely in their stores. The other product, which I would recommend over the Pan
tene one, is the version that Avon does.

The Avon Advance Techniques range sell a Colour Protection Deep Treatment Mask (150ml for £4, but they recommend you use it weekly) and a Deep Conditioning Mask (150ml for £3), both of which I have used and have found them slightly better than the Pantene version.

But overall, if your hair is desperately in need of some TLC, try the Pantene Pro-V Moisturising Masque. It helps my hair in the short term, but in the long term, I think the only cure for me will be a very short haircut.

So if you’re coming to the Bristol meet in June, don’t expect me to look like the photo in my profile pic. Instead of a big cheesy grin and long bright red hair, I’ll be the one in the corner with short hair in a nondescript dark brownish colour.

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