I have been having my hair trimmed regularly for some time now and every time that I walk out of the hairdressers door I have promised myself a colour to brighten up my fast greying hair.
Part of me says that is vanity but there is another part of me that says that not only does a colour inject a little life into your hair it seems to make my skin look brighter too.
For me the major drawback is setting aside time to `be bothered`, doesn't that sound awful!
But the more I think about sitting about with my hair dripping with cold colourant the less likely I am going to be bothered to go out and buy one!

The last time I coloured my hair I made a big mistake - No, I will correct that statement, a HUGE mistake. I bought one of the new permanent ten minute colours. In theory a brilliant and innovative idea, in practise for me it meant a quick visit to the hairdressers afterwards. The colour was on my hair for no longer than the ten minutes and it took hold like a fever, the end result was a dense dark and unflattering colour that I could do little about. Luckily the stylist was able to cut and layer my hair, this lifted the matt colour and softened it to an extent but I don't want to make the same mistake again!

I had a browse around our local Superdrug and ended up buying a Schwarzkopf Poly colour tint, they were all on offer at £1.99p. I wasn't too worried about applying it either, knowing that it washes out is a big comfort.
My beauty routine is a bit slap dash to say the least and I always seem to pick ridiculous times to try anything new.
Just after nine in the morning after I had washed the breakfast dishes I decided that the grey hair had to go, the Poly colour box came out and that was that!
I always try to choose the one shade lighter than my natural hair colour, to go any darker is fatal. I am naturally dark brown and I had chosen a mid brown Poly colour tint.

You apply the Poly colour to dry hair, so that part is simple. Inside of the cardboard box there is one bottle and one tube, one filled with colourant and the other with developer.
There is a large instruction sheet that takes you through the whole process step by step.
You also get a pair of very large plastic gloves that look like they would fit an orang-utan !
The packaging is basic but lets face it I am not using the packaging to colour my hair.
Poly colour pledges to cover my grey hair with a rich colour that will last for up to 24 washes.
Just the job!

So, you take the lid off of the tube of crème colourant and squeeze the contents of the tube into the plastic bottle of developer. When the contents are both in the one bottle you then shake the contents until they are thoroughly mixed.
The next step is to put on the plastic gloves and apply the colour to your hair and this is fairly easy, after the contents of the bottle have been evenly distributed then rub the colour in using your fingertips, make sure that all of the hair is well covered with the colourant.
The one thing that is great is that the thick colourant stays put on your head, you don't end up having to continually mop streaks of colour from your face and neck.

I left the colour on my hair for the maximum length of time. The next step was to run a bowl full of warm water and just gently run some of the warm water over your hair to loosen the colour.
Give it a final rub through with your fingertips and then carry on and rinse all of the colourant off using clean warm water.

After a good rinse your hair is ready to style. The one thing that slightly concerned me was that yet again the colour had taken a firm hold. But when I dried my hair it seemed to appear couple of shades lighter. The whole beauty of the Poly colour tint is that it fades to create a very natural effect, after a couple of washes I think anyone would have struggled to guess that I had used a colour.
The grey hair turned out a shade lighter than the darker hair, this created a highlighted look which I was quite pleased with.
Where the coarse grey hair had been coloured it had given it life, whereas before it had looked dull and lifeless.

The whole process took no longer than a half an hour from start to finish and it was relatively mess free, only an old towel to put through the wash.
Poly colour should last for up to twenty four washes, mine has lasted far longer than that, I do have some grey coming through at the roots but the remainder of my hair is still holding the colour well.

The procedure was quick and painless, there was no major impact on my purse and although at first glance I thought it was a shade too dark a couple of washes later it was near perfect.
Older skin and harsh hair colourants don't go hand in hand and it was an effect I was keen to avoid, Schwarzkopf Poly colour was the ideal solution from my point of view.