Clairol Nice'n Easy Colour Blend Hair Dye #114 Natural Light Ash Brown review

For the first time, this is NOT a review of any bubble hair dye or foam hair dye, this is a standard hair dye that's just creme in consistency.

Again, I have natural Asian black hair, it's not a stark black but more like blackened brown naturally. I have a bit of grey (less than 1%) so using drugstore branded hairdyes is just my way of avoiding spending too much money at hairdressers every 6 weeks. I usually use two or three at home hair dyes (each time at least 4-8 weeks apart), then usually followed by a professional hair dye and cut at the hairdressers.

I picked shade 114 natural light ash brown, it still looks sort of medium dark on the pack

Contents:

Basically you get globes, conditioner, and the other two bottles are the dyes. 

You mix the die together and apply with the bottle on the very left in picture above.

Instructions:

Here's my hair color before, it's already faded, and was taking on a more reddy/ mid brown tinge, which in sunlight makes my hair look dull and lacklustre.

I had a bit of difficulty with applying the clairol one. There's no applicator per se, they just tell you to separate hair into small strands, and apply from the bottle nozzle and massage in with fingers. Personally I have way too much hair to do it all myself. So I got an old plastic comb, squeezed some on the hair and some on the comb then brushed through main areas of concern (e.g. regrow and greys). I don't have too many greys, at most 1% of my hair, but I'd like to cover them as much as possible.

The whole application process took a good 20 minutes, and personally 1 box wasn't quite enough for my long hair, the end of my hair didn't really get much product on it.

I left the dye on for a good 35 minutes (excludes the 20 minute it took to apply), then rinsed my hair thoroughly. Then used the enclosed conditioner (which was ok, nothing spectacular), and rinsed again thoroughly.

AFTER pictures are all below:

You can see it did come out well, like the box color, especially in picture below, it wasn't as 'ash' as I expected, but I liked how it wasn't warm toned and neutralised the previous brassiness.

Below pictures are AFTER 4 weeks- I took these right before I was doing another different hair dye again (separate review to follow later).

After 4 weeks I had some issues with the regrowth area, I don't think I got thorough grey coverage , so the regrowth looked quite obvious, and even for normal black hair area the regrowth was still very obvious because in the areas where I applied the hair dye thoroughly , it took on color, and also faded in the same localised area, making the regrowth patch glaringly obvious.

Indoors it was still ok

Outdoor pictures below, you can see pictures below there's a lot more red based brown appearing, which I quite dislike, because it makes the regrowth section very obvious and in real life it makes my hair texture look worse.

Again, here you can see it's now became a warm brown.

Ovreall I thought for a boxed creme dye for like $15AUD retail, it delivered what it promised. However as with all creme hair dye the real trick is probably getting an even application and make sure you have more than enough dye for your hair. I thought the brushing through I did with a comb helped with color distribution, but I think a lot of work was still needed with your fingers to rub in the color to ensure all strands are coated, especially if you have long and a lot of hair like me. 

It had a typical ammonia sort of hair dye smell, was not too bad.

Personally I don't think I will go back to normal hair dye other than bubble foam types anymore, it's just too troublesome for at home application to achieve an even result, and the instructions always say "avoid scalp application", which is a bit silly if you are trying to get as much grey coverage as possible. I didn't really follow that instruction and still rubbed it well into the roots, it did sting the scalp a little bit but didn't leave any other resulting irritations once rinsed clear.

Rating is 4/5. It's a nice color, works well if you have short hair (probably anything above shoulder length). It came out a bit darker than on the box but stayed like the box color for a good 2-3 weeks. However the fading was pretty marked after about 4 weeks and I thought the regrowth was far more obvious than bubble foam type of hair dye.