Our loyal readers (both of you) might remember this blog post from a few months ago about comparing salon versus drug store products. Here’s the quick recap:
- Heide (a stylist) said drug store hair products leave her client’s hair “silicone impacted.”
- She says the silicone buildup from drug store products can easily be seen by rubbing her finger nail over the hair.
- We offered to send her tresses to see if she could really tell the difference.
Here’s what’s happened since then….
Test design
Heide (who is an AWESOME sport, by the way) agreed to the test so here’s what we did:
- Treated bleached hair tresses (the same kind of real hair used in testing labs) with two brands of Heide’s choosing: one from the drug store and the other from the salon.
- The drug store products were Pantene Color Preserve Shine shampoo and conditioner, the salon products were Redken Color Extend shampoo and conditioner.
- 10 tresses of each were shampooed and conditioned 20 times to simulate about a month’s worth of treatment.
- We put secret codes on the tresses so Heide wouldn’t know which was which (we even spritzed a little perfume on the hair to mask the scent.)
- Then, we sent the tresses to Heide so she could perform her “fingernail scrape test.” Would you like to hear the results?
Test results
First, a word about hair tress testing. In a test set of this size, there’s always the chance that Heide (or anyone else doing such a test) could just guess the right answer. For each individual tress there are two possible answers (either Pantene or Redken) and statistics would say that just purely by chance, a person should be able to correctly identify 50% of the tresses just by guessing. According to my favorite binomial probability calculator, in order to prove that there is more silicone buildup on the Pantene tresses, Heide would have to correctly identify the right product on 15 out of 20 tresses. Anything less than 15 out of 20 means there is no statistical difference between the salon and drug store products (at least using her test method.)
Heide correctly identified 8 out of 20 tresses (40%.) In other words, she couldn’t really detect a difference in silicone buildup between these salon and drug store products. (To be totally fair to Heide, she thought that the tresses felt different than the hair that she is used to. She said that “There is a difference between these kinds of strands and everyday user hair. None of these hairs feel like Redken or Pantene users.”)
The Beauty Brains bottom line
This was a quick and dirty test but I’m confident that if we repeated it with more tresses the result would be the same. While we’re pleased that results came out as we predicted (there is no real difference in silicone buildup between drug store and salon products) the important thing is that instead of relying on anecdotal evidence with Heide’s help we were able to actually test a hypothesis. That’s how the scientific method works!
Thanks SO MUCH to Heide for agreeing to go along with our experiment. It took a lot of guts to put her beliefs on the line like this and we really appreciate her open mindedness as well as the time and effort she put into this project.
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That was very cool of her. I remember that post too!
How can you test for buildup after only one use?
@Tck: As we explained in the article: “each were shampooed and conditioned 20 times to simulate about a month’s worth of treatment.”
I usually tell my clients that if it’s working for you, stick with it. I tell them the truth regarding this topic because I don’t let marketing hype sway me and do my own research.
I’m constantly told that by clients that they have never had someone teach them so much about the products they use and they completely trust me. They then turn in to loyal clients that start using the products I sell because they want to support me.
I have gotten into a lot of heated debates with other stylists who’s knowledge doesn’t go much farther than what sales reps and ads tell them. I drop science on them and they get lost most of the time.
@Dennis: You’re a stylist who “drops science” on other stylists? Good for you! If you ever need our help in answering questions just let us know.
AMAZING! Thank you for sharing. I was going to email you and ask a question, but I was also going to see if there was an update on this too!
Something I would like share from my experience being a salon manager for years, is that one advantage of salon products is that the stylists can recommended the right products for your hair and needs. Many people are using the wrong products and wasting their money. Also, these days many of the drugstore brands are about the same price as salon products. We have a helpful staff of experts and a generous return policy, something you won’t find at Walmart.
I remember this test/challenge was supposed to have posted results. I also remember Right Brain was supposed to post results on http://thebeautybrains.com/2012/03/13/silk-n-review-how-does-ipl-hair-removal-work/.
Did I miss it? Was it posted on a separate blog?
Yay! Great to see the results. Thanks to Heidi for helping in conducting this test. I am also a firm believer that if it works for you, that’s what matters – no matter if it’s $20 or $2.
@Qwerty: You didn’t miss anything. The IPL device was more of a hassle than it was worth (to us anyway) so we went back to shaving.
I think the hard water buildup is often confused with silicon or “drugstore products buildup”.
Thick, lifeless, raspy hair, at least thats what I thought when my hair started feeling like coated with plastic. I thought it was silicon buildup – from salon and drugstore products, I tried both – so stopped using silicon containing products for 3 months, and there was no results, then I completely stopped using conditioner, after a month without results I made a search on this site and realized the problem was caused by hard water (thanks Brains).
Theres no chelating shampoos or shower filters in my country so Im rinsing with pure vinegar and leaving it on my hair for half an hour, after a month theres almost no change but ill keep trying.
Hope there was other options to improve my hairs condition………….
@Ale: Excellent point about hard water leaving a residue that could easily be mistaken for silicone. Thanks!
I wondered about the results of this test! Thanks for posting the follow-up.
Oh great to hear the results! I just asked about this the other day. I’ve actually heard anecdotally that Pantene is one of the worst shampoos out there so that’s interesting that you really couldn’t tell between the two products.
I’m hooked on Trader Joe’s shampoos and conditioners now. The bottles run about $ 2 or $3 a piece and work amazing on my hair!
Thanks for pointing that out in the study. I missed. I’m also wondering 2 things:
Would styling products have a much larger amount of silicone in them than Shampoo and therefore give more buildup?
Also, slightly different topic, but; what do you think of the pH difference of the two products? Being a nerd, I tested an otc shampoo and a salon shampoo and found the otc to have a much more alkaline (cuticle opening) pH. Not that all otc products are more alkaline but could that be a signal of the quality of the otc products? Or, might what I did just have been random and pH be high or low in any products (which I suspect is probably the case).
@Tck: Depending on the type of styling product, it could leave a LOT more silicone on your hair than a shampoo or conditioner.
The idea that salon shampoos have a better pH is a myth. For proof, read this post:http://thebeautybrains.com/2008/08/18/do-salon-shampoos-have-better-ph/
Thanks so much! Having worked in the Hair Industry for many years it was always so hard to find any information about the products outside of the marketing of the companies. I’m glad I found this site!
The grip that the marketing has on the hair industry is pretty fierce!
I would love it if you could afford to do a full double-blind test with a large number of real people, not tresses. I think an overall sample size of 80 to 100 people would be large enough to get started, and it should contain folks with all kinds of natural, untreated hair.
This is the kind of experiment that would be perfect to do with college students. (They already volunteer as test subjects for a wide variety of experiments, especially in psychology and consumer behavior.) I’m sure for a stipend of perhaps $50 or $100, you could recruit the people you needed.
An experimental budget of a mere $15,000 should cover the stipend, the shampoos, the processing and analysis, and the writeup.
I hope you do this.
@Lianne: I too would love to see a larger scale study but I don’t think it’s worth $15K of our money. The people who are inclined to believe the kind of data this study would generate are probably already of the mindset that there’s not that much difference between salon and drug store products. And the people who DON’T believe it now are unlikely to be swayed by another study, no matter how well designed.
I’m in beauty school and am constantly told that Pantene and Suave “coat the hair with wax. Read the ingredients.” I don’t see wax in the ingredients, unless it’s labeled under a more scientific name that I’m not aware of. I’m also constantly told that professional (the definition of that word is rather gray) brands are more concentrated, meaning you can use less and is therefore worth the extra money since it will last longer. I have read the ingredients on both “professional” and drug store brands and I don’t see how they’re saying that or where they’re getting that from. Water is still listed as the first ingredient which makes me think it can’t be that concentrated… Please help, Beauty Brains!
@Beauty Cat: As you seem to suspect, the idea that professional brands are “more concentrated” is just a myth. We’ve worked for companies that have sold salon and drug store brands and we can tell you that for a fact.
Is there really wax in Pantene and Suave?
@Beauty Cat: Congrats on doing your own research rather than believing everything you’re told. If you were throw something like “it has wax in it” to a knowledgeable client later on and they ask you “what is the wax?” you would look like a complete bonehead by not having the answer.
Your question has been asked a lot; here is a link to an answer: http://thebeautybrains.com/2009/01/18/pantene-is-bad-for-hair-myth-busted/
What a great little study. I used to be only a believer in professional hair care , but I too, have learned that some of the drugstore brands can give equal to or even better results. I think it all depends on your hair “issues” and what you use to treat it.
I just wanted to make a small clarification on what I said about the tresses. Hair that is used for wigs, dolls, even experiments has been sterilized and treated (even minimally). Hair on someones head has not. I work with doll hair all day long as an instructor and I have worked with cheap to expensive “real hair” dolls. They all have one thing in common. They are a representative of real world, but no where near the real thing.
@Heide: Thanks for the clarification. I don’t know about doll hair but the hair we use in scientific testing is not treated with anything that negatively impacts its physical or chemical properties. (That’s why it’s so expensive!)
Hi,
have you tried with other salon-brands? beacuse this test gives me the feeling that “Pantene is as good as Redken”, and all of us in beaty-business know that Redken isnt really that ecklusive as they claim, the products are actually available in drug stores…
so this test was actually more “drug store products vs drug store products” rather than “salon vs drug store products”. Have you tried Pantene/or other drug store products vs. salonbrands that arent available in drug stores, like Moroccanoil/Shu Uemura/Kerastase etc?
@Robert: The professional stylist who set up the test parameters chose the salon products. We realize this single test doesn’t prove anything about ALL salon brands but the testing is a lot of work and we don’t have the time and resources to repeat on multiple brands. By understanding that many salon and drug store brands use very similar ingredients, though, we can extrapolate the data and be pretty confidant that we’d get similar results with other salon products.
This entire series of articles has been interesting to read. I am neither a stylist nor a chemist, but a consumer and student (of medical laboratory science). My question: why not purchase a few comparable brands – both salon and drugstore versions of the same products – and run representative samples through a GCMS? If I had access to one, I would give it a go.
Interesting idea – I assume you mean to treat the hair tresses with products then do an extraction of some sort and run that through a GCMS to detect silicone. (AA might be better for silicones but I’m not sure since I’m not an analytical chemist.)
It would be an interesting experiment, albeit an expensive one. Furthermore, I’m not sure how to interpret the results because I’d expect BOTH products would show silicone residue. Silicone has to be left on the hair or it won’t condition. The question we were addressing is whether or not this particular stylist could detect an objectional residue from silicone. That’s much different than just being able to detect it analytically.
I’m curious,
If I were able to cut off a sample of hair and send it to you.. would you be able, or have the resources to, find out what the build up/residue is? I just had it happen again with one of my students whose hair was full of gunk. She happened to use Pantene.. and her hair was thick, oily-ish, waxy, unbrushable, heavily weighted and stuck together in clumps.
She actually believed this was completely normal because no matter what drugstore brand she uses, this is the result.
Heide: Unfortunately we don’t have the appropriate analytical equipment in house and that would be an expensive test to out source. But let me make sure I understand you— you’re saying that her hair has “gunk” after using Pantene conditioner? And the gunk doesn’t wash out with a “regular” shampoo? Is her hair processed in any way? Relaxed, bleached, etc?
Yes.
Her hair is approximately 14″ long, fine and medium textured mixed, very thick, and it has bleach from about 3″ from the scalp to the ends that was under processed and a single permanent color covering the bleach.
She has about 1″ of regrowth from her last chemical service, and the build up was thickest in this area. The last 6″ of her hair (give or take) did not have as much residue. To be fair, she was clear to say that while she is currently using Pantene, this is not the only brand she has this happen with.
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