I don’t normally post bad reviews – I usually just relegate the fails to the bathroom bin and move on. But the Lush shampoos and conditioners are so bad that I feel compelled to get word out there.

About a month ago my hair was in need of some TLC so I decided to give Lush and their hand-made range of haircare products a whirl. An incredibly peppy sales assistant recommended pre wash hair treatment Fluff-Ease, their Rehab shampoo and Retread conditioner.

Hand on heart I’ve never used such a useless range of products – they certainly were not suitable for my hair and it was in significantly worse condition post wash than it had been before. The pre wash may have been decent but after Rehab shampoo had sucked the life out of my locks there was no way to tell. And the Retread conditioner may just as well have been fancy smelling yoghurt for all the good it did.

My hair had been stripped bare. I couldn’t get any sort of handle on the knots – imagine washing your hair with a bar of soap and then running a nit comb through it and you’ll get the idea. Even my husband waded in complaining that, ‘this new shampoo does nothing for me’.

I went back to Lush, incensed by how bad the products were, and was pacified by a very sweet sales assistant who talked me through all of the alternatives and then sent me off with an array of other products. Temporarily mollified, I jumped back in the shower to calm my stressed out tresses. But guess what? The replacements (Blousey on the shampoo side and conditioners American Cream and Happy Happy Joy Joy) were equally horrific. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve persisted with all of them to the serious detriment of my hair.

On Sunday I saw my hairdresser at Gina Conway and she immediately asked me what I’d done to my hair. And she wasn’t surprised when I told her about Lush, agreeing that their shampoos and conditioners are harsh and drying. She smothered on some moisture boosting Aveda products and my hair’s condition is now ‘stable’.

So where has Lush gone wrong? Their shampoos and conditioners all contain sodium laurel sulphates so maybe they’re just too harsh for my hair? They do smell amazing but as a result of added perfume which kind of kills it for me. And who needs amazing smelling hair that looks and feels like a wire brush?

As an aside, you may be interested to know that Lush is in the process of phasing out the use of parabens and other preservatives in their products (until now they’ve advocated using tried and tested preservatives to prolong a product’s shelf life). This is an interesting read, especially for those confused as to what parabens actually are: https://www.lush.co.uk/article/were-self-preservation-society

Maybe it’s time to splash out on some trustworthy Aveda shampoos and conditioners…watch this space!

Natural credentials: who cares?

Available from: did you actually read what I wrote?!! If you insist: https://www.lush.co.uk/