One thing I seem to have done in 2020 is switch over from liquid shampoo and conditioner to the solid variety. I have quite a lot of hair and it needs quite a lot of conditioner. There’s a reason you normally see it in plaits and that’s because it very easily gets in a state. Therefore, I get through a lot of plastic bottles, especially with the conditioner, which I’m increasingly uncomfortable about and I like the idea of a lot of washes without the plastic. Also, travelling can be difficult, what with the 100ml flight limit when it takes at least 85ml of conditioner per wash just to tame my hair enough to get a brush through it.
Enter solid shampoo and conditioner!
I’m trying out three brands and I’ve linked to all of them. FYI, none of these are affiliate links, not even the Amazon ones. Not a penny comes to me from clicking on them.
Ethique
The first of the three brands I’m trying is Ethique, which you can get from Holland & Barrett or Boots. Rather than throw £26 at trying out solid haircare for the first time, I bought the dry skin/hair trial pack which contains four miniatures of 15g each for £10.99. My hair isn’t dry exactly but it does require some nice thick creamy conditioner. The shampoo is called Frizz Wrangler and the conditioner is The Guardian. You also get a solid face cleanser and body butter but I’m not going to talk about them. The mini bars are heart-shaped and they come in a recyclable cardboard box with a pull-out drawer like a matchbox which makes this brand the most transportable by far.
Now, I fell foul of the box. The shampoo is top left and the conditioner is top right. But I used it in the shower at Our Chalet last Christmas without my glasses on, obviously, and I accidentally took the inner box out sideways. So what I thought was the shampoo was actually the face wash and what I thought was the conditioner was actually the shampoo. Well done me. It should be nice and obvious – the shampoo is a kind of creamy-beige and the conditioner is bright green, so you shouldn’t mix them up.
Having tried them properly, knowing which is which, I’m not hugely impressed. You’re supposed to swipe the shampoo down your hair and then work the resulting lather through your hair. Maybe it works better on a full size bar but I didn’t really find it lathered and it’s really hard to get all my hair covered. I tried it twice for luck and neither time felt like I actually washed even half my hair. Also, and this is probably a problem unique to the miniature version, but the bar felt like it was going to break apart in my hands. I imagine the full-size version doesn’t feel so fragile but I’m not going to invest £13 in a shampoo bar that probably still won’t feel like it’s actually washing my hair.
The conditioner didn’t feel very conditioning either but it smelled amazing. It contains cocoa butter and coconut oil but the smell that really comes through is the lime oil. It’s a little better than the shampoo but I have to apply it directly to my hair – lathering in my hands does nothing. Again, this is probably easier and more comfortable with the full-size bar but I’m not investing in one unless the other two are beyond appalling.
Ethique is the most expensive of these three brands – the full-size bars are £12.99 each from Holland & Barrett. The 100g shampoo works out cheaper than Lush but it’s a lot for a 60g conditioner. You can also buy the 15g minis on their own for £2.50 each but Holland & Barrett only do the green conditioner and a pink shampoo in the mini format and due to the pandemic, you can’t buy anything direct from Ethique’s website at the moment,
The other issue with Ethique is that it’s made in New Zealand and shipped from a warehouse in the USA and I can’t help feeling like the airmiles don’t make these bars much more eco than bottled shampoo.
Lush
Next up is Lush. Couldn’t skip the original solid naked products. I mentioned these in my Home Spa post last month but they might as well get their proper review here with their peers. Lush is made in Dorset so the carbon footprint is virtually non-existent for me which is a bit of a plus.
I have the Honey I Washed My Hair shampoo bar (£8, 55g) and I’m very happy with it. This one you lather in your hands and then apply to your hair and it makes so many creamy bubbles that it feels exactly like liquid shampoo. It smells like a solid Lush bar. I imagine it’s honey with a hint of orange but it just smells of Lush and anyway, I’m generally too busy being surprised that it bubbles to notice the smell.
My conditioner is Golden Cap (£9, 55-60g), which is beer and lemon flavoured. I don’t think it smells like either – it smells like Lush again but less sweet. The trouble is, it doesn’t act like liquid conditioner and that takes some getting used to. It doesn’t lather at all but if you literally rub the bar into your hair, you can see a yellow coating start to appear and it does feel reasonably soft in the morning. It’s ok and I can live with it but if there’s something better out there, I’d be up for that.
The downside of Lush is the packaging. These come unpackaged – which, of course, is exactly the point, but it makes them a lot less transportable. I bought two of the round tins to store and transport them in but it turns out I don’t recommend that. For a start, the conditioner is oval and doesn’t fit in the round tin. According to reviews, they don’t fit in the oval tin either, which is made for massage bars. The shampoo does fit in the round tin but… not yet. I mean, I can get it in but it’s a very tight fit and if it’s wet, it’ll stick itself to the bottom and you have to dig it out with a spoon. Once it’s been used half a dozen times and starting to shrink, it’ll fit better but that’s not a lot of use right now.
Alter/Native
Third up is Alter/Native by Suma Wholefoods. I was expecting them to be huge. They’re 90g each compared to Lush’s 55/60g and Ethique’s ~15g bars but I wouldn’t say they were six times the size of the Ethique and half as big again as the Lush, even after the Lush has been used two or three times. They’re like medium-sized bars of hand soap, each in a little cardboard box (which came in one of Amazon’s form-fitting cardboard book wrap-around packages) and my first thought was that I’m glad they look different because they’re both coconut and argan oil and after I ordered them, I suddenly panicked that they were going to be identical and I was never going to remember which was which.
The shampoo is a kind of semi-translucent brown and the conditioner is opaque white. They don’t quite smell the same, although my sense of smell isn’t fine-tuned enough to be able to pick out why not. They’re also both very rectangular, with proper square edges which might be better for holding but doesn’t strike me as the most comfortable way to lather.
Given what I’ve read in reviews, I don’t think it’s a good sign that the website details the transition process from liquid to solid shampoo, nor that it recommends regular apple cider vinegar washes to remove soap residue. But let’s try it anyway.
Ah. They’re right. The shampoo lathers in my hands but not enough to rub it through my hair so it takes a certain amount of direct application to feel like I’ve covered my entire head. When I washed it off, it felt squeaky clean for a second and then it felt bad. I attempted to run my hands down my hair. To flatten it, to smooth it, to press off the worst of the water? Well, anyway, the result was so much friction that my hands wouldn’t slide. I figured I’d wait and see what it was like in the morning and it feels dirtier than it did before. My hair didn’t really need washing last night but I had the new bars and I wanted to try them out. Well, my hair feels absolutely solid with thick oil. It’s as if the factory have mixed up shampoo bars with bars of re-waterproofing wax. Suma say that it takes a transitional period for hair to get used to natural and solid shampoo but my hair’s done fine with the others and I’m not willing to put up with a month of candle wax on my head for it to adapt to this one.
Happily, the conditioner is much better. It lathered a little in my hands but it still works best applied directly to hair and unlike the Lush, you can see the conditioner on the hair. The bigger bar with its square edges is easier to grip and apply and the conditioned bits felt noticeably smoother and softer as I was rinsing it. Tentatively, I might say it’s the best conditioner I’ve tried yet but I think it could do with a second go where it’s not trying to fix the terribly waxy Alter/Native shampoo. It’s a little on the soft – my thumb made a dent in one edge and the bottom is already a little on the uneven side but hopefully it’ll survive a few more uses.
Verdict
Best shampoo: Lush’s Honey I Washed My Hair
Best conditioner: Alter/Native’s Coconut & Argan Oil
Best pair: If you want to get two together from the same place, I’d go for the two Lush bars.
Best price: Alter/Native in general. Specifically, the shampoo. Ethique full-sized bars are the most expensive by a long way.
Best eco-credentials:
Food miles: Lush
Packaging: All good, even the one that came from Amazon
Vegan: Ethique and Alter/Native. Lush’s conditioner is vegan but the shampoo contains honey
Cruelty free: Ethique and Alter/Native are cruelty free. Lush is vehemently anti-animal testing, in their products and in their bought-in ingredients.
Palm oil free: Ethique. Lush and Alter/Native are both open about how this isn’t as easy as might be assumed.
Best smell: Ethique’s The Guardian conditioner