L’Oreal Colorista is a new-ish temporary hair colour range that includes a set of spray-on “1-day” hair colours. The pastel shades are designed for blondes, but the brights are advertised to work “on brunettes” as well. Like every other dark-haired Asian, my first thought was “Will they work on me?”
I’ve always wanted pastel hair, but as a black-haired Asian with undyed hair (well, poorly dyed reddish brown hair that’s pretty much black) I’m going to need a bucketload of bleach and Olaplex to get there – if I even get there at all without my hair all breaking off. The hair chalk craze was a sad adventure in disappointment because nothing showed up in my dark hair (I still have a drawer full of chalk and broken dreams). Could L’Oreal Colorista be the answer?
I picked up two shades at the Priceline press event: hot pink (“#HotPinkHair”) which I was told would definitely work on dark hair, and pastel blue (“#PastelBlueHair”) that I was told “could give a subtle effect” if I went into the sun. This didn’t sound super promising, but I still lived in hope…
L’Oreal Colorista Spray in Hot Pink
I tried the Hot Pink Colorista shade first on the ends of my hair. After covering my clothes with a towel I sprayed it on the ends, then combed it to distribute the colour and sealed it with a ton of hair spray. Here’s what I noticed:
- MESSY. This isn’t too surprising, but during application I think it’s made slightly worse by the special skinny Colorista nozzle that sprays the colour in a very concentrated jet, rather than the usual misting spray. It makes it easier to target bits of hair for a mermaidy look, but it also shoots through the hair quite a bit. Afterwards, the colour shed onto my clothes and neck quite a bit even with the hair spray.
- It made my hair turn into a puffball. Colorista sprays don’t contain chalk, but they certainly feel like chalk, and they volumise amazingly well… though it isn’t really something you necessarily want. I had to fight to comb through it, and it left my hair stiff and tangle-prone. I tried dousing it in a silicone-based spray-on hair serum, but it just faded the colour.
- It took a lot of product to get it to show up on my dark hair. I couldn’t really work out how much of the spray I went through but it felt excessive (L’Oreal Colorista comes in 75 mL sprays and I feel like I went through about 1/3 of it).
- It didn’t wash out very easily. Even after a thorough shampoo and condition, I still had pink coming off onto my hands, and the bottom of my hair was still rough and poofy. My pillowcase went a little pink, and so did my snot.
are two sets of 10 neutral shadows that come in Rose and Beige, and I’ve totally fallen in love with them. These drugstore palettes have the same the universally useful neutral colour scheme of Urban Decay’s Naked line, but present them at a more budget-friendly price point. They also lean towards away from the heavy shimmer that made some of the Naked shadows a bit too much for everyday wear. These palettes were released last year in the US, but they’ve updated some shades and changed the packaging.
