PRODUCTS
Offering a great selection of only the best salon products available!
ARE SALON PRODUCTS REALLY BETTER?
In a word, yes. Products that are sold in a salon are better than products you purchase in the grocery store.
Why are salon products better? Ina word, ingredients. When you examine the ingredient list on a bottle of shampoo, what you see listed first is what there is most of in the bottle and so on until the end of the list which is what there is least of in the bottle.
The first ingredient will frequently be water and the last ingredient is often a dye. Toward the top of the list you will notice an ingredient such as ammonium laurel sulfate, sodium laurel sulfate, or sodium laureth sulfate.
These are surfactants. Their purpose is to make water wetter, or to put it differently, to help the cleaning agents lather. A surfactant can also be a cleaning agent in and of itself. Salon products contain gentler surfactants than your store bought shampoo.
You will then see some conditioning agents listed. Salon shampoos contain higher quality protein based conditioners or moisturizing conditioners, thus enabling the conditioner to penetrate deeper into the hair shaft or scalp and lock in moisture. These quality ingredients contribute to the cost of the product and is why they are not typically found in store bought products.
The remaining ingredients are largely consumer appeal ingredients. These contribute towards color, aroma, and consumer buzz words such as honey and aloe.
Although it is true that honey can have beneficial affects on your hair, it is very unlikely that it can do anything in the quantity available in the bottle. Honey is added as an ingredient to appeal to your idea of what is good, whether it is based on scientific fact or not. Aloe is nothing more than water unless it is stabilized aloe.
Lastly, a few ingredients are stabilizers and preservatives, but the most important ingredients to keep your eyes on are the surfactants. Sodium laureth sulfate is the gentlest of the surfactants but will lather very little which is why most shampoos won't use it. Consumers believe their hair isn't getting clean unless there are tons of bubbles. In truth lather has no beneficial affect and contributes little to good cleaning.
Of late there have been rumors making their way about the Internet that sodium laureth sulfate causes cancer. There has been no supporting evidence of this claim. In all likelihood this rumor was circulated by over the counter manufacturers to combat salon products taking an ever greater hold on consumer preference. There are some opinions that the sodium laureth sulfate is actually safer than the ammonium laurel sulfate which is usually found in the cheaper brands.
Bottom line, it all comes down to your preference. Keep in mind though that there are a lot of benefits to the products we carry in the salon and we wish for your hair to be in tip-top shape!