Budget Purple Hair Toners

I recently dyed my hair from light warm brown to a medium ash blonde, but for some reason it still stayed quite warm-toned. I really wanted to take it an ashy shade so purchased a couple of budget toners from the high street.

First up is the Superdrug Colour Effects in Cool Blonde which costs a mere £1.29 for 75ml of product. Superdrug also have a 'buy one get one half price' offer on this product.

This product is supposed to be a wash-in colour as opposed to a tinted shampoo. Because of this I was quite surprised that the solution wasn't more purple, instead, it was a blueish-grey colour. The consistency was really quite runny, as you can see from it dripping down my hand.

Following the instructions, I wet my hair in the shower and squeezed away any excess water. I then slathered a whole bottle all over the roots, lengths and ends of my hair. The formula lathers very easily and so a lot did drip away from my hair. The instructions says to leave it on for only 5 minutes, but I lived life on the edge and left it for 15. Even after this excess time I wasn't blown away by how well it had toned my hair, but a second application the next day gave better results. The product claims to be a conditioning colour but I really felt the need to apply my own conditioner afterwards as my hair didn't feel remotely conditioned. If your hair only needs a slight toning then for the price I would recommend this product, but not if you want to remove very warm tones from your hair.

The next toning product I tried was the Pro-Voke Touch of Silver Twice a Week Brightening Shampoo, which costs £2.23 for 150ml of product. I actually found this in Home Bargains whilst looking for a conditioning mask and totally did not expect to find toner in there.

Boy, is this stuff purple! It is aimed at those with platinum hair, but I figured it'd do the same job at removing warm tones from medium blonde hair. Despite this being a shampoo the consistency is much thicker than that of the Superdrug product and as such I needed to use a lot less. I covered the whole of my mid-back length hair and I only used 1cm of product (from the top of the bottle). I can see this lasting a really long time which means that for the price it is fantastic value.

This product certainly did a much better job at removing warmer tones from my hair, and I was left with a lovely ash blonde shade. I don't feel that this product has a stronger smell than any other haircare products and even though this is only a shampoo my hair did feel pretty soft after applying. I only left this product on for 5 minutes and it did a much better job than two 15 minute applications of the Superdrug toner. I would thoroughly recommend this product and I really hope Home Bargains continue to stock it.

Here's an 'after' picture of my ash toned hair. Apologies about the iPhone quality photo, but this was taken in natural daylight.