WEN, the hair care line from stylist Chaz Dean, has some pretty lofty claims. They refer to their Sweet Almond Mint Cleansing Conditioner as a “5 in 1″ product that replaces shampoo, conditioner, leave-in conditioner, deep conditioner, and detangler. It promises to cleanse your hair without stripping its natural oils, and give you more manageability and shine! That’s a lot to promise from one little bottle, but I figured it was worth a shot anyway.
Hair Economics 101
A major difference between WEN and other products I’ve used on my hair is they basically say you can never use too much. They recommend you pile on a bunch of it on, massage it into your hair, comb through with a wide tooth comb, and let it marinate for a few minutes in the shower. The bottle says 5-10 pumps of product depending on your hair type and texture. It ends up being a lot of product to fully coat my hair, which isn’t that long (few inches past my shoulders). One bottle is estimated to last a month, on average. I would say it probably lasted me about that long. Normally it takes me much longer to go through a bottle of shampoo. For you math geniuses out there, a 30-day supply costs $29.95 so it costs about $1 a day. My Redken shampoo & conditioner costs roughly the same amount for the pair, but lasts me much longer, bringing down the cost per use. Bottom line for you non-math geniuses: yes, this is expensive. Another important factor to note is that it has a very strong herbal mint scent. My boyfriend hated the scent and said it smelled too “manly”, but I didn’t mind it at all.
Results!
Here’s where you penny-pinchers (myself included) will have some problems. Yes, it’s expensive, but…my god it works. From the first time I washed my hair with it, my fine hair had BOUNCE without even blow drying it! If you have fine hair, you know how unheard of it is to get body and bounce after just air drying your hair. I was so impressed I took pictures (see right) of my fluffy mane of hair. About 3/4 of the way through the bottle I went to my stylist to have my color touched up, and my stylist made a point of complimenting the condition of my hair. WEN is great for those of us who color our hair because it is sulfate free. Sulfates are color’s worst enemy. Since having my hair colored, I have noticed less fading while using WEN. Going to see my stylist less often is money saved, so perhaps WEN’s costliness is made up for elsewhere? Time will tell on that one!
Recommendation
If you have fine hair like myself, you should definitely try it. If you have very long hair or extremely thick/coarse hair, you may just use so much of it at once that the cost is an issue, but I think you’d still be pretty happy with the results! Goodness knows I am!
