Olia Dark Intense Auburn Review

One word comes to mind for this experience... regret.  Let me give you a bit of my hair history.  I used to home dye my hair brown every 4 to 6 weeks using natural instincts.  Then my stupid butt decided I wanted to go blonde.  So, I started getting highlights and fell in love with being blonde.  Well, when college rolled around, I was broke and tried to go back to brunette for my wallets sake.  I got it dyed at a salon then continued at home.  It would always fade back to a weird blonde color and my friends convinced me to go back to blonde.  So I did.  I tried to find ways around paying over 100 dollars at a salon by doing it at home, but I always ended up back in a salon.  Recently, I dyed my hair an auburn color, at a salon.  Only 3 weeks later, all of my red was gone, my blonde was back and I decided to do an at home job.  I decided on olia, hoping it wouldn't fade as fast, and I had heard mostly good things about it.  I pick up 4.60 dark intense auburn, since the majority of my hair was light brown.  Here are my before pictures:

I followed all the directions.  I found that the applicator bottle, which is tear drop shaped, is impossible to shake with gloved hands.  I had to use both hands on the bottle and awkward shake it.  Now the consistency is very awkward.  It tends to dry into a hardened shell type thing.  As you will see with my after results, apparently I missed a bunch of my hair.  I also think that it didn't grab onto my hair that well.  I still managed to drip it literally everywhere, the worse I've ever dripped it.  It took me forever to apply and I had to wait the thirty minutes.  I now know what is so enticing about foam hair dyes.  So I washed it out and people don't lie.  The water will literally never run clear.  So I did my best, applied the conditioner and got out.  At first I was happy... until I looked at my after pictures.  I basically want to cry:

From the front, it looks great, from any other angle I look like a crazy person.  I'm for sure going to try and wash out as much as I can, using lots of sulfate shampoo and conditioner.  My hair feels dry and damaged.  I will have to wear my hair up for the next month.  And you know what I'm doing next month? Natural instincts semi permanent.  If only I could afford to go the the salon once a month... sigh.  Another bad hair job to put in the books.

Verdict:

I will never ever recommend olia or buy it again.  Going back to what I know, the salon and natural instincts.