How One Foam Hair Color Had Me Fuming

I’m not new to hair coloring. I’ve been coloring my hair since my teen years. When all the girls at school were adding highlights I went hog wild with the peroxide and became an instant blonde. It proved a bit too startling for my liking and I cried until my mom helped me dye it back to my usual dark brown and stuck with it. But when my daughter was playing hair salon on my hair and informed me I had a “big, long white string” stuck in my hair I knew it was time to color those nasty grays. I vowed to make the time to color my hair every six weeks since then and have never looked back.

Hair color has come a long way over the years. Manufacturers have listened to consumers and have made great improvements by making their products more gentle and less smelly. I’ve tried just about every brand and color on the market but always come back to the same crème formula in my own dark brown shade. But when I began seeing the new foam styles I just had to see what all the hype was about. According to commercials, the foam was supposed to be less messy, easier to use and was better at covering the grays. So when my six weeks were up and the grays once more came in

I made my usual trek to the store to select a foam hair color and settled on Clairol’s Nice & Easy Foam, this time in a medium brown shade.
When I returned home I put on my usual ratty hair coloring clothes and read the instructions that came with the box. I mixed the color thoroughly as per the directions and began to apply the mixture to my head. First, I found the foam to be very runny despite shaking the bottle the necessary amount of time. Having to squeeze the bottle from the middle wasn’t the easiest of techniques. In my opinion, Clairol would do well to provide a pump bottle instead.

As I stood at the kitchen sink, the foam went flying everywhere. Plop on my kitchen counter. Plop on the floor. It was a much more tedious process than it had ever been when I used my usual crème color. By the time I got to the ends of my hair the color on my head had dried and caked on my scalp. I waited the required time and was pretty upset about the length of time it took me to rinse the color from my hair. It was pretty hard and crusty. So I decided to get in the shower to do a better rinse. And I rinsed and rinsed some more until I thought it was rinsed pretty thoroughly. Unfortunately all the scrubbing and rubbing had resulted in quite a bit of lost hair from the looks of the hair pile on my shower drain cover.

After taking the towel off my wet hair I saw that my hair was in no way a medium brown shade. It was black. Thinking because it was wet, I dried it. It was still black. Darn it! Was I the only one who had used this foam color and had this experience? A quick online search brought me to several message boards where women who had used Clairol’s foam color had pretty much the same experiences. Honestly if I had read some of the personal reviews prior to coloring I would have steered clear of the foam.

In addition to the above issues, it took three washings before the color was finally thoroughly washed from my hair. For three subsequent days I saw brown, murky water in my shower. And, it stained my scalp. Interestingly, other women on the message boards had this same experience.

Since I’m writing about my own personal experience with Clairol’s Nice & Easy Foam Color that’s all I can attest to. I have not tried any other brand of foam color. However, in Clairol’s defense I must say that, although the color was definitely not true to the “medium brown” description and did indeed result in a black color, it did cover the gray magnificently. And the fact that this was weeks ago and I still see no visible grays I remain impressed with the coverage. In addition, when I emailed Clairol and detailed my experience they immediately responded with their concern and mailed me a coupon for a free product of my choice. So they did get an A+ in customer service from me. Foam hair color is relatively new to the market and hopefully it will be perfected so that manufacturers can get the kinks out of the process. But for now I plan on sticking to my usual crème product.