Garnier Olia - £6.99 from Boots

Firstly I'll start by saying this is not a sponsored post - because there were a few of them going around at the time of Olia's release!  Basically I decided that I really missed my dark hair and I really wanted it back for the winter months.  I just felt that the lighter brown and caramel highlights was more of a summer hair for me, and I will probably go back to it next summer.  I have dyed my hair a lot by myself, but I've always been faithful to Nice and Easy because it's what my mum always used and I found the results were always nice and it was...easy (nice and easy *facepalm).  But, since getting into the blogging world, I've been much more open to trying things I haven't before, and I thought that Olia would be a nice change.  I was struggling to find a hair colour range that had the shade I was after - a deep rich colour that wasn't quite black.  A lot of the other ranges had really golden or reddish browns, which I really didn't want, and they jumped from them straight to the blackest black ever.  I decided on Soft Black from the Olia range.





I would immediately say that I wish I had bought two bottles to do my hair because one didn't really go very far.  I found this quite surprising because while my hair is reasonably long, it is very thin and I've only had to ever use one dye (if you've seen any pictures of me with thick looking hair that's because it's moussed, curled, backcombed and hairsprayed within an inch of its life - ALWAYS!).  So because I struggled to spread it evenly through my hair I found it quite dry - not quite a luxurious oil.  It didn't particularly smell of much and it definitely didn't have the usual hair dye smell, maybe because it has no ammonia? I don't really know, I'm not going to pretend I know a lot about hair dye!  I just know that ammonia is supposed to be bad for your hair, so it's got to be good if a dye doesn't have it, especially a permanent one.


The colour result is pretty damn good.  Like most home dyes the initial result tends to be a little bit more intense than what it'll settle to, and because I had sections of my hair bleached I imagine these will fade within the next 6 weeks or so.  There are a couple of teeny sections underneath that didn't get properly dyed because one bottle wasn't enough, but luckily you can't see them anyway and they're not big enough to be noticed unless I sit and study my hair in sections - so I can live with that.  The dye has made my hair super soft too, which is good in a way, especially in the sections that were bleached and were getting super dry, so it was due a bit of TLC  But I usually like a little bit of something in my hair which makes it easier to style - when it's too soft the volume and curls just fall out too easily, but again that should settle the more I wash it and use my regular hair care stuff.  If you're after shiny hair this dye is really good too, I don't think I've ever seen my hair this shiny!

Hair Before

Hair After Using Garnier Olia Hair Dye in Soft Black

Overall my thoughts are that this is an okay hair dye.  It hasn't blown my world like all the reviews said it would - but I really like the colour result and the shine it has given my hair.  But negatively I didn't find it very easy to use because it dried in when it was applied, and one wasn't enough for my hair when really it should have been!  I would use it again if it was on special, so I could get two dyes at a reduced price - Boots and things regularly do buy one get one free or buy one get one at a reduced price type things on their hair dyes so I would definitely do that!