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Essential Ultra Honey & Shea Butter Hair Mask Review

I'm. so. done. with. dry. hair.

This is definitely a problem to me. I like dyeing my hair in light colours, like orange or light brown, I even thinking of dyeing my hair blue or lavender. But my hairstylist said I can't bring out bright blue/lavender colour if I don't BLEACH my hair. 

OMG.

My hair is already suffering with normal hair colorants (I usually use Miratone/Freshlight cream colorant), what would it make my hair if I have to bleach it?? I've tried serums for hair but still didn't help me a lot. 

In desperate times, I remembered Xiaxue's reviews*** on Essential hair care, and I decided to try on the products since Xiaxue herself has platinum blonde-baby pink-ash lavender hair and she likes it too (even though it's a sponsored post), I should try it. 
Essential Hair Product Range
Nuance Airy - Rich Premier
So I asked my bf to buy me the Essential products. First was the Nuance Airy serum (it's around SGD10/60ml pump bottle*), then came the Rich Premier shampoo, conditioner (both are around SGD8/9 each*), and the hair mask as well, and lastly he bought me the Nuance Airy hair mask (around SGD10/jar/200g*). 
I didn't reviewed the shampoo and the serum since that time was around three to four years ago and it was when I don't feel like writing anything, not even my assignments (well yes it was an alibi HAHAHA), so I skipped the serum-shampoo-conditioner reviews and jumped right to the mask.

THOUGHTS
For what I've experienced, the three other products gave me a quite satisfying result. My hair was a lot smoother, easier to comb, and it smells heavenly. Even though I used both type, I didn't feel too many differences between the pink and orange team.
The Nuance Airy serum was very, very nice. It has this sweet, cute floral scent and it didn't make your hair greasy and it didn't weigh your hair down too much but just right from keeping it stay around your head instead of floating around like someone just buzzed you with static wave. While the Nuance Airy has this sweet floral scent, the Rich Premier team has the kind of premium royal honey scent, and what's nice is the scent stays for around a couple of hours after applied. Nice huh?
200 grams of hair mask in plastic jar
On the first sight, I really like how they designed the packaging. It's a product of Japan, since there are bunch of kanjis and katakanas all over the sticker, a product by Kao Japan. I forgot to take picture of the cap, but it's a kind of screw lid in metallic gold colour for Rich Premier Mask, and metallic lavender plastic screw lid for Nuance Airy Mask.
the back sticker
On the back, we can see this wall of text of what is in the jar, what will it do to your hair, how to use, ingredients, product details, manufacturing date, and barcode.
content
The product itself smells nice, heavenly, as I've mentioned before, sweet floral scent. It's like squeezing sugarcane and various kind of flowers and pour the juice all over your head. It is seriously that good. It's not full because I've used it for around five to six times before I took these pictures for review. Yes I've stashed this for years yet I'm so lazy to finish it and now my hair mask is just a couple usage away from empty. I am THAT lazy.
Texture
The lemon-yellowish white hair mask is more than creamy, and thicker than conditioners. I've never used any other hair mask so I can't compare this one with others, but this kind of formula lets the mask hold on to your hair until it's time for rinsing it all off your hair. 

How-to-use instruction is pretty clear, and it applies like we're applying conditioner, but with hair mask we leave it for 3-5 (or more) minutes before rinsing it off. I usually get my hair pinned with huge hair clip so water won't get on your hair during washing other parts--yes I used this when I'm taking bath, after washing my hair, before cleansing the other parts thoroughly then rinse all the foam away together including the hair mask. 

After one use, my hair feels better already. It shines more than before, smells heavenly (for heaven's sake I really like this product's scent), and easier to comb. Less frizzy, yes, but there are still some tangled hair but not so much, only a few tangles which can be finger-combed easily and voila it's pretty again! I wonder will my hair look fab if I use all of Essential hair care range--since all of them brought good results for my hair, the serum, the shampoo, the conditioner, and the masks--I definitely will buy them again.

The only drawback is: 
IT'S NOT AVAILABLE IN INDONESIA WHERE I RESIDES FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS
*insert gross sobbing here*
and also additional 'drawback': it makes my hair super smooth that no hairspray or curling irons can hold my hair curly for more than three hours (and it makes all hairstylists that ever made contact with my hair sighing again and again during hairstyling and ended up spraying probably more than a half a huge can of hairspray. MY POOR HAIR). I don't know to be happy or agonized over this thing. 

VERDICTS
+ Heavenly smell. YES YES you probably had enough with this BUT IT'S SO GOOD
+ Does make my hair better after every application
+ Still affordable with that much product in one bottle/jar and 'a little goes a long way' thing
- I CAN'T FIND IT HERE IN INDONESIA. I bought it at Watsons Singapore or the other place called Swanson Svetson whatever it is somewhere in Little India in Singapore
- Not travel friendly. Obviously. 

DETAILS on HAIR MASK
Contents: 200 g
Price: around SGD9-10**
Ingredients: see pic 2 (click to enlarge)

BUY IT AGAIN?
De.fi.ni.te.ly.
If only Kao will ever exported them to Indonesia, or when I'm visiting Singapore again which I don't know when since dollar is rocketing like crazy and it's making accommodations expensive as hell.

Have you tried similar product or any of Essential Hair Care range? Tell me your thoughts in the comment section! 




Notes:
*) Prices are on SGD on 2012/2013
**) Price according to Bongqiuqiu's blog post on 2014
***) Xiaxue's posts (copy & paste):
- http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/2010/06/transform-your-hair-like-magic.html
- http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/2010/07/transform-your-hair-part-ii.html
- http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/2010/10/ways-to-get-back-your-long-lustrous.html

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