Yes To Carrots hair care

Yes To Carrots Nourishing Shampoo - £8.20
Yes to Carrots Leave-in Conditioner - £10.99

In the above picture, you can see some classy bathroom shots of my hair when using shampoo containing sulphates (top) and after using sulphate-free shampoo for a few weeks (bottom). Just to give you a bit of context... I've struggled with my hair for a long time. It's very fine, dry and a bit wavy-wonky. I dye it regularly and this makes it plumper (yay) but drier (boo). I would always look at my friends with their lovely silky hair, sigh, then resign myself to a lifetime of Hermione-esque fuzz.

Now, I know that coarse-haired ladies have it tough too, but it seems like every product designed for dry hair assumes that because the hair is dry, it must also be coarse and thick in texture (not fine) and therefore the product is pretty much akin to body-butter. Products made for coloured hair are usually packed full of silicones (which make my hair sticky and dry) or are just not moisturising enough. Products made for bleached or highlighted hair tend to be a bit overwhelming (apart from the Redken Extreme CAT Restructuring Spray which is bloody brilliant).

Anyway, in order to stop feeling so down about my hair (and to shut up my moaning!), I did a bit of research into wavy, sensitised hair and the products that work for other people. Surprisingly (as I don't consider myself to have curly hair), any hair grumbles I typed into the Google search bar seemed to be covered in minute detail on forums for curly ladies... There were two popular solutions suggested for my Hermione hair woes: stop using shampoo altogether; or switch to sulphate-free or low-sulphate shampoo.

To cut a long story short, I tried the second method as fine hair needs to be clean otherwise it looks gross. I also took notice of advice on the forums on silicones. In a nutshell, using "normal" shampoo was stripping my hair much more than it needed to, then the corresponding conditioner in the range would pile on silicones to smooth and gloss over the damage underneath. For most people, this routine is fine. But for my rubbish hair, this process resulted in parched, over-washed hair weighed down with a sticky film (yuck).

I now stick largely to sulphate-free (or low-sulphate) shampoos and avoid silicones as much as possible. My favourite products which fulfil these criteria are from the Yes To Carrots range. I use the shampoo, conditioner (although I ran out last week as I go through conditioner like nobodies business!), and the leave-in cream. I have tried the cucumber colour care shampoo and conditioner from the same company, and while it was lovely, it wasn't quite conditioning enough for my hair.

You can see (and hopefully you agree) from the above shot, that this little change has made a world of difference. In both cases, I shampooed, conditioned and used some sort of leave-in cream and I left my hair to dry naturally. I sometimes use one of the Loreal Hair Expertise sulphate and silicone free offerings (there are a few different ones in the range including an intensive conditioner - EverSleek I think - which is quite amazing), but day-to-day, Yes To Carrots gives me great results. The range is fantastic value (around £8 for 500ml of shampoo or conditioner!) and they last for ages. The leave-in conditioner is rich, but easy to distribute and you only need a little blob each time.

All of the ingredients are listed on the Yes To... company website. They are a San Francisco based company - like Benefit I believe, so much of the range is only available stateside. However, online sellers like BeautyBay and Feelunique stock the basics at very reasonable prices, and I would thoroughly recommend trying it out if you feel like your hair might be similar in texture to mine.