Have you ever wondered if buying salon-quality designer hair products amounts to “buying in” to the hype? Can you get similarly effective hair products at the grocery or drug store, and also save money? Let’s look into whether salon products are worth the price and why retail store shampoos, conditioners, and other hair products may not be able to measure up.
Store brands are all about making a profit from the volume, while salon products must perform as advertised. After all, if salon products were of poor quality, it would affect the stylists’ reputations and their bottom line as business owners. Imagine the bad reviews, complete with awful photos, if salon stylists delivered lackluster locks. These pros are serious about their careers and the products they use for their clients!
Hairstyles are concerned as the most important thing for your look. Hairstylists need to use only the best, most effective hair products because they must produce top results for their clients. These exclusive, professional-level products are only sold in the salon. You may notice that salon brands often carry the name of a well-regarded hair professional, and their reputations, as well, can only be upheld with quality products.
After a while, some noted hair experts may allow their name to be licensed and used on drugstore shampoos; however, that’s why shopping for shampoos at your salon should give you the best results by supplying only highly trusted products.
What Products Do Hair Salons Use?
Salon products are typically designed to perform as advertised for specialized uses or to solve certain styling problems for specific types of hair. Your stylist can recommend the right products–almost like writing a custom “prescription” for your hair’s health and beauty.
Examples of products top salons use and sell include:
- Deep cleansing shampoo
- Deep moisturizing shampoo
- Blonde shampoo
- Redhead color-protecting shampoo
- Hair repair shampoo
- Scalp treatment
- Protein-rich hair treatment
- Overnight hair masks
- Leave-in conditioner
- Volumizing conditioner
- Curl defining cream
- Texturizing spray
- Sculpting pomade
- Max hold hair spray
- Styling spray
- Anti-frizz serum
- Heat protective spray
- And more
Do Salon Products Make a Difference? Are They Worth It?
Salon products usually cost more than their counterparts at the grocery store, but they DO make a difference, and they DO perform – especially if you select the products that your stylist professional recommends for your particular hair type and desired color or style.
Since the stakes are higher for salon products, significant care is taken in their initial development and ongoing production.
Here are the main costs (in time and money) associated with high-end hair product lines:
- Salon Product Development and Research Costs: Beyond stylists’ endorsement and everyday evidence of quality, superior salon products command higher prices partly due to the science that goes into developing them. Product costs reflect the expense involved in expert research and development by highly trained chemists, along with beauty and hair health experts. Many different combinations of ingredients, at different concentrations, must be experimented with before the final formula is ready to be produced and sold.
- Salon Product Testing Costs: The best salon products are not tested on animals, and testing on people is slower and costlier. Testing on actual humans is not only more ethical, but it also gives a truer result. There’s no guessing if the product will really work on the intended audience (people), as well (and safely) as it did on mice in a lab, for example.
- Salon Product Ingredients Costs: Salon products aren’t manufactured with just any ingredients. Only the finest quality elements go into making the “recipe” that was created and tested by the beauty brand’s scientists. Ingredients may be fairly rare, and not available in mass quantities—and they may need to be sourced from exotic, far away locations. Tight quality control must be ongoing so that future batches of the product meet the same high standards as the originally developed formula.
Keeping all this in mind, it’s no wonder salon products must carry a slightly higher price tag.
Why Are Grocery Store Shampoos Often Cheap?
Generic or store-branded hair care products may be cheap, but they’re no bargain when they mistreat your hair. When you look closely at effectiveness, you may find that many grocery store hair products are a waste of money. To control prices, store brand shampoos are often made with the cheapest, easiest to get (and often watered-down) ingredients. They may skimp on development and testing and are often manufactured as quickly and inexpensively as possible.
Some store-bought, off-the-shelf, generic shampoos, conditioners, detangling sprays (and more), are actually quite expensive and ineffective! This often means that a significant amount of money is spent on advertising. To recoup the marketing budget and pay for commercials, prices need to be high. Unfortunately, the quality rarely matches the high price tag.
Let’s face it–in the retail store business, their intent is not to produce salon-level standards of beauty and hair health. Their goal is, instead, to simply fill and refill store shelves with bottles of product, to maintain profits. No matter how cheap grocery or drugstore shampoos may be–if they don’t work well, or even harm your hair, these cheap hair products are not worth it.
Are Expensive Shampoos Always Better?
Of course, there’s no guarantee that paying more gets you a better service or product–in any industry. However, since salon products are used by experienced beauty professionals, who are paid well to create beautiful styles and healthy hair, salon products carry expert, real-life endorsement. Our advice: go for quality–and purchase from experts at your local salon. You’ll have confidence that you’re getting your money’s worth, rather than throwing your money away. After all, your stunning hair is worth it!