This Drugstore Shampoo Made My Brassy Blonde Hair Brighter in Just One Wash

As someone who spends a lot of time on the water and in the sun, my blonde highlights can get tired veeery quickly. While I always try to use hair product with SPF, there’s only so much saltwater and sunlight my hair can handle before my blonde balayage ends up looking bored and brassy. Once that happens, there’s usually no going back. Sure, a couple of at-home masks can help a tad, but only a trip to the salon can really bring my bleached locks back to life.

That is, until I got my hands on some L’Oreal EverPure Brass Toning Purple Shampoo & Conditioner ($14). The budget-friendly drugstore shampoo and conditioner revived my hair in—no joke—just one wash. I’m not exaggerating—as someone who is very skeptical about products (especially ones that cost less than $10 each…), this shampoo rejuvenated my brassy, blonde head in a single shower.

L'Oreal Everpure Brass Toning Purple Shampoo — $7.00

This ultrarich neutralizing shampoo revitalized my brassy hair in a single wash.

L'Oréal Everpure Brass Toning Purple Conditioner — $7.00

Follow your cleanse with this deep, creamy conditioner and get noticeably brighter results.

Thanks to its deep, rich pigment, L’Oreal’s affordable purple shampoo neutralizes unwanted brassy tones. It’s so effective, a tube of the stuff sells once every two minutes.

As colorist Juliana Ohlmeyer previously told us, the vibrant pigment of purple can help make blonde hair look brighter when it starts to pick up orange-y hues.”Purple shampoo is used as a very gentle way of controlling extra yellow tones in your hair, which is the underlying pigment in light blonde hair—especially for blondes or those with blonde highlights,” she explained. “Essentially it is a way to upkeep your blonde at home in between color services.”

While I’ve tested other lilac and lavender hair products, I’ve yet to meet one as inky and rich as L’Oreal’s version. I squeezed a smidge of shampoo into my hand to shower with and was immediately struck by how dark the tint was. (TBH, I was hesitant to put it on my hair worried it would stain, that’s how rich this stuff is.) Nevertheless, it lathered up easily, bubbling into a purple froth that I let sit in for the recommended two minutes.

After rinsing out (a heads up, it took a while to get the water running clear), I washed with the matching conditioner, which was an equally deep purple hue. This I left on for a bit longer (around 5 minutes) before washing out. And although I couldn’t see any definitive change while wet, I was awestruck at the results as soon as my curls dried.

There was basically no brass left. It didn’t stain at all, rather, it took all those orange-y tones and Sun-In streaks and transformed them back into a similar version of the balayage I left the salon with nearly 3 months before. It wasn’t exactly the same—you can’t bottle salon highlights, unfortunately—but it was damn near close. My blonde hair was brighter and blonder than before, nearly free of all weird, unwanted brass tones.

And it was softer, noticeably silkier than what I started with. Other purple shampoos have dried out my strands, stripping away the oils and “good dirt” in the process of making it brighter. Not L’Oreal’s—as part of the brand’s Ever collection, it’s formulated sans sulfates, so it won’t dry you out. It’s also infused with hibiscus and other hydrating ingredients, so it nourishes hair from root to tip while you wash.

Blondies—for $7 a bottle, L’Oreal Everpure Purple Shampoo and Conditioner are worth checking out. No, you don’t need to run back to the salon or splurge on designer hair products to keep brassy hair at bay. Brighter, blonder hair is a click away, or on the shelf of your local drugstore.

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