John frieda sheer blonde go blonder lightening shampoo reviews

Since lockdown* I’ve be trying to embrace my natural blonde locks even more by laying off the highlights. I mean, I’m not going anywhere, who needs the blonde bombshell look to have to maintain when no one appreciates it? BUT I forgot how blah my natural blonde colour really is. Dirty blonde I believe Americans call it. So I decided to try out John Frieda Go Blonder Shampoo/conditioner, which claims to lighten your hair up to 2 shades. Does it work though? I gave it a try!

Growing up I always hated two things about my appearance; my freckles and my blonde hair. I used to nick my mum’s foundation (which was at least 2 shades too dark for me) to try and cover up my freckles and all throughout my teens spent a large proportion of time dying my hair darker (even bright ginger at one point). Thankfully as I’ve grown older though I’ve learnt to embrace both. There’s a reason I’m blonde; it suits my skin tone, compliments my freckles, and is the perfect excuse for when I take slightly longer to understand the point of something ;-).

It’s made me wonder of the years, that whether you can class a hair colour as almost like a way of life. I know, I know it sounds daft but honestly, many times I’ve spoken to people on the phone and when I’ve met them they’ve said ‘ah i knew you’d be blonde, I could tell by your voice/mannerisms/personality/inability to get the point etc‘. May not have been a compliment of course. I’m taking it as one though.

First things first, it smells really nice, which is always a good start for a shampoo. They recommend you use the John Frieda Go Blonder shampoo, conditioner and leave in lightening spray together but I just stuck with the shampoo and conditioner.

Below is what my hair looked like before using it at all

And then after one wash

As you can see, it does look slightly lighter already.

Here’s what it looked liked from washed 3 to 5:

Again, much lighter. I would say more than lightening abilities though, it takes the yellow/brassiness out of my hair much like a purple shampoo would. A couple of things to bear in mind. I don’t wash my hair every day, probably only about every 3 days, so if you wash you hair every day you may have more of a dramatic effect. Also, I have lots of different kinds of highlights and low lights in my hair from dye jobs of yore, as well as my natural blonde roots. This shampoo lightens everything, so actually the contrast in my natural blonde, and treated blonde, is still the same, albeit a little lighter.

Is it as affective as getting some babylights in your hair that make you looks like you’ve just come home from a week on Portugal? No. But as someone who gets affectionately (I hope) blondie, Barbie, or Paris pretty regularly, this might be just what I need to help me through the winter months.

*I know this contradicts what I said the other week about using shampoo bars which I do also use. This was tried out over the summer while in lockdown and just limited our shopping experiences to one weekly supermarket shop, which meant shampoo in plastic bottles.

Footnote: before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, I am of course speaking very tongue in cheek about all the blonde jokes, because they’re just that, jokes. People tend to get a bit prickly when they’re underestimated. I actually don’t mind being underestimated. Underestimate the hell out of me I say, and i’ll show you, i’ll show all of you what blondies can really do. Or something far less passive/aggressive and cheesy…