You may or may not be aware that at the end of November I randomly decided I wanted to change my hair, I darkened the colour do a dark brown/purple/black /red combination and I had the Keratin treatment applied, all at Toni and Guy Hilton Malta by Sarah Vella who at first raised eyebrows at the colour change.
I think by now most of us know what the Keratin treatment does but if you don't here's the summary. Basically, keratin is actually a protein that's naturally in your hair, the keratin hair-straightening product fills up the gaps in each hair shaft, the product is applied to the hair and then a flat iron is used to seal it in. You are told not to allow water to go next to your hair for the next 2/3 days, to avoid sulphates in shampoos and to avoid swimming in water containing salt or chlorine.
For any recent readers this is my natural hair in the pic below...very curly, lots of what you'd call tight curls, don't get me wrong .. I love my curly hair, this wasn't a protest against my curls decision...I did this for two reasons, my hair stays best when it has been air dried, my curls hate dryers, even when using a diffuser. This is always somewhat hard to achieve in the Winter, but I also happened to have 4 trips booked for this Winter; so it got even more difficult. The second reason is that sometimes change is fun.
In the first few weeks following the treatment I had my hair professionally blow dried so I found it difficult to judge the exact effect the treatment had made...what I did notice immediately though was that my always extremely dry hair was now oilier especially at the roots; I found this to be a good thing.
The first time I washed my hair myself, was probably about 4 weeks after the treatment, and it was with some trepidation, I washed it using a special shampoo that I bought from the salon called True Keratin and dried it using a hair dryer, not an actual blow dry using a brush ..literally just waving the dryer in front of my hair (I don't really know how to blow dry hair properly). I was AMAZED - it was straight, straight, straight.....pic below.
The next time I washed it, thought maybe it would be curlier, maybe the first was due to the blow dries of the previous weeks but no straight again and the time after and after. It is now mid-February (approx 3 months later) and my hair is still very straight, some waves are starting to make an appearance at the roots at the front but I just use hair straighteners on low heat for a few seconds to smooth this out.
Since, having the treatment, I got curious about it and researched it a bit online and also spoke to the stylists at Toni and Guy. It seems like first of all there's a ton of different products out there that all claim to do the same thing, but of course like with everything some are of inferior quality...even within the same brands there are different strengths and the hair stylist must know how to determine which one is needed. Last but not least, there is an element of kill involved in applying it, and applying it badly can cause some damage to the hair so if you decide to go for this treatment don't choose the salon based on who is the cheapest but on who is the most reliable.
A good idea is to ask around and try and find someone who's had it done at the salon you are considering and see whether they were happy with the results. Sarah did a great job on my hair and I couldn't be happier.
