If the first lockdown is anything to go by, I’m fairly certain that by now, half the population of the UK will have started eyeing up vibrant hair dyes on beauty websites, or googling ‘how to cut a fringe’. It’s irresistibly tempting to experiment with our hair when things get bad, and since no one will be seeing us for a good few weeks, what’s the harm?! Well, I have another suggestion. While I’m certainly not against dying your hair any number of vibrant, wild, brilliant colours or taking the plunge and giving yourself a chop (I did this myself in April!) I think it’s an even better idea to spend this lockdown giving our hair some love. Especially if, like me, your hair is naturally dry, and/or curly, or if it has heat or chemical damage. And there’s no better way than with the only home-treatment that actually repairs your hair. That’s right – the only one. I’m talking, of course, about Olaplex 3. In this review I’m going to talk about what Olaplex 3 is, how to use it, and share the results I got!

What is Olaplex 3?

Although there are all kinds of hair care products that claim to repair, restore, revive and even fix split ends, Olaplex 3 is the only product on the market that actually restores the bonds that hold a hair strand together. If you look at a single hair under the microscope, you’ll see that rather than a smooth strand, it’s made up of little scales, called keratinocytes. These are dead cells, and in a healthy hair strand, they sit more or less flat together. But for people with chemically treated, heat damaged, or naturally dry hair, the scales lift up, causing breakage, brittleness and split ends. Olaplex 3 works by rebonding these scales, so that they lie flat together again. No other product does this – other repairing products work by creating a layer over the hair strand. It’s the difference between plastering over a hole in a brick wall verses rebuilding the wall. And in fact they have similar benefits – plastering a hole in the wall is something you can do as often as you like, and will protect the wall from further damage. This is exactly what your everyday ‘repairing’, ‘restoring’ products like masques, serums and leave in conditioners will do. They protect your hair, help to prevent further damage. But Olaplex 3 requires more time investment, can’t be done as often, and is the only way to truly fix the damage.

How do you use Olaplex 3?

Olaplex 3 can be used up to three times a week, and can be left on for a very long time. I was really confused when I bought my bottle, because I couldn’t work out how long I was supposed to leave it on for. Olaplex simply say that the longer you leave it on, the better. I even read that it can be left on overnight, but I decided to go for 4 hours. I started by shampooing my hair, and detangling with my fingers. Olaplex 3 must be applied to wet hair or it won’t work, and if you have any leave-in products on, you should wash them out to make sure it can actually make contact with the hair. So, once my hair was clean, I took a palmful of the product and gently raked it through with my fingers. I decided to avoid my scalp, because I had read that some people had experienced scalp irritation from the product – and the hair at your scalp should be the healthiest part so it shouldn’t really be necessary anyway. I then took my Tangle Teezer and brushed my hair to ensure it was fully distributed. I have a lot of hair, so after I had brushed it through, I took another palmful and repeated this process to make sure my hair was well saturated. I used about a third of the bottle. After this, I took a spray bottle and sprayed water all over my hair, to the point where my hair was almost dripping. I wanted to make sure that my hair wouldn’t dry out during the treatment, because this would render the Olaplex 3 inactive. After that, I got some cling-film and wrapped my hair up in it, then took a microfibre towel, and wrapped that around the cling film. And then I waited! I stayed alert for any feelings of itchiness or irritation, but my scalp was absolutely fine the whole time.

How to rinse out Olaplex 3

After four hours, I unwrapped my hair and got into the shower. From the second I took the cling-film off I could see the difference, but it was when I started to rinse it out that I really saw what it had done to my hair. Usually, when I rinse a conditioner or masque out, my curls will start to fluff up immediately, but when I rinsed out the Olaplex 3, my hair looked like strands of seaweed. It was unbelievably silky and smooth. It’s very important that you use shampoo to get Olaplex 3 out of your hair and follow with conditioner, because it needs to be thoroughly removed and it isn’t a conditioning product. I did a good first rinse with water, then shampooed, rinsed, and followed with conditioner. I was kind of expecting my hair to look how it normally does once I’d finished shampooing and conditioning, but it didn’t. These perfectly soft, frizz-free, silky locks remained, and they felt strong. I was so excited to see what it would look like once it had dried. And I certainly wasn’t disappointed.

Olaplex 3 results on curly hair

Because I have so much hair, and much of it is quite fine, I don’t like it to be frizzy (but to be clear, I don’t think frizz is automatically a bad thing, and isn’t necessarily a sign of unhealthy hair. The demonisation of frizz is actually a very Eurocentric beauty standard – personally I think it can be utterly beautiful on other people but I don’t like it for myself, because when my hair is frizzy it gets in my eyes and mouth and I can’t control it). Olaplex 3 completely eliminated the halo of frizz I used to struggle with, and every single curl lay perfectly in line. You can see from the pictures! It was mind-blowing! My hair feels so smooth and soft since I started using Olaplex 3, it doesn’t tangle as easily, my curls are more defined, and they stay hydrated for so much longer between washes.

Olaplex 3 also did something to my hair that I really didn’t expect. Because my hair is really heavy and thick, I don’t tend to get curls at the roots – the weight of the hair pulls them down. Olaplex 3, somehow, restored the curls all the way to the roots! And this has lasted for months between treatments. I think it must be because of the incredible strengthening effect – restoring the bonds has meant that my hair is strong enough to sit in its natural state, whereas before it was constantly undergoing a kind of gravity-based straightening!

I hope you found this useful and interesting, and maybe gave you some inspiration for a lockdown 2.0 activity! If you want to purchase your own bottle of Olaplex 3, you can get the 100ml here, and if you really wanna go for it, there’s also a supersize 250ml here! That’s definitely the size I’ll be getting next time.

Also, before I sign off, let me caution you against buying from Amazon – while it’s tempting because Look Fantastic and other retailers do sometimes sell out, the Amazon listing for Olaplex 3 is really dodgy. Sometimes people get the genuine product, but other times, because of the way that the warehouse system works, people end up with fakes that wreck their hair. Don’t risk it! Be safe, and buy from a certified seller like Look Fantastic.