L'Oreal Extraordinary Oil Review

L’Oreal has come out with a new hair care product, their Elvive Extraordinary Oil. Hair oils are super happening right now, so of course one of the leading drugstore brands could not stay behind. According to the brand this product is a ‘miracle hair perfector’, and it should make your hair healthy and beautiful. L’Oreal has made two different types of extraordinary oil for regular hair and for colored hair with added UV protection. I tried and tested the regular kind and my opinion is below.

The oil contains six different oils that can benefit your hair in a lot of ways. A few of the options are

As a high intensity mask before you wash your hair

As a heat protectant before blow-drying or heat-styling your hair

As a serum to combat frizz

To add extra shine and softness to your hair

The bottle is glass, which makes it feel and look pretty luxurious. It contains 100 ml of product for €10,16. That’s some pretty good value considering you use about two pumps every time on average. I’ve been using this product for a little less than a month and it has only gone down a little bit.

Looking at the list of ingredients we can immediately conclude that it isn’t 100% pure oil. It’s mostly silicone. Silicones provide a kind of film around your hair which makes it feel soft and look shiny, this can provide a buildup of product which can be removed with a clarifying (sulphate rich) shampoo. I don’t particularly like using silicones on my hair, because I use Dr. Organic organic shampoos, which contains no sulphates, silicones, parabens, etc..

But for the sake of the review I kept using the product, mostly because I wanted to see if it would improve the look of  my ombre hair. Besides sillicones the oil also has numerous caring ingredients, like:

Chamomile extract

Coconut oil

Lotus extract

Flax seed extract

Gardenia extract

Dog rose extract

Soy bean oil

What catches my eye in this list of ingredients is that most of the nurturing, caring ingredients in this product are extracts. Again, not pure oils. That kind of goes against what L’Oreal is claiming, doesn’t it?

But how does the product actually feel? It feels really smooth on my hair, probably the silicones. It also adds a nice shine, but be careful not to use too much, because it can make your hair look a bit greasy. I don’t use it too often on dry hair. I’m currently using it as my heat protectant, just rubbing about two pumps of it on towel dry hair before blow-drying my locks.

If you really want a high-intensity deep nurturing care for your hair I would go for something that’s more pure. So, less silicones, less extracts. Just oil. As a serum or heat protectant this product works really well. The L’Oreal Elvive Extraoridinary oil is available in drugstores all across the world. It retails for €10,16 in the Netherlands.