Charles Worthington Big Hair Full Volume Conditioner

...Fortunately Boots have never discontinued Charles Worthington's entire range. As I mentioned when reviewing the Full Volume Shampoo, I opted for this conditioner (and obviously the accompanying shampoo) for two reasons. Firstly, I was nearly out of shampoo and Boots had a "£7 for 2" offer on Charles Worthington so, being my bargain-hunting self, it seemed better than paying £9 for two items separately later on (each bottle therefore being ...
...most of those - the Charles Worthington website (www.charlesworthington.com) suggests that this "weightless conditioner" can give "gorgeously glossy volume" and is a "light, body-boosting" product which sounded fairly good to me. On the other hand, clever marketing can be very persuasive - it doesn't automatically make the product good. On a side note, the packaging is not quite the same as the illustration at the top ... more

A conditioner is a conditioner is a conditioner - isn't it? It has taken me a shamefully long time after reviewing the shampoo to get round to the conditioner, but please be assured I have been conditioning my hair . . . I just haven't got round to committing my thoughts to paper (or to be more accurate, "virtual Post-it note thing on the Stickies application on my MacBook!") until halfway through the bottle.

I have a tendency to switch between different products in the same range at the moment, partly to try them out and partly because I'm trying to avert the "if I like a product, the shops will discontinue it" jinx I seem to put on various beauty products. Fortunately Boots have never discontinued Charles Worthington's entire range. As I mentioned when reviewing the Full Volume Shampoo, I opted for this conditioner (and obviously the accompanying shampoo) for two reasons. Firstly, I was nearly out of shampoo and Boots had a "£7 for 2" offer on Charles Worthington so, being my bargain-hunting self, it seemed better than paying £9 for two items separately later on (each bottle therefore being £4.49 - although I must note that they're a few pence cheaper in Sainsbury's). Secondly, at the time I'd just a few inches chopped off my hair and was aiming more towards the "bouncy and shoulder-length" look than the "long and very straight" one.

Being my picky, reluctant-to-part-with-my-money self, I was looking for something quite particular. My choice had to have some kind of softening effect, without making my hair heavy or lank (that would defeat the object of getting it chopped!) So, having gone into Boots and scrutinised the bottles, I decided the one that called itself Full Volume seemed to answer most of those - the Charles Worthington website (www.charlesworthington.com) suggests that this "weightless conditioner" can give "gorgeously glossy volume" and is a "light, body-boosting" product which sounded fairly good to me. On the other hand, clever marketing can be very persuasive - it doesn't automatically make the product good. On a side note, the packaging is not quite the same as the illustration at the top of this webpage shows, but other than a bit of rebranding - which must be expected over the years! - I am pretty sure that what was once called Big Hair Full Volume has now simply become the Full Volume section of the Results range. These days it comes in comes in a flat strawberry ice cream pink bottle (which looks like an oval with pointy ends from above, a square from the front and has a lid that you press down at one side to make the opening pop up, just like the other Results hair washing products) and both the "Charles Worthington" text in a sort of steel grey and "Results" in shiny metallic silver are printed in fairly big text, so your eye could be drawn to either phrase first. The "Full Volume" detail is shown just underneath in deep strawberry red-pink, and finally I am told that this is for "super-shiny, thicker, fuller hair".

On first impression, this looks basically the same as the Moisture Seal conditioner (and presumably all other Results conditioners - but I can't vouch for this as I've only tried two) - a white, glossy looking product. From the outside, all the Results shampoos and conditioners look pretty similar - clear shampoo, opaque conditioner - so I'd fully understand any assumption that they must all be the same product, just in different packaging because I thought that myself. Admittedly the different items for different hair types come in variously coloured identically shaped bottles, but my sceptical side would say, "That doesn't mean they can't contain identical conditioner". But I soon spotted a definite difference in the consistency of this one - the Moisture Seal one had been slightly runny (almost like body lotion) and the Full Volume version, although also white and opaque, was thicker. Not quite as firm as, say, jelly or cold custard, but then neither was it as liquid as salad cream - it's somewhere between the two. I thought this seemed quite promising - perhaps if it had a thick texture it would spread out in my hair more easily and evenly? There's a fragrance to it, which is just like the one the other Results items seem to possess, a subtly perfumed salon-product type of smell that you might expect to be greeted with on entering the hairdressers' - recognisable as a hair care product but not something you would call floral, herbal or generally botanical.

That said, it's still easy enough to work through wet hair - I am a bit too lazy to comb my conditioner through when I apply it, so I normally just start at the roots - using a reasonable squeeze, maybe two teaspoons' worth? - and work it down roughly to ear level with my fingers before rinsing, which lets it run through the rest of my hair. (I've found this is quite an effective way of conditioning my hair at this length as the condition can then obviously just run down through the strands as I rinse.) I would say it takes as long to rinse out as any conditioner does - I always rinse my hair a few minutes' longer than I think I need to just to be sure it's clean, but despite its thicker consistency it rinses out relatively easily.

It does make my hair feel very soft. I always notice that there is a slight firmness - in shape rather than feel - to my hair that comes with blow-drying (although I don't find it seems quite as "styled" if I allow my hair to dry naturally) but where some volumising hair products can occasionally leave it feeling just a bit coarse and dried out (the Aussie Mega Volume ones being one instance) I am pleased to say that this conditioner seems to offer the best of both worlds - body and softness! Which also neatly brings me to the volume issue - does it give me that "super-shiny, thicker, fuller hair"? Actually, yes, I think it does. I must admit that - because I seem to get through shampoo much faster than I get through conditioner (I often wonder why this is, then I remember that I lather up twice sometimes but generally only use one lot of conditioner every time I wash my hair) - I've been alternating between a Full Volume Shampoo/Moisture Seal conditioner combination and the Full Volume shampoo/Full Volume conditioner variation just to try to use some conditioner up! But, that said, there is a difference between the effects the two have. Where the Moisture Seal one makes my hair feel very soft and "deeply conditioned" - if that makes sense - the Full Volume one still has a good softening ability and leaves my mop with a lighter, somehow more "bouncy" feel to it, which is quite an achievement because my hair can vary between looking thick and moderately heavy (when it's clean) and flat and borderline lank when I need to wash it. So I'm genuinely impressed by the thickening capabilities, and I find it does have a good taming effect if paired with the shampoo - I feel a bit self-conscious if I think my hair looks "too big" because I'm used to it being relatively flat but this seems to make it manageably thick.

I'm not sure how this would work on long hair - I suspect that it wouldn't leave heavier hair looking too "big" as the hair's weight might counteract the bounce I found it gave to my hair but I think it might work quite well on fine to medium thickness long hair. I've always had this idea that shampoo gives volume because of the "rubbing it in" action needed to get a lather, and that conditioner counteracted this by putting the moisture back along with some weight, but actually this has turned out to be a conditioner that really seems to complement the shampoo it partners. It makes my hair manageable rather than oversized and it also delivers that "super-shiny" effect that it promises. As a volumising conditioner, I am very pleased with it. 

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