This £3 shampoo is the best thing I’ve found to balance my oily roots and dry lengths

Hair is normally categorised in one of three ways: normal, oily and dry. But what if your hair doesn’t fit neatly into one of these labels? Well, this is my problem…or should I say was my problem, as I’ve found a new hair-washing duo that perfectly addresses the problem—and they’re one of the best affordable shampoos and conditioners on the high street.

L’Oréal Paris Elvive Hydra Pure Shampoo and Conditioner, which hit shelves at the beginning of 2024, is designed to tackle hair that’s ‘combination’, to borrow a skincare term (more on this later), with oily roots but dry or dehydrated ends. This can be caused by what L’Oréal terms ‘The Greasiness Dilemma’: your hair feels greasy so you wash it more frequently, which then encourages the scalp to produce more sebum to compensate, and can also leave lengths stripped of natural moisture. 

To combat this, L’Oréal has looked to the skincare world for inspiration, and enriched the Hydra Pure range with two key active ingredients perhaps more commonly found in a serum or moisturiser: salicylic and hyaluronic acids. Salicylic acid helps to remove excess oil from the scalp, while hyaluronic acid adds moisture back into lengths without weighing them down. The result, L’Oréal tests say, is a clean-feeling scalp and hydrated lengths for up to 72 hours.

I could write an essay on the complexities of my hair. It's Type 1 (straight), fairly plentiful and grows well so I know I have it easier than a lot of people, but I still struggle to find the right products. My hair is long, fine and regularly coloured with bleach so it gets incredibly knotty, and so I need to use a moisturising conditioner to be able to get a comb through it. However, this then makes my grease-prone roots even greasier, leading me to reach for some sort of deeply cleansing formula. And so the circle continues…

After years of trial and error I’ve only ever found a few shampoo-and-conditioner combos that tackle both problems and really balance my hair—including, now, L’Oréal Elvive’s Hydra Pure range. And it's under £3.

The shampoo is clear, not creamy (always a sign that it’ll be good for oily roots) and leaves my scalp feeling really fresh and clean but without my lengths immediately turning into a matted clump. The conditioner gives just enough hydration to detangle without weighing hair down. Since using these I’ve noticed that my hair looks fresher than usual the day after I’ve washed it (no need to scrape it back into a topknot for the entire day), so I can now go longer in-between washes.

If your hair’s super dry I don’t think this duo will be quite nourishing enough (even I’ll still use a hair mask on an ‘everything shower’ day), but for balancing out confused combination hair, this has become a firm favourite.

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