Review of the Ash:ba Botanics Hydrating Shampoo for curly or wavy hair is the focus for today!! I am restarting to build my curly hair stash. Had literally hundreds of products in my stash pending for use… I have thrown away half of it as it had expired and some are just on my rack and I don’t wanna use them yet!! Anyway, as I am starting almost everything again with a fresh start, I decided to start with a new set of products. The whole set of Ash:ba curl products is what I got my hands on as the first thing!
Now, lets start with the Ash:Ba shampoo. For me, sulfate-free shampoo is a pain point. I do not have a go-to sulfate free shampoo yet. It is surprising, as being a curly hair blogger for long, I have used a lot many shampoos and haven’t found one that I love yet. Anyway, so here is my opinion on the Ash:ba shampoo.
CG-Friendly Product
Yes! It is a Sulfate and Silicone free shampoo.
Pricing
Rs. 1099 for 237ml (8 fl oz)
Ingredients List
Ashba Shampoo’s Ingredients list is quite impressive. It even claims to contain natural ingredients and being cruelty free and vegan.
Top 5 Ingredients:
- Aqua – Water
- Cocamidopropyl Hydroxysultaine – Surfactant (Cleansing agent), also creates lather.
- Sodium Methyl Cocoyl Taurate – Mild Surfactant, suitable for sensitive skin. This too lathers. has conditioning properties.
- Capryl Glucoside – Another mild & non-irritant Surfactant
- Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate – another very mild naturally derived surfactant
Multiple mild surfactants are, sometimes, added to sulfate free shampoos to complement each other and to make the shampoo more efficient.
Packaging
Ash:ba shampoo comes in a cylindrical plastic bottle. It has a sturdy packaging. The plastic bottle is neither too heavy nor too light. It is such that the bottle (especially the cap!) will not break if you accidentally drop it. But it is not too heavy to handle as well.
I love the packaging. The stickers are mild colored, the logo is simple, the ingredients are mentioned neatly. Each and every detailing on the bottle is perfectly done. The feel of the packaging is subtly classy and you can feel it when you hold it in your hands.
The Ash:ba shampoo has a basic press-to-half-open kind of lid/dispenser. You have to tilt or invert the bottle to dispense the shampoo. For this consistency (discussed later!) of the shampoo, I would have preferred a pump dispenser to have a better control on how and how much of the shampoo we can pump out from the bottle.
Consistency
The consistency of the Ash:ba shampoo is very runny. It is a translucent shampoo with a very watery consistency. I would have preferred the shampoo to be a little more thicker in consistency. For the kind of lid the bottle has, I feel a lot more than necessary gets dispensed. We really need to be careful otherwise it tends to spill all over the hand and the product gets wasted! 🙁
Product Review
For a sulfate free shampoo, the lathering surprised me a bit! It forms soft lather, which does not really feel drying on the hair. In fact, as the name of the shampoo suggests, ‘Ashba “hydrating” shampoo’, this makes the hair feel soft and hydrated. The 1st and even the 2nd ingredients on the list have some lathering up properties (which i saw later!), so the lather is explained.
This shampoo has very runny consistency. It spreads easily and 2-3 dollops are enough to wash the scalp. I need 2 more dollops to wash the lengths of my hair. It has good spreadability, however due to the watery consistency, we end up using more product and even have some wastage as it spills over. Which would probably make our shampoo run out faster than our conditioners. I would really prefer the consistency to be more thicker for ease of use and to have more value to the product versus what we invest.
Post oiling, this shampoo was able to remove all the oil and did not leave the hair sticky.
My hair is currently very dehydrated and has not seen even a drop of conditioner in past one month. Just to test this shampoo, I used only this on my hair and skipped all conditioners and styling products. To my surprise, my hair still felt soft and hydrated. I love how this shampoo (and just the shampoo itself!!) makes my hair feel a bit moisturized and combats the dryness.
Pros:
- Sulfate & Silicone free and a mild cleanser.
- Curly Girl Method friendly.
- Cleans hair & scalp efficiently.
- Doesn’t dry the hair at all. Instead imparts some moisture to extremely dry hair.
- Works well with pre-poo.
- So far it has not caused my scalp to itch or flake.
- Impressive list of ingredients that seem to work well together in this shampoo.
Cons:
- Very runny consistency which is difficult to manage.
- Because of the consistency I would prefer the dispenser to be pump type to have more control over the spillage and amount used
- Tends to run out faster.
- Expensive – does not fall in budget friendly zone for sure!
Overall Summary:
Ashba Botanics Hydrating Shampoo is a really good sulfate free shampoo which is mild yet efficient. It even mildly hydrates the hair which is much more than what we can expect from a sulfate free shampoo. Additionally, it also lathers up giving us the satisfaction of the traditional shampooing. I would not call it my go-to shampoo yet as I am not okay with its consistency which in turn makes it fall short for its pricing. If the price point is not an issue for you, I would totally suggest you to go for this shampoo. It does everything that we would want a sulfate free shampoo to do for our curly and wavy hair. Just a little bit of tweaking and it might just be it for us (if budget is not a concern!).
