What everyone else said is true. If you want to go lighter, avoid this product!! I have black hair, and bought 4.0 to give it a dark brown tint. Well, it is still black with very very very very very slight brownish tint now. Totally not worth the time and money. It did a great job dying my toenail and bathtub, though... Even after a lot of elbow grease with Magic Eraser, I couldn't get all the stains out. And judging by the color of the stains on the white bathtub, there definitely is blueish tint in the product. The only nice thing about this product is the smell and not stinging eyes. Other than that, it's an epic fail as a hair dye. AVOID!

Olia is in pretty, attractive packaging, promising you ammonia free color and healthy hair.


I didn't have the negative experience on the 1 star reviews, but it hardly changed the tones on my brown hair. I bought the light natural auburn and the photos for medium/dark brown seemed significantly lighter than the tones I got. I also had some highlights that had been dyed over and then faded again, so my hair wasn't even that dark in places. Had my hair been its natural almost black brown, I doubt it would have done anything. It didn't do much of anything at my roots.

I am probably the 50th person to say this, but I ignored the negative reviews on here because I've never had box hair dye that was REALLY awful. Normally, I believe most problems are user error.

However, this hardly did a thing on my hair, and for $9.99, the higher end of the box dyes (the highest I saw in the store being 16-ish), I would expect more vibrant results for the price I paid. It's not so bad it's extremely distressing because it's an easy fix with some quality dye, but I would NOT buy this product again for any reason.


For the record, the one I used was 6.43 Light Natural Auburn.

I've been trying to find a at home color that works & doesn't damage my hair. I've tried a lot of them & so far this one is the one I'm most satisfied with. After reading the reviews on here I was hesitant but decided to go ahead & try it out for myself. It is one of the more expensive box colors at $9. I agree the smell is amazing. I hate some of the smells of others that either choke me or burn my eyes & then my hair stinks for a day or more after. Not the case with this one. Even my pillow smells amazing. I went with medium brown 5.0 & so far love the color. No reddish tones (which seems to happen with other box colors even when I got cool browns). So far grey coverage is great. Some other box colors barely cover my grey's and I end up with my grey's just looking lighter brown then the rest of my hair. It all looks well covered so far. I only did it yesterday so the next test is to see how well it lasts. I saw lots of complaints of hard to apply due to it's thickness & the bottle slipping out of their hands but I did not have issues with either. It was just as easy to apply as any others I've used & the bottle didn't slip out of my hand at all. My hair felt soft and silky afterwards. Normally after other box colors my hair feels dry & damaged afterwards & takes a few washings to get it feeling soft again. My hair is just past my shoulders on the thicker side & I was worried from the other reviews that there wouldn't be enough in one box to cover but there was plenty (I did all over coverage this time with plans to do roots only next time as long as the coverage lasts). I love there is no ammonia with great smell, great coverage, & great feeling hair. continued >>

No no no no no no. Horrible. I dye my hair all the time but this is one of the worst I've ever tried. Ever. When applying it to the hair it is very hard to spread then turns hair stiff. It was also extremely hard to rinse and I ended up not getting all of it out. THEN after drying to see the color turn out, there wasn't any. I had purchased dark brown and my light/medium brown hair had no difference. Horrible product and a waste of money.

This is the WORST thing I've ever bought in my life!!!!! I have dyed my hair by myself since I was 14 and have never had an issue like this!! I used this after I saw the commercial for it and i swear it turned my platinum blonde hair BLUE/GREY!!!! This is the most expensive boxed haircolor I have ever purchased and after it tinted my hair blue I ran to the salon and spent another $360 to get it fixed. UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE!

You could not pay me to recommend this product for anybody!!!!!!!

If you care at all about your hair you will stay far far away from this ridiculous product.

I decided to buy this product after seeing so many commercials and I wanted to go from blonde to brown with the least amount of damage. The claim that it's oil infused is what sold me because I'm constantly doing oil hair treatments. Anyway, I usually use any FOAM dye because my hair gets covered better with foam, and I don't end up ripping out a ton of hair, but the store didn't have any foams in the color I wanted so I went with this. I didn't have any problems with the application bottle like many had, it didn't slip out of my hand at all and the gloves were a perfect fit for me. It had a great smell, was NOT overpowering like many dyes, didn't sting my nose or eyes which was a pleasant surprise. I did find that it was difficult to get the product through my hair, and I have chin length hair which is short and I still felt like I needed more product. Like another reviewer said, my hair felt during application like I was putting glue in my hair, it got extremely stiff which ripped out a lot of hair during application and rinsing. I will probably go to a different store later today and get a foam and just go back over it because I can definitely see spots that are uneven. I only did it last night so I can't say how well it stays or if it fades. The color is nice though, slightly darker than advertised and the unevenness could totally just be my fault. If you have long hair youll need two or three boxes. Honestly though, i'd just go with a foam color and skip this all together.

I was really excited about trying this product (I must admit I was drawn in by the commercial and packaging). My hair is quite the case, it's to my rib cage and naturally blonde. I have been dying it brown forever and two summer ago I decided to dye it black.. The ends of my hair is still very dark but I have been dying the roots and middle section a dark brown to blend in.. I picked up the Dark Brown 4.0 shade because the back of the box showed it turning black to brown and blonde to brown. I thought it would be perfect, even if it could lighten up my ends a tad.. The application was fine, the bottle was fine, glove size was fine and rinsing was not a huge issue.. But my hair looks like I dyed it with the darkest brown or almost black color.. It's not black but it is very, VERY dark.. I am hoping that it fades out in a couple washes..

A while ago I decided to bleach out the all blue from my hair, even with a high lift product there were remaining faint blue high lights (combined with yellow roots it was a terrible situation). I decided to try Olia 8 Medium Blonde to get the last of the blue and tone down the roots (and darken the platinum in the rest of my hair). I loved that there was no harsh scent, and it was gentle on the scalp. The last of the blue was taken out and the roots were neutralized. My hair is finally all one colour. The only thing is it wasn't as dark as I had hoped, but that was more a combination of doing it so close after bleaching and not going for the darker shade. And my hair feels fine :)
The one reason I think so many people are disappointed is that this is a product that will darken, or add depth/lustre to hair, but it isn't strong enough to do a lot of lightening (especially on non-virgin hair).

comment i sent to garnier:
maybe you all should rethink the bottle design on the Olia hair color. it's cute and all, but have you ever attempted to actually use it when you're wearing gloves covered in slippery hair color? flew out of my hands 3 times and im pretty sure i ended up with more color across my bathroom and floor than on my head. :\

How do you explain your blue tinted hair to people at your job when you are 56 yo? I dyed my hair with this stuff late at night and didn't have time to correct it. It was tinted in the front only, but yikes! Maybe I didn't wash it out all the way??? There are reviews that say it is hard to wash out. The next day I washed my hair with Dawn, African Black Soap, and a clarifying shampoo. It looks better, but beware of the ash blond colors. I used 9.13 or something like that. Also like other reviewers mentioned, the "mixing bowl" bottle is designed poorly. It went flying a couple times and I had to use both hands to squirt it out. They could have designed the bottle better and used less plastic by putting the developer in the same bottle instead of a separate bottle. The gloves fit fine on me - better than others in some cases. This is pricier than other at home hair colors, too. At least my hair is soft and in good condition even after all the washings.