L'Oreal • ColorSpa Moisture Actif [DISCONTINUED] • Treatments

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mricci on 7/7/2009 3:14:00 AM more reviews by mricci

Age: 25-29   Skin: Oily, Olive   Hair: Brunette   Eyes: Hazel    

i love this stuff! my natural hair color is a mousy light brown (think dull and blah) and it's too light for my skin and eyes. anyway, i tried this in espresso, dark brown, shade 12. the result is a very dark brown - a less discerning eye might even call it black. it looks fab! my boyfriend asked me, upon seeing it, if i was wearing a wig because it looked "so perfect". he's complimented me many times on how great it looks. so, yeah, its kinda awesome :)
oh - and my hair is just past the bottom of my bra strap (aka, really long), and i only needed one box to saturate all. on the flip side, it *is* a little runny. do it in someone else's bathroom, hehe.

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Dreamsical on 3/17/2009 6:36:00 PM more reviews by Dreamsical

Age: 25-29   Skin: Normal   Hair: Brunette   Eyes: Green    

I have medium auburn hair that tends to get brassy and a little too orange for my tastes. I use Light Brown Mocha and it gives me a nice neutral med to light brown which I love and compliments my skin tone better. It doesn't appear to damage the hair too much and the colour is gorgeous. ♥

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*TOP REVIEWER* Product_Junkie on 1/28/2009 2:19:00 PM more reviews by Product_Junkie

Age: 25-29   Skin: Combination, Medium   Hair: Brunette   Eyes: Brown    

I recently tried ColorSpa MoistureActif in #24(Cocoa- Medium Brown). My hair is already coloured (from the salon), but my colour was beginning to fade a little and my roots started to show, plus I have about 5-10% grays since the time I had my hair professionally coloured. I wanted something that wasn't permanent, but that would cover the grays as well as my roots and give an all-over natural uniform colour. At the salon, the colourist used a semi-permanent so I felt that it would be okay to use Color Spa over the existing colour. After applying ColorSpa, my roots were covered and turned into a natural rich brown, the grays were covered completely (now those pesky little hairs look like highlights--but make sure to really cover the grays with the color--I used a comb after the color was in my hair to make sure it was evenly and thoroughly saturated), my roots look like the rest of my hair color, a nice rich brown; nothing brassy, nothing ashy, which I was afraid of, since my past experiences with drugstore hair colour gave flat or brassy results. This one, however, darkened my hair a little but that is what I wanted. I left the colour in for about 25-30 minutes. It rinses very easily and quickly; the conditioner is also fabulous-it is quite thick and really softens the hair and thus improves hair texture and condition. My hair was quite dry prior to using ColorSpa. Thus far, my hair is glossier and more uniform in colour, looks natural, nothing drastic. Smells great too, easy to apply and an affordable stop-gap in place of getting my roots and grays touched up @ the salon. I will repurchase this shade in the future, but I still prefer to get my hair coloured once at the salon b/c the natural brown is not ashy, brassy, or muddy, but since they use a semi-permanent, Color Spa blends in quite nicely when I need to touch up my roots w/out breaking the bank, paying $$$ to have a root touch up, provided I use a brown shade that is like my hair colour already or slightly darker. In all, so far, so good! ColorSpa does what it claims.I also felt more comfortable knowing that it does not contain ammonia, so the smell is quite pleasant;nothing overly chemical. My hair texture has improved so much since using this.

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jenlcox1982 on 11/15/2008 9:16:00 PM more reviews by jenlcox1982

Age: 25-29   Skin: Combination, Fair-Medium   Hair: Blond   Eyes: Hazel    

I have naturally dark ash blonde hair. I had highlighted on top of that with roots showing. I chose Palomino, and I LOVE it!!! My hair looks shiny and healthy. The color looks natural with no brassiness, blotchiness, or weird "hot" roots. I have used Natural Instincts before and have not been this happy with my results, because that brand tends to bring out the brass in my hair even if I get ash-toned color. Will definitely purchase again!!! Only I wish that they did not take the product out of drugstores.

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andypandy on 8/25/2008 10:30:00 PM more reviews by andypandy

Age: 19-24   Skin: Sensitive, Fair-Medium   Hair: Black   Eyes: Brown    

Why is this listed under Treatments, and not Hair Color?

Anyway, my previously bleached and 3x dyed hair was fading to a brassy color, and I wanted to get it back to my root color, which is a brown/black. After scouring the message boards and reading through reviews, I decided to go for ColorSpa. I had used Revlon Colorsilk in the past, which works well, but it faded a lot and it is a permanent hair color that uses a very strong developer (around 25-26 volume I recall). ColorSpa seemed like a gentler option because it is a demi-permanent that uses a 15 volume developer. I walked over to Longs and picked up a box in Cocoa (Medium Brown) because a few MUA users said this color is actually a very dark brown. I got home and excitedly ran to the bathroom and got started. The directions were pretty easy to follow and I left the mixture on my whole head for 15 minutes (instead of 10 mins roots, 5 mins ends) since I wanted to focus on getting my lighter ends darkened.

BEWARE: this is a very drippy mixture and it looks like a bottle of this stuff exploded all over my bathroom, so make sure you line everything with newspaper if you want to avoid that. One good thing about the drippyness, however, is that the mixture fully penetrated my hair, even though it didn't seem like there was a lot in the bottle.

When I was first rinsing it out, my scalp felt a little tingly, so I panicked a bit, thinking that maybe I was experiencing an allergic reaction. False alarm; I'm fine, and the sensation went away after I rinsed everything out. Also, my hair felt pretty dry during the rinsing process, but I think all hair dyes do that to your hair (it felt way drier during the coloring process for Colorsilk). After I used the conditioner and blow-dried my hair, my hair feels super soft and thick--not dry at all. The color is great and it was pretty much what I was looking for--a very dark brown. I know it will fade, but I'll try my best to slow that process. Bottom line: this is definitely my favorite hair dye now and I'm really glad I tried it.

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emalove on 8/18/2008 4:02:00 PM more reviews by emalove

Age: 30-35   Skin: Combination, Fair   Hair: Brown   Eyes: Green    

I was very pleasantly surprised with this product. I'm not one for coloring my hair...haven't done it in several years and I don't love putting harsh chemicals in my baby-fine, thin hair.

I have naturally light brown hair, but I wanted it to have some red/copper tones to it. I wasn't ready to go permanent, so I picked this up at my local Rite-Aid. They were having a BOGO sale, so I grabbed two for the price of $6.99. The color I chose is called Sunset Golden Copper.

It was simple to use, like other reviewers have mentioned. You click two bottles together, shake up the dye mix, and apply on damp hair. It was a little drippy, but not too bad, and it didn't stain my sink or counter area AT ALL. It was so easy to clean up!

I left the product on for five minutes longer than they said (so 20 minutes total) and I now have the exact shade of copper-golden brown that I wanted. I love it! And my hair feels super-soft too! I've heard this product is close to impossible to find, so I'm going back to my Rite-Aid tomorrow and buying all the boxes they have in this shade!

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njr86 on 7/22/2008 5:02:00 PM more reviews by njr86

Age: 19-24   Skin: Sensitive, Fair   Hair: Brown, Straight, Fine   Eyes: Green    

What a pleasant experience! No this dye is not the best..the color is not as pretty as the box (came out to dark..Cocoa, Med. Bown), and there was not quite enough to fully saturate my shoulder length hair. but I am willing to forgive those things for 3 reasons.
1. The dye is very easy to use. you twist and click the two bottles together, shake and apply per directions! very easy directions at that.
2. The dye itself! The dye was a light color that didn't stain my skin or my bathtub. It is not runny, it doesn't take nearly as long to rinse out as other dyes(10 mins TOPS and the water was running clear), and it's easy to wash off (i had a splotch of it on my arm that washed off with dove soap).
3. It did what I wanted it to do, which was cover some hot orange roots and help make my hair a more uniform color. It is dark brown now with hints of red. More red on top obviously since my hair was lighter up there, but it looks okay and I'm fine with leaving it alone for a while (poor hair *sniffle*)

It costs more here (westchester, ny) than you guys are saying...mine was $6.79, but that's a lot less than getting my hair color corrected. There were only 6 colors at my drugstore but those are close to the colors I want anyway...although I'd order online if I had to. So yes, I would buy it again, but I'll buy two boxes!

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inadreambuzz on 4/9/2008 2:34:00 PM more reviews by inadreambuzz

Age: 19-24   Skin: Oily, Fair   Hair: Brunette   Eyes: Blue    

First off I am a first time dye user with very fine, thick and curly brown hair. I used the Redwood color. Its very pretty, didn't damage or dry out my hair like i thought it would. Not too drastic or matte looking. I bought another box and plan to do it next month!

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*TOP REVIEWER* ilovemakeupandsoshouldyou on 12/24/2007 2:28:00 PM more reviews by ilovemakeupandsoshouldyou

Age: 18 & Under   Skin: Combination, Fair-Medium   Hair: Brunette   Eyes: Blue    

I just dyed my hair last night using this in cocoa (medium brown shade). I've always had natural blond highlights ranging from gold to platinum blonde and the underside of my hair (where the sun never touches) is almost black. Well, i got sick of people asking my if I've colored my hair( people would ask my mom when I was really little, too), so I tried this stuff and it's great! I have very thick coarse and straight hair, so I can never get it to be really shiny and this definitely helped. Also, my hair a pretty dark chestnut color-blonde streaks are gone, but they are still a lighter brunette color which looks really good. I'm so happy with this stuff.The smell is not that bad. This only cost about $6 too, so that was good.

UPDATE MARCH 08 This stuff is terrible, it said it would be gone in a month, and now i have roots. It looks terrible and brassy, it's not so obvious but it's there and it is annoying. DON'T use this stuff

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jarin on 10/22/2007 1:03:00 PM more reviews by jarin

Age: 30-35   Skin: Dry, Olive   Hair: Black   Eyes: Brown    

Decided to try a semi perm after a bunch of gray hairs started appearing :( Found colorspa at ride aid a couple days ago for $5.99 & after reading the reviews (color runs darker than shade on box), I chose the shade cocoa for my black hair. So I washed my hair with aveda detoxifier to remove build up a couple nights ago & applied colorspa last night and love the results but....it doesnt cover gray (which I kind of expected)...think it might of covered them if I picked a darker shade but I wanted to see if this shade would lighten my black hair...and it did! Its still dark but I def see brown...more of a chocolate brown too w/no red tones! So, I'm satisfied with the color :) Formula is a little runny but not a problem & I suggest if you have long hair (mine is a little past my shoulders) to buy 2 boxes. I also left it on longer than directed for 30 min., used a little of the conditioner, and today my hair is soft, shiny, & the smell has already faded. Will def. buy again & highly reccommend for virgin color treated hair.

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nkar23 on 8/16/2007 11:19:00 PM more reviews by nkar23

Age: 18 & Under   Skin: Combination, Olive   Hair: Brunette, Wavy, Medium   Eyes: Brown    

this color is great and im sad that the drugstores dont carry it anymore. Gives great shine.. and i love it. hair looks very healthy and natural. two thumbs up

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ltiwdt on 7/31/2007 7:12:00 PM more reviews by ltiwdt

Age: 36-43   Skin: Dry, Medium   Hair: Brunette   Eyes: Brown    

I've been using this in whatever the medium ash brown shade is, to tone down my brassy highlights. It works super well-almost too well, since it takes forever to come out!
The other reviewers are right on-this goes on much darker than the picture on the box. Once you've finished dying but before you put the conditioner on, your hair will feel dry and you WILL panic, but once conditioned, hair feels soft and stays that way. Great shine, too. Hard to find, but worth stockpiling, if you can get it.

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*TOP REVIEWER* diggity on 6/25/2007 11:20:00 AM more reviews by diggity

Age: 19-24   Skin: Dry, Fair-Medium   Hair: Brown   Eyes: Brown    

Tried medium brown Cocoa on my slightly lighter (non-colored) medium brown, hoping for a rich, deep brown. It came out blackish-brown. Very flat-looking color, not pretty. My hair also feels super dry. I am not impressed. Hopefully it fades quickly.

Also, the smell of this product was very annoying. It was kind of grape-fruity (like they were trying to mask the chemical smell), but so overpowering and sick-inducing. I won't buy this hair dye again.

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*TOP REVIEWER* TeenBeauty on 6/24/2007 6:12:00 PM more reviews by TeenBeauty

Age: 18 & Under   Skin: Oily, Fair-Medium   Hair: Blond, Straight, Fine   Eyes: Blue    

I absolutley love this product!!! I used to dye my hair w/ permanent hair-color & that just ruined my long fine hair. Girls, a word of advice, DO NOT color over permanent color WITH permanent hair color! This is what causes your hair to break and what damages it! I use to color my whole hair (roots & ends, OUCH!) EVERY TIME w/ permanent hair color. Little did I know!

Well, even with those permanent hair colors, my blonde hair would still end up being too orangy or too brassy and dark. I had to switch to semi-permanent (which this is) because my hair was in desperate need of it. I use the medium blonde color & my hair comes out perfect every time!!! I just dye my roots, then put some on my ends the last 5 minutes.

I used to hate dying my hair, and then people could tell because it was too orange or looked ugly brownish. BUT NOW IT IS BEAUTIFUL AFTER USING COLORSPA!

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france71 on 2/13/2007 8:38:00 PM more reviews by france71

Age: 36-43   Skin: Very Oily   Hair: Blond   Eyes: Blue    

I am very impressed with this product. I have been coloring my hair light blonde for over 15 years. I've been wanting to quit, but I'm not willing to suffer through the "grow out" period with my long hair. This website helped me make an informed decision to go with ColorSpa Moisture Actif -- thanks for all the reviews.

I chose to go with Palomino which is darker than my dyed hair color but a little lighter than my natural color and it turned out great. There was a little bit of "ash" tone in the back initially, but I figured that would happen going from a light blonde to a dark blonde. And the ash became less noticeable after a couple of washes.

It's been almost 3 weeks now since my first treatment and the color is holding really well. The last 3 color treatments before trying this product I used a dark blonde permanent color and each time the color faded back to light blonde after about 2 weeks. So far, the Palomino hasn't faded much.

I heard others say the odor was horrible -- to me, it was nothing in commparison to permanent hair color. My hair has been a lot softer since using this product [and the conditioner it came with], too. I don't ever plan to go back to permanent hair color.

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Adah on 1/5/2007 10:47:00 PM more reviews by Adah

Age: 30-35   Skin: Oily, Fair   Hair: Brunette   Eyes: Other    

I'm really surprised by these rave reviews. I've dyed my hair at home for the last 10 years, and this is the most runny dye I've used. It dripped EVERYWHERE. All over my skin, all over my bathroom. And it stinks to high heaven. The packaging is so clumsy, it's hard to get the product where you want it or even use up all of the dye in the bottle. I won't buy this again.

Edit to add: It also faded like crazy. This stuff sucks.

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*TOP REVIEWER* spooky_natalya on 10/31/2006 12:25:00 PM more reviews by spooky_natalya

Age: 25-29   Skin: Oily, Fair, Cool   Hair: Red   Eyes: Green    

after going from black to red to blonde all within an 8 month period i was up to a platinum blonde. i liked it but then got really sick of it, so i wanted to go back to some darker colored hair. i was searching high and low for a nice rich chocolate brown and really discovered it in colorspa. now this is becoming harder and harder to find but i found mine at one of my local 4 walmarts on the way way bottom shelf in the coloring section. seems like not too many places around here carry it, and if they do they only carry a choice few colors. anyways, after using a red filler before applying my chocolate color, i was ready to go. i purchased cocoa and it turned out GORGEOUS. deep, chocolate but not too dark. loved it and it did fade but not until after a month just like the box said. and i wash my hair everyday! now the smell was a tad funky, i compare it to the smell that you get when you walk into a carpeting store, that weird padding / plastic smell but i'm an artist so i'm used to smelling strange chemical odors - so you have been warned! smells, but it's quick, easy and produced some luscious color! highly recommended and the price is right.

second attempt i used walnut, the cooler version of cocoa, turned really dark, i don't like it as much as cocoa but i'm hoping it fades. otherwise great stuff!

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mayomi18 on 10/21/2006 1:18:00 AM more reviews by mayomi18

Age: 25-29   Skin: Very Oily   Hair: Black   Eyes: Green    

This is my favorite hair dye (and believe me, I've tried them all!)
I've been dying my hair consistently since the age of 14 (I'm 24 now) but a couple of years ago I developed this weird allergy to hair dye. My face swelled up and I didn't leave the house for a week because I looked like I had some kind of disease. At the time, my hair was black and my option was to either let it grow out naturally or use temporarily hair dye until it grew out. At first I tried a couple of times with permanent hair dye thinking the allergy incident had been a one time thing. Nope. Then I discovered this and it has seriously saved me from looking ridicilous for the two years it took me to grow out my hair! :) I used to react to this too although usually just with a mild rash that only lasted a day or two (worth it IMO) but the last two times I dyed my hair I had no reaction at all. Very odd but obviously I'm happy! :) Anyway, my hair has grown out but I continue to use this. I've used pretty much all of the brown shades as well as the black one. They last quite a while on me but wash out eventually. Leaves my hair nice and soft too. And best of all, it's super cheap!

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rasberrikisses on 9/19/2006 8:36:00 AM more reviews by rasberrikisses

Age: 25-29   Skin: Combination   Hair: Brown   Eyes: Green    

I love this stuff!I have used Cocoa in the past, which made my hair a rich, chocolate brown that I loved! I wanted my hair darker, so I used espresso. I love the color! It is a rich, shiny dark brown. I love the way the conditioner smells and it really makes my hair soft. I don't have that yucky, chemical smell or feel after using this. I usually use ths in beween Garnier Nutrisse Dark Chocolate to liven up my color. Love this! Just wished it lasted a little longer!

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glitterbomb on 6/1/2006 5:12:00 PM more reviews by glitterbomb

Age: 18 & Under   Skin: Normal   Hair: Brunette   Eyes: Brown    

This is probably the best hair dye that I've tried, and I've tried Feria, Natural Instincts, Herbal Essences, l'oreal Couleur Experte, probably others that I can't remember. My natural haircolor is somewhere between light and medium brown. I really like Palomino when I am want to tone down brassiness from other dyes when I go lighter - it really gives me a beautiful dark blonde color.
I also absolutely love Mocha #36 when I want to dye my hair back to my natural color. This is probably the least damaging dye, and the conditioner that it comes with is great. The initial color is always darker than I am shooting for, but 2-3 shampoos later, the color lightens and it's perfect. Yay for ColorSpa!

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