Ion Keratin Smoothing Treatment

Back in the late spring of 2011 the Ion brand from Sally’s came out with a new keratin treatment. It boasted that it reduced 90-100% of frizz, 50% of curl and replenishes keratin at the same time. Not only that, it came in a nice sized 12 oz bottle for about $20. What a steal! This looked like a cheap version of the keratin treatment I had used before then and it had NO FORMALDEHYDE! I couldn’t believe it! As it turns out, this was another lesson of “you get what you pay for”.

Here are the ingredients: Water, Cetearyl Alcohol, Vanillin, Hydrolyzed Keratin, Cyclopentasiloxane, Amodimethicone, Ceteareth-20, Hydrolyzed Collagen, Centrimonium Chloride, Fragrance, Dimethicone, Methyparaben, Propylene Gycol, Hydrochloric acid, Trideceth-12, Pectin, Argan Oil, Wheat Germ Oil, Benzyl Salicylate, Hexyl Cinnamal, Coumarin, Yellow 5.

The active ingredient is the vanillin. This is the ingredient that gives the smoothing effector at least was supposed to. Vanillin does turn into formaldehyde when heated though. I knew this at the time and in another post I will go into this in detail. I felt OK about using vanillin because my reasoning was that it is used all of the time in baking, it was safe to eat so it couldn’t be too bad if i flat ironed my hair with it. (I know weak reasoning!) Also it does not do any harm if it gets on the skin unlike formaldehyde.

The sweet vanilla yet chemically smelling formula had a nice consistency….not too thick or thin. I Applied it on my hair like any other keratin treatment and blow dryed and flat ironed as usual. I’ll have you know, by this time I am very proficient in flat ironing my hair. So when I saw the results I was quite befuddled.

Humidity may have had a role in how this product performed but then again isn’t the point of a keratin treatment to prevent frizz?! How well could it possibly perform in frizz and curl reduction if right after applied the treatment my hair turns into cotton candy fluff? I had to re-flat iron it with another hair product to control the poof. Then I waited my usual week to rinse it out.

I have no pictures of the rinse out. Do you want to know why?

THERE WAS NO PRACTICALLY DIFFERENCE AT ALL!

I was so disappointed!

I realized that this product was a total waste of my money. I had only bought it because I traveling with someone and we had happened to be near a Sally’s. Also, I live in an area that has no Sally’s near by. The nearest one is about 2 towns over.So if I wanted to return this I would have to travel 2 towns over by bus and travel back. The time and money did not seem worth it to me so i decided to stash it for a later time.

When cleaning out my stash I decided to try it out again before I chucked it. I got the same results. I was so angry with this product I threw it out the next day! I wouldn’t even have given it away for free because I thought it sucked that bad.

Bottom line: this product is so not worth it! A regular blowdry cream or serum would have worked better!

Thanks for reading <3