Schwarzkopf Live Colour XXL Absolute Platinum Review

After having very dark brown hair for over 6 months I decided it was time to go back to blonde. Since my hair was so dark to begin with, I knew none of the ordinary hair dyes would lift the colour so I needed something with bleach. The best product I could find was Live Colour XXL by Schwarzkopf. I bought 2 boxes in Platinum from Tesco at £4.50 each.

The colour above turned into the colour below. I was under no illusion that I would get the colour on the box in 1 application, so to get such a massive colour lift in 1 go I was impressed. To add to my happiness my hair didn't feel like straw afterwards either.

My hair is quite thick but at shoulder length I genuinely expected 2 boxes to cover my hair well, but to be honest it didn't, it just about managed to cover my hair, and the colour dried up in spots long before it was due to be washed out.

 

I gave my hair a couple of days to recover before I tried to dye it again (I really do not recommend this, any proffessional will tell you to wait at least 2 weeks between colouring, but I was willing to take the risk.) 

This time I bought the dye from Wilkinsons for a whole £1 cheaper than Tesco (not on offer). I bought four boxes so I could use three on my hair (like I said, I didn't feel enough coverage from two boxes) and one to put aside for regrowth touch ups. After all it was super cheap and I wanted to be stocked up.

I applied the three boxes and my hair felt like it was well and truly covered with no signs of drying up.

As you can see, in places it is the advertised 'Platinum blonde', but 70% of it, is this horrible pale orange colour, and the orange band that goes around the top of my head is awful, though I'm sure that was my fault durin application. You can also see that the ends of my hair are now completely frazzled. However, the rest of my hair actually feels like it's in amazing condition - when it's dry. You see, now, when my hair is wet, it is so weak that the slightest pull will snap it, it's because of that I won't brush my hair when it's wet, else I'm sure I'd go bald.

I suppose my biggest problem is not the current condition of my hair, I take full responsibilty for that due to the short time between applications. But, if the colour managed to get my hair from picture 1 to picture 2 (extremely dark to quite light,) why did it not go pure white by picture 3? Could it be something to do with me buying the product from two different places? Is it possible that the reason it's £1 cheaper in Wilkinsons compared to Tesco is because it's not the same product inside the box?

I've since checked out other reviews on this product and based on 25 reviews it has a rating of 2.9/5 and would only be recommended by 60% of the reviewers. Most report the same colour problems as me, the orangey, yellow tint. I'm undecided on whether or not I would recommend this, I think the product is generally really good, but do a strand test first.