Review :: Red Ken Anti-Dandruff Shampoo

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Review
1.5
  • Ingredients
  • Scent
  • Wash
  • Price

Summary

RedKen looks and smells great. Unfortunately that’s where the good stuff ends. Looks and smells don’t help your dandruff and, chances are, neither will this overpriced chemical soup.

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User Review
3 (2 votes)

buy now on Amazon Much like Clynol Care in the UK, Redken appears to be the default anti dandruff shampoo for hair salons up and down the United States.  The stylists love it.  Quite how this happened I don’t know.  In 2007, they were named as one of the “Icons of the American Marketplace”.

At first glance the bottle is nice enough with a modern grey minimalist design.  It’s a relatively expensive shampoo too.  Certainly for a Zinc Pyrithione shampoo, an active ingredient so common you can pick up equivalents for a few dollars. The shampoo is bright white and smells like menthol.  I’m generally not a fan of menthol in shampoos.  It’s a gimmick, a needless gimmick at that but it feels good.   My hair felt nice afterwards, a bit dry but decent for an anti-dandruff shampoo.  This is a decent wash but certainly not worth the cash they are asking.

Or perhaps it’s the quality of the ingredients which sets this shampoo apart from the crowd?… As it turns out, no, the ingredients don’t justify the additional cost.  If you have a sensitive scalp of any kind you really should avoid this altogether.   5 (5!!!) of the 14 (14!!!!) contact allergens in this shampoo are rated as high hazards on the skin deep cosmetics database.  One of the parabens added is given a 10/10 full hazard score.  As in, it’s one of the most dangerous materials allowed in modern cosmetics industry and it will probably be banned soon.  What kind of manufacturer in this day and age would add 14 known contact allergens to their shampoos?  L’Oreal, that’s who.

It seems that cynical clever marketing has won on both sides of the atlantic.  Red Ken in the US and Clynol in the UK seem to be the default choice for stylists up and down the country despite being overpriced and feeble.  These people work with hair for 5 or 6 days a week so what hope do the rest of us have!

Avoid.

Author

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  • The site owner. I founded, and have ran this site for too many years now. I have extremely sensitive skin, have suffered from seb derm for all my adult life and this site is my way of doing something about it. Check out my sister site at safehouseholdcleaning.com

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