ARTec Orange Marigold Shampoo - Either Be Ready for Red or Be Ready to Pay!
Written: Jan 12 '05 (Updated Jan 12 '05)
Product Rating:
Pros: Actually deposits color.
Cons: Certain conditions make it permanent, it may fade to an undesired color, expensive to fix.
The Bottom Line: This shampoo worked well for me in a home with softer water, but with hard water it became permanent, faded to a "pink" color and was expensive to fix.
mrs-j's Full Review: Artec 8oz Orange Marigold Shampoo
My hair has been just about every color of the rainbow. When I first went to the woman who was my hairstylist for years, she thought I was nuts. "Chop it all off and bleach it blonde," I told her on my first visit. My hair was about six inches past my shoulders and dark brown. I wanted to have a little fun. She very nervously did as I asked and I walked out of there with the same haircut Anne Heche had back when she was wooing Ellen.
Since then I've toned down the blonde highlights to a warm golden brown but the highlights are still there, and my hair has grown back to its fairly long length. Because my natural haircolor is a mahogany brown and my highlights are only a few shades lighter, I thought I would give my old ARTec Orange Marigold Shampoo a try again. I purchased this stuff awhile ago back when I was living in my old house and I used it to jazz up my hair sometimes with good results.
About ARTec Orange Marigold Shampoo
ARTec is a beauty company that was acquired by L'Oreal in 2002. This product is a part of the ARTec line of products. I was first introduced to this salon shampoo line when my sister-in-law recommended I use their Kiwi Coloreflector shampoo and conditioner. There are few claims on the bottle. ARTec simply states that this is a color depositing shampoo with natural botanical extracts. They claim that the product "maintains brightness of copper, auburn and warm brown hair".
ARTec Orange Marigold shampoo is a part of ARTec's "Reds" line of shampoos and conditioners. This is a dark burnished copper sort of shade, a very natural tone. You can purchase this shampoo in an 8 fl. oz. bottle for between $10 and $12 online or at local salons that carry ARTec products.
Warnings: The bottle warns that customers should do a preliminary patch test to check for skin irritation before using the shampoo. This product should also not be used on eyebrows or eyelashes - they say doing so may cause blindness. Yikes! So keep it away from your eyes and on your hair, after doing that patch test of course.
Using the Shampoo
First off, you don't have to use all of the ARTec branded products that they recommend. The directions instruct you to shampoo with their Kiwi shampoo first. I don't, I use my regular shampoo. Then the directions instruct you to pour out a generous amount of the Orange Marigold shampoo, lather it into your hair and rinse. If you want brighter color deposits, repeat the process one more time. After washing, ARTec directs you to follow the shampoo with your choice of color depositing moisturizing conditioner - again, made by ARTec. Again, I never did this. I have always used my regular conditioner.
ARTec recommends using the colorizing shampoos and conditioners with every other shower.
How It Works
Well, here's the thing - I have had two wildly different experiences with this shampoo. When I first bought it a couple of years ago to use on my hair at my old home, it worked just fine. It really did deposit color and the color would wash out after a few shampoos.
But here in our new home, things went a little differently.
I got out of the shower after using the ARTec Orange Marigold shampoo and as I dried I noticed that my hair was really, REALLY red in some areas, as in too red. I had used ARTec over highlights before and while the highlights do tend to pick up color more readily than non-highlighted hair, my hair had never shone such a vivid red before. I figured it was no problem, I would just wash out the shampoo over the course of the next few showers.
Yeah, that didn't happen. Instead, my red highlights faded considerably, to a light pink, and they stayed that way - for well over two weeks.
I was planning on getting my hair colored anyway, so I figured I had chosen the right time to experiment. I have had highlights in my hair since my wedding almost two years ago. When you get highlights for that long, without getting low-light treatments as well, your hair begins to get blonde toward the end while the roots and upper ends are darker. My hair was almost down to my waist, so I had been planning to find a local colorist, get my hair evened out back to its natural color, and get several inches lopped off.
I found a local colorist via Angie's List, a nationwide service for local referrals, and went in. They took one look at my hair and asked what on earth I had put into it. I said, "Well a couple of weeks ago I used ARTec Orange Marigold shampoo, and it's just never come out."
I told them that I had used the product before but it had never done this to my hair. The board certified colorist on staff looked over my hair carefully and asked where I lived. When I told her she said, "Oh yeah, that's out there where they use well water, isn't it?" I said it was. She asked if I had lived there for long and I said, "Oh no I just moved in a few months ago." She said, "It's the hard water, which you probably didn't have where you lived before. The minerals in the water have made your hair unnaturally absorbent. ARTec products usually don't permanently stain the hair like this, but with your water, your hair is now extremely porous."
Well, lucky me. It took a three step process to fix what the ARTec shampoo had deposited. They first tried stripping my hair, which didn't remove the color. (Their jaws dropped when they saw that.) Then they had to do a neutralizing color which turned my hair green - yes, green to remove all traces of the pink. Only after that could they apply my natural shade of haircolor without fear of the pink coming back through after a few washes.
It was a good thing I went to a salon with a board certified colorist, because she was pulling stuff out of the back that she'd seen in demonstrations and classes just a few weeks before in an attempt to get my hair back to its normal color. The whole process took four hours and cost $200 - just to remove the cast that the ARTec shampoo had put into my hair permanently, thanks to our well water.
Summary
The staff at the salon were very surprised. Even though they didn't sell ARTec products there, they made certain to tell me ARTec products "don't usually do that". However, as became abundantly clear to me, ARTec products can do that sometimes. The key factors, the colorist explained to me, were that my hair was processed and our hard water. So, if you have processed or color treated hair and hard water, I would recommend you either don't use this product at all, or be prepared for some rather permanent results.
My stylist who was working with the colorist (yes, it took a team of two to fix my hair), joked that I should give the ARTec bottle to a redhead friend of mine and then rethought his comment and said, "Nah, just throw it away. It's dangerous stuff." I walked out of there after the long, marathon coloring session, with a great looking head of thick chestnut hair, but I've decided that I'm off the ARTec colorizing product line - for good.
ARTec Systems Group, Inc.
Port Washington, NY 11050
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