According to the product bottle:

Transforms dull, dry, brown hair into soft, supple, satin brunette. Smoothes and perfects each strand for a healthier more radiant appearance. Adds natural luster for intense, mirror like shine

Now I’m a brunette. I don’t consider myself mousy. Color/shine/sheen wise, my hair is perfectly decent. Nothing spectacular, but nothing awful, but when a product promises results like that, it’s hard not to fall into a trap of advertised possible hair bliss.

Unfortunately, there are few products that live up to their own hype.

I purchased John Frieda Brilliant Brunette Light Reflection Conditioner in Chestnut to Espresso (for darker shades of brown hair) at my local Target store after some questioning. Do I really have dark brown hair? I would say that my hair falls into the spectrum of medium. It’s not that light, but it’s not that dark. I do consider myself closer to chestnut than anything else (especially when I am not out in the sun like I am during the summer). So I paid the $5.99 and went home to try it.

Now that I have used it for a couple of weeks, I can honestly say that it is nothing remarkable at all.

The conditioner is packaged it a squeeze tube. Long. Sort of triangular. I’m sure you have seen types like it before. For the price, you get 8.45 FL OZ of product, which is quite a bit.

The conditioner is light, but has some weight at the same time. I hate conditioners that are too heavy, since they weigh my fine hair down. This conditioner is a good consistency. A good texture. In that respect, it is phenomenal. Not too heavy or too light. The color, a light brown, isn’t all that pretty, but who really cares about that?

The scent of the conditioner is extremely pleasant. It is a nice clean scent. I’m not sure what it is exactly, most likely some sort of mix of things, but it does smell very nice. It smells clean (I am better at using adjectives to describe scents than I am at actually describing scents). It is a wonderful scent, though.

Unlike many conditioners nowadays, this conditioner can be rinsed out immediately. No waiting for a few minutes for the conditioner to soak in and then rinsing. This is a great thing for those who insist on showering in the morning and never give themselves quite enough time to get ready (yes, that would be me).

Basically, I like everything about the conditioner but the results.

John Frieda has promised a lot with this product, and that is undeniable. Not living up to that expectation is understandable, because chances were that it was never going to happen. Well, what really happened wasn’t even in the ballpark.

I noticed absolutely no difference in my hair.

Pre-John Frieda, I was using the Target Brand version of Garnier Fructis. Which cost about $4.00 less than the John Frieda conditioner. It is not formulated for brunettes. I just bought it because it was cheap, and it provided the same results (take into consideration that there was no change in my hair routine other than the change in shampoo and conditioner).

The brunetteness isn’t richer. My hair doesn’t shine like glass. I don’t have anybody coming up to me and saying “Your hair is so beautiful; you must tell me what you do with it!” That’s what John Frieda said was going to happen (or more accurately his PR firm or whoever did the packaging). My hair doesn’t look bad, and it didn’t before. I just wanted it to look different, and even though it sounded like it was going to make my hair into a beautiful cape of shining brown. Instead, it did nothing. My hair was not any softer. My hair was not any shinier. It was the same as it had been with my Target brand shampoo.

This product is nothing but average. It didn’t do a thing that it claimed to. While my hair was perfectly nice before, it was thanks to a substantially cheaper product. John Frieda produces a lot of his own hype, but this stuff just isn’t worth it. I was a brilliant brunette before, but I don’t want to be John Frieda’s Brilliant Brunette…I will just be brilliant on my own.

Recommended: No