Looking after your hair is a top priority if you pride yourself on having clean and healthy looking hair, and using quality hair care products (i.e. shampoo and conditioner) is a must. However, when it comes to getting the best value for money should you buy professional salon hair care products, or would cheap high street hair care products be just as good?

Comparing hair care products on cost alone, high street hair products may seem cheaper and a better buy, giving the impression of providing more value because of their low cost. Professional salon products on the other hand may seem expensive with a typical 300ml bottle priced around $20/GBP10, 5 times the price of the average high street hair products at an average cost of $4/GBP2.

Comparing these prices it seems as if the high street products are better value at about a fifth of the price of salon professional hair care products, giving the impression that they are much better value for money, because you would be getting 5 times the amount of product as you would compared with professional salon hair products.

However… when you carry out a closer inspection of the differences between cheap hair products and professional salon hair products, does cheap hair care products really provide the better value for money, or is buying cheap hair products a false economy? Let’s take a closer look…

To find out whether the premium brand salon hair products provide better value for money in both the short and long term when compared to cheap high street hair care products, we decided to test them to find out the real truth about hair products, and whether the high street products are as good a deal as they initially appear.

In our test we compared a 300ml bottle of an average high street shampoo, and an equivalent 300ml bottle of salon professional shampoo. The high street shampoo needed about 50ml per application to clean the hair to our required standard, whereas the salon shampoo needed only 10ml per application to clean the hair to the same required standard.

Needing 50ml per application, a 300ml bottle of cheap high street shampoo would give you about 6 applications. But using only 10ml per application, the professional hair care shampoo gives you approximately 30 applications in a 300ml bottle. Comparing the prices, the price per application of the professional salon shampoo is $0.66c/GBP0.33p per application, and the cheap average high street shampoo worked out at $0.64c/GBP0.32p per application.

Summary: at first glance, cheaper high street hair products appear to be a better buy and provide value for money, but on closer scrutiny there is but a hair’s breadth of difference in the price of salon hair products, and cheap hair products. When you add the better quality and effectiveness of salon products into the equation, the salon products turn out to be much better value for money. Q? Why would you use anything other than the highest quality hair care products on your hair?