Over the years I heard so much about Macadamia Deep Repair Masque. People seem to love it and a number of my friends say it’s their holy grail hair care product. Come to think of it, I can’t believe I haven’t tried this before. It’s probably because about a year ago I bought three other Macadamia products: Rejuvenating Shampoo, Moisturizing Rinse, and Healing Oil Treatment. The Healing Oil was an OK product. I loved the scent: very unique and musky, different than the scent of other Macadamia products. However, I didn’t think it was any better than other hair oils I’ve tired. I use VO5 Miracle Concentrate with Argan Oil and it works well for me. Honestly, I don’t see much difference between this and the Macadamia version. The other two products, the shampoo and rinse, were a total fail. They made my hair look matte, oily, dull, and lifeless. I assumed that the Masque will be equally disappointing. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Macadamia masque up close and personal
What it does?
Couple of weeks ago BeautyBay had an offer on the Deep Repair Masque: 500ml for £13. As this size normally costs £37, I thought that if was ever going to try it, this was a good time to do so. The instructions said to comb the product through clean wet hair and leave for 7 minutes. I used it as I would any other conditioner and 7 minutes later, when I rinsed it out of my hair, I was in love with this product. My hair has seriously never been softer. It looked great after blow drying as well: smoother, more manageable and definitely softer. If you have ever tried Philip Kingsley’s Elasticizer Pre Shampoo Treatment the results are a bit similar. Both products transform your hair from a tangled frizzy mess into shiny flowing hair.
This masque has macadamia and argan oils as well as tea tree and chamomile oils, and aloe and Algae extracts. Basically, all the good stuff. It’s designed to be a deep revitalising treatment for dry, damaged hair, for example, hair damaged by blow drying, straightening, and colouring. On the Macadamia web site it says that the product deeply nourishes hair and leave improves its elasticity and shine. While I can absolutely agree with the first two points, I haven’t notice my hair being more shiny than usual. Despite that I think it’s a fantastic product and that I will continue using it. I’m not sure if it gives any long-term effects as I only had it for a week or so but I will be happy to write an update once I’ve used it for a while.
I have VERY thick, frizzy dry hair, damaged by using heat and this masque leave it feeling soft and sleek. I’m not sure how it would work on thin hair, but if your hair type is anything like mine I would strongly recommend this product.
What’s Inside (some scary stuff)
And then I read the ingredients list… This kind of dampened my enthusiasm. It doesn’t have any parabens. So that’s good. But it does contain some other scary stuff.
First of all silicones. The masque has dimethicone which is a type of silicone oil. It also contains amodimethicone which is one of amine-functionalized silicones: silicone modified to have different properties. They are considered to be the best high–performance silicone ingredients in hair care at the moment (you can read more on this topic here). They have strong conditioning properties and help to lock in moisture. The interesting thing about these silicones is that they use electrostatic attraction to condition the parts of hair that need it most. On a slightly more negative note, they can stay on your hair for several washes. I guess this is one of the reasons why this masque is not recommended to be used more than twice a week. I have noticed that after using this product once my hair has been softer and smoother for a couple of washes.
This product also includes butylene glycol, an ingredient derived from petroleum, and phenoxyethanol, a preservative and a potentially toxic ingredient which has been removed from the list of safe ingredients or at least limited by a number of countries and organisations. It’s also not used in many natural skincare brands.
Overall, I will continue using this product cause it works great. As it’s a hair masque I’m a bit more laxed when it comes to ingredients. After all I rinse it out after and 7 minutes so the contact with toxic ingredients is kept to a minimum.
Coming up:
Friday: New Revolutionary Anti-aging Serum Review
Young For Good 
Mar 12, 2013 @ 09:06:00
Oooooh this is nice. Does it have silicones in it?
Mar 12, 2013 @ 22:57:29
That’s a great question! Thanks for reminding me, I should have covered it. So I went back and added a new section towards the bottom of the post just for you :).
Mar 12, 2013 @ 10:59:10
I was waning to try this too. I have the Moroccan oil treatment masque and that is quite good as well!
Mar 12, 2013 @ 22:56:18
If you do try this, please let me know how it compares to the Moroccan one cause I haven’t tried it 🙂