Although I usually stick to basic drugstore hair care, I can’t help but be curious whenever a “cool” high end bottle of hair care gets released! Matrix is a well known professional hair care brand and recently they released a collection of shampoo and conditioners under the Matrix Biolage RAW line. The idea behind these products is that they are effective but using as much natural origin ingredients as possible!
So let’s get the stats out of the way:
-no silicone
-no parabens
-99% biodegradable formulas
-no colorants
-$25 each with 325mL of product
There are three different sets to fix common hair problems.
Uplift
For flat and fine hair
I actually have pretty thick hair but I do find that my hair gets flat. Maybe it’s because my hair is so long so that it weighs too much? The shampoo lathers up really nicely. I find when I rinse it out, my hair feels pretty squeaky clean. The conditioner is very moisturizing, my hair strands feel soft and smooth. I would expected an uplift conditioner to be a bit thinner though as to not weigh the hair down. Overall my hair feels pretty soft, shiny and lasts for about 2-3 days.
The scent of these are not that appetizing. It heavily smells like clay with other floral/earthy tones. However, it mostly just smells like mud. Combined with the black/grey coloring, it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing. I was really excited about the conditioner containing kiwi, but I wasn’t able to detect any of the smell.
Recover
For Stressed and Sensitized Hair
The shampoo contains Yucca and Goji berry and is meant to restore shine. The conditioner contains coriander oil and kaolin clay and improves strength, shine and bounce. I actually haven’t used this yet and gave it to my mom to test. Since I don’t have stressed or sensitized hair, I figure I’d give it to a better home. And a girl can only use so much hair products right?
Nourish
For Dry and Dull Hair
The shampoo uses Quinoa Husk + Honey while the conditioner contains coconut oil and kaolin clay. The scent on the shampoo is pretty natural, it’s quite earthy and a tiny bit sweet from the honey. I wouldn’t say it’s an “attractive” smell but it’s not bad either. The shampoo lathers really well and I don’t need that much at all to cover my whole head. My hair feels a little bit stripped when rinsed.
The conditioner is quite good at making the hair feel super soft and smooth! It stays pretty smooth while in the water rinsing off. But looses the smoothness once the hair dries. I would say this keeps my hair in nice shape and my dried hair feels soft and supple. The performance of this is very similar to the uplift set, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference other than this set smells a bit better!
So my hair is probably not made for this expensive stuff as I don’t see any dramatically different results. My hair does feel nice though but it also does with $5 drugstore products.
The other concern was that when I read the ingredients list, it contained a lot of chemical sounding names! Maybe I’m not well versed in sciences but for example these are the first 5 ingredients in the Nourish shampoo: Water, Decyl Glucoside, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate, Cocamide Mipa. Through research online, the ingredients seems to all come from natural origins. But I would expect more of an ingredient list I can read at this price point.
So overall while it did work fine, I didn’t notice anything different from my drugstore hair care. If you are sensitive and need a gentler hair care system that still provides good results, this is great! But if you do okay with drugstore products, this won’t be life changing!
How picky are you about hair care?