My experience with Schwarzkopf Live Luminance in Ultra Violet...

I followed the instructions that came with Schwarzkopf Live Luminance in Ultra Violet exactly and I used two bottles as my hair is long and thick. The colour that I picked is called Ultra Violet, so I took that to mean kickass purple, but, as you'll see, it turned out more halfass meh-urple...

My hair ended up as a pinkish red in natural light, not the vivid violet shade the box shows and promises. In certain light there was a faint tinge of purple, but this was only in close-up views of my head. In most lighting my hair looked darker then what I was expecting and in most photos taken for reviews, my hair just looked brown/black.


My natural hair colour isn't very dark [ash blonde/brown], so the colour should have worked, and in any case the whole selling point of the Luminance range is that it's meant to lighten hair as well as colour it.

That was another issue for me; the product lightened clumps of hair lighter then others, and it DIDN'T look like natural highlights. It just looked uneven and messily done, even though I took care with the application...

A birds eye view of my 'Ultra Violet' hair...

The colour I ended up with wasn't particularly bad, but it did not turn out as the colour it is advertised as being, and it is not what I was looking for. My hair is still soft, shiny and healthy looking, so it's not anywhere near as bad as it could have been, but yeah, it is still something that I consider to be a let down - the colour swatches on Schwarzkopf home hair dyes are usually very reliable,  so they are one of my favourite brands.


The box warns you not to use Schwarzkopf Live Luminance on lightened hair.

How my hair should have looked...

I lasted a fortnight with this colour, before using Colour B4 on my hair to remove the 'violet'. I now have ginger stained hair, as the Colour B4 can't remove all of the residue from 'fashion shades' [red, purple, blue, vivid black] of hair dye.

I'm going to try bleaching my hair, to lighten the ginger [I'll probably end up with it lightened to a yellowish tone], so that I can then look for a shade that is close to my natural hair colour. Well, what my natural colour was before it started greying...