What a steal: Garnier's Olia at home hair colour

InStyle magazine called it “revolutionary” whilst Marie Claire opted for “a nourishing alternative to the traditional hair dye”, but my call on Garnier’s new Olia is “an absolute steal”.

At just $16.99 a pack, Olia draws on the technology behind the latest breakthroughs in hair colour using oil as a delivery system, but at a fraction of the price and in a fraction of the time.

Olia includes Oil Delivery System2 technology for the first time in home hair colour, and its clever formula contains 60 per cent oil. This not only gives your locks deep conditioning and nourishment, but also diffuses colour directly into the hair shaft. The four natural oils you’ll find in there are sunflower, camellia, passionflower and limnanthes alba, which work together to penetrate the hair shaft more easily for minimal damage. A nourishing polymer preserves the inside and outside of the hair fibre during the colouring process while a second polymer binds to the hair surface to protect the fibre.  Magic!

On the colour and experential side of things,  this ODS2 technology provides up to three times tone lift and promises 100 per cent grey coverage, and it’s ammonia free so doesn’t have the cloying chemical smell that a lot of at home colours bring with them. It comes with a clever tear-shaped developer bottle that fits perfectly in the palm, along with a pop-out hole in the box that stands the applicator bottle upright during the colouring process. The kit also includes a generous-sized conditioner - that lasts up to three washes - gloves and a detailed step-by-step instruction sheet. It’s the little things huh?

Olia is in store now with 18 shades available, and more will be arriving on the market hopefully later in the year.