L'oreal Mousse Absolue Review

On Sunday evening I decided dye my hair with L'oreal's Mousse Absolue in Very Light Frosted Blonde 1021. In short, the experience was very disappointing.

After: Mousse Absolue 1021 under dimmed sunlight

Before: faded Prettia Cassis Berry under strong sunlight

Didn't do a skin test 48 hours prior to the dye job, risky choice seeing as my eczema had returned due to the cold weather. But luckily, like all my other previous dye jobs, I didn't get any sort of allergic reaction.Was too lazy to even apply Vaseline to my skin before dying, I just went straight into it after changing into an old shirt and combing through my hair.
Take note that I was dying my hair in the warmest area of my living room: right next to the radiator! This is to ensure better results.

The dye is really easy to essemble together: take off the cap, hold the nozzle by its sides, click it on, shake it for a while, and you're ready to go.
Please remember to keep your fingers off the top of the nozzle otherwise you might accidentally squirt some of the dye out (woops).

The dye comes out in a smooth glossy white mousse-y foam, which unfortunately dissolves within seconds.
This is the main reason why I am so disappointed with the product. I expected the foam to at least hold till I was near done with the application, because all the other foam dyes that I've used before held their foaminess till I was done applying the stuff! After all, the foam helps the application process speed up a lot faster and gives more even results.
With the Mousse Absolue, the mousse/foam dissolves into a fairly dry solution on my hair, which makes it difficult to massage the product in later. So by the end of it all I went back to seemingly dry looking patches (espescially the ends) and reapplied more foam - I'm paranoid about uneveness. My hair did appear glossily wet with the dye on it, but not wet wet. It's like as if I hadn't applied enough product.

When I was done there was perhaps only less than 10% left of the dye - not that I could tell exactly because the packaging is opaque. This is clearly not enough for a root touch up.
If I don't plan on buying another Mousse Absolue in future I would probably use the rest of it for my brows.

To further ensure that I got the best results, I blasted some heat onto my hair with the hair dryer and quickly covered it all up in a shower cap. I planned on leaving it in for 1 hour and 30 minutes - like always since my hair is originally black after all, however I ended up leaving it in for almost 2 hours because I go distracted.
The last time I left it in for 2 hours was years ago when I asked my friend's mum to dye my hair for me with Palty's Milk Tea Brown. That was not a good move since it left my scalp super sensitive and my hair feeling thinner than ever - but hey the colour turned out amazing.
And so, similarly with the Absolue Mousse, I had to be super gentle when I was washing the dye out, because my scalp had indeed gone sensitive on me. Water didn't seem to make the dye foam up again or anything of the sort, but it was easy to wash out at the very least.
I shampoo'd my hair with a small amount of L'oreal's Expertise EverPure shampoo to make sure the dye was completely washed out, and then left in the conditioner supplied for around 5 minutes.

Came out of the shower with soft hair that didn't feel dry and frazzled. My black roots appeared to have been covered and blended in well with the rest of my hair. And it looked as if I had just used a lighter version of Prettia's Milk Tea Brown. Though, hair does look fairly ginger under warm lighting still. But it's kind of expected since my hair is originally black.
I thought everything looked fine until the morning came. Under natural light I noticed there were some tiny black roots on my hairline (refer to after picture)! Clearly the dye didn't budge despite having spent a good 5 minutes massaging every part of my hair after application.

I haven't noticed any patches on the other parts of my hair yet, but this is probably because it's like as if I was dying my hair with the same colour as I used before, so patches don't show up even if there were any.

In conclusion I would give this dye a 3/5.

Pros

• Convenient dye set up
• Vibrant and high-shine colour result
• Hair doesn't feel terribly damaged

Cons

• Mousse/foam dissolves too quickly
• Difficult to know whether you have covered your hair evenly or not
• Uneven coverage due to quickly dissolved mousse/foam
• A lot of product is used to make sure the dye is evenly distributed
• Higher chances of  patches 
• Opaque packagin: unable to see how much product is left

I wouldn't recommend this dye to anyone dying their hair from one extreme colour to another.
If you're just going a few shades lighter or darker, maybe it will be fine.
To avoid undyed patches of roots like mines, perhaps you should take some extra care to massage the mousse onto your scalp/roots thoroughly before it all dissolves. Like, whack that stuff on and don't stop massaging till the foam's all gone!

Despite how much I love the convenience of the dye and the colour result, I probably wouldn't buy this product again, most definitely not for it's RRP at £10.99! Would only buy this again if L'oreal improved the formula to make sure that the foam actually holds.