For years, the age-old advice when it comes to dyeing your hair has been to leave it to the professionals. But between the cost of salon hair color and the time it takes to book and sit for an appointment, box dye is a more accessible option for many people with colored hair. But, with at-home dye comes a host of challenges, from the mess of set up and application to missing spots and more. Leave it to the great minds at L’Oréal Paris—industry leaders in at-home hair color—to solve quite literally all your box-dye troubles with a first-of-its kind product.
Nowadays, more than half of the women in America color their hair, and box dye has come a long way in recent years thanks to brands like L’Oréal Paris. Always innovating, the brand didn’t stop after mastering their professional-grade formula and expanding their ever-growing shade range, as today marks the launch of L’Oréal Paris’ Colorsonic ($125): an industry-shaping hair color–application tool that mixes and applies color in five minutes or less.
L’Oréal Paris Colorsonic: What Is It?
I’ve been dyeing (or attempting to dye) my hair with box dye since I was in high school, and while it’s affordable and typically does the trick, there is always that laundry list of issues that make the experience less enjoyable—the mess, missing spots on the back of my head, not fully saturating certain areas, wasting the leftover dye—and I long accepted that was just the price you pay when coloring your hair at home. That was, however, until I got to experience L’Oréal Paris’s new Colorsonic device, which quite literally combats every single at-home color issue.
A first-of-its kind at-home color application device, Colorsonic mixes dye in a perfect 1:1 ratio and applies it to your whole head in as little as five minutes thanks to its self-parting bristles; all you have to do is brush the device through your strands like you would a regular hair brush. Yes, you heard that right—the smart bristles on the device move 300 times per minute while in use to part your hair while you apply, ensuring even and complete color application. The bristles also feature a hair density–sensing feature that allows them to move faster or slower depending on the type and texture of your hair, so it’s safe and effective for use on all hair types.
How Does Colorsonic Work?
What amazed me most about Colorsonic was how truly simple it is. To use, simply pop your color cartridge into the base and turn the device on. The lights on the tool indicate when it is done self-priming and mixing the dye, and even indicates how much dye is left in the cartridge. Once it’s ready to go, just press the “on” button and watch as the bristles start moving and dispensing dye. Starting with your roots, just brush the tool through your hair and voila.
Colorsonic also comes with a length attachment for ensuring full saturation of the lengths of your hair. Once finished dyeing your roots, pop on the attachment and get going on your ends. In total, based on consumer testing, the whole process only takes about five minutes start to finish. In my opinion, the most amazing part of the product is it’s self-sealing capacity, that locks and seals left-over dye into the base after use so you can continue to use dye from the same cartridge multiple times, minimizing waste and maximizing the bang for your buck.
Leaving nothing to be desired, the tool comes with reusable gloves, a water cartridge for quick and easy cleaning (put the water cartridge in and turn it on—it will fully flush the device and automatically shut off when finished) and even a tear-proof, waterproof instruction manual that serves as a place mat for keeping your sink clean while dyeing. Not only can you keep the instructions handy, you can rinse them clean after, fold them up and use them again.
How Much Is Colorsonic?
With a device as multifaceted and high-tech as this one, you’d expect a hefty price tag, but L’Oréal Paris’ Colorsonic is shockingly affordable. The device itself is $125, and each dye cartridge is $30, but as mentioned before you can get, on average, one full-head application and three to four root touch-ups out of just one cartridge. Right now, Colorsonic is compatible with 20 of L’Oréal Paris’ at-home dye shades, but that number is expected to increase in the coming months. Shop the game-changing device for yourself here.