Waves Solid Shampoo

Cast yourself back a while and you may remember the initial excitement Lush fans felt when a single picture surfaced on the internet of the new haircare counter at the Oxford Street store. Alongside regular items, the particular shot captured three elusive shampoo wheels that stood out as not only being brand new exclusives to pine after, but boasted a first for shampoo designs in this particular format.  

Waves Solid Shampoo is hard to miss - a bright blue clump of ingredients that looks almost like something you'd find washed up on a beach. While the irony of this would suggest the very reason why Lush named it as so, the truth lies more in the components that the company have used to craft this rather delectable product. 

Designed to be used when your hair is in most need of a quick fix, this exclusive item contains a combination of sea salt, Irish moss powder and lavender oil. Together, these key ingredients create a shampoo that will not only leave your hair feeling light and manageable, but one that adds a wonderful and very natural healthy shine to it.   

The inclusion of the salt means that Waves is packed full of natural minerals that both replenish and hydrate the hair and leave it feeling super-soft and silky; the lavender oil moisturises your locks and gives it a very gentle fragrance to carry forth with you for the most part of the day.   

What I love about this shampoo is that it doesn't smell like you would expect it to. With it's blue demeanour and reference to the sea, I was expecting it to smell like Seanik or Big Blue Bath Bomb. However, without the inclusion of any lemon oil, this product has a very basic but rather wonderful fragrance reminiscent of the Unicorn Horn Bubble Bar. In simple terms, this solid shampoo bar offers a gentle and delicately-sweet lavender smell - a comforting and very calming aroma to enjoy in the shower. 

How Waves differs from most of Lush's solid shampoo bars is that it contains a lot of dried seaweed threaded throughout each piece - meaning that this product has a very rough feel to it when you're using it in the shower. To begin with, I was a little worried about the prickly nature of this as I thought it might irritate my scalp or at least deposit the strands of seaweed throughout my hair. As it happened, it did neither of these things and instead gave an enjoyable exfoliation that only served to help remove excess grease and dirt and leave my hair feeling really clean. 

For those who are not familiar with Lush's solid shampoos, you use them in the same way as you would a block of soap - either rubbing it over your wet hair to create a lather, or massaging it between your palms and applying the lather to your hair. Either way, they work just like a normal shampoo would and are often much better for your hair because they aren't full of excess ingredients to maintain their liquid state.

What I found with this particular shampoo was that it was not as sturdy as the circular bars and my chunk broke in half after only the second use. However, once the pieces had broken once, they remained intact for the duration of their use and I didn't experience any more problems with breakages after this point.

What I will say is that this shampoo is amazing - leaving my hair feeling really silky soft and well-nourished from the word go. My hair is quite thin naturally but can often develop a frizzy wave that prevents me from being able to wear my hair down without straightening it first. Waves reduced this frizziness without flattening my natural volume, and I have been able to wear my hair down without using any other products to control the stray strands.

Furthermore, I usually find that I have to wash my hair most days as some shampoos leave it feeling slightly greasy by the end of the day. With this product, I have been able to reduce this down to every other day, which above everything else, saves me money and time and allows a 100g chunk of this to see me through a good two months worth of washing. 

Finally, I have discovered that since using this, my hair has developed a natural shine to it which really brings out my highlights - this is without making it look overly greasy. Since I began using this almost a month ago, I have not noticed any fading of my hair dye and if anything, it's only heightened the different colours that are present.

Waves has definitely cemented itself as one of my go-to shampoos. I love how it makes my hair feel and the gentle, comforting scent that makes it extra pleasurable in the shower. While many of Lush's solid shampoo bars have made a big impression on me, this is definitely one I will be using regularly - especially during the coming summer months. 

Quantitative Ingredients: Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Stearic Acid, Water (Aqua), Glyceryl Stearate & PEG-100 Stearate, Hand Harvested Sea Salt, Irish Moss Powder (Chondrus crispus), Soya Lecithin, Perfume, Lavender Oil (Lavandula angustifolia), Gardenia Extract (Gardenia jasminoides), Limonene, Colour 42053. 

Vegan?: Yes. 

2015 Price: £6.50 per 100g.

Year Of Original Release: 2015.