Review: Salon Grafix Healthy Hair Nutrition Conditioning Cleanser for Oily or Flat Hair

Purchased by Me 

It's been a while since I reviewed a haircare product, and even longer since I reviewed a conditioning cleanser. But when I saw this one at my local Grocery Outlet a few weeks ago, I couldn't resist picking it up, since most conditioning cleansers are formulated for dry/coarse hair. Very rare to find one for oily/flat hair!

You can also purchase this at Walmart and Walgreens, and on drugstore.com and there's store locator on their site here. I found mine for $2.99 at Grocery Outlet, so if you have a Grocery Outlet near you, definitely check there first. This product retails for $7.99 elsewhere.

Salon Grafix Healthy Hair Nutrition Conditioning Cleanser for Oily or Flat Hair

(retail: $7.99, 12 oz)

For those new to conditioner cleansing (aka: "co-washing" or the "no-poo" method), it's a pretty simple idea. Instead of using shampoo, you use a mild conditioner to wash your hair. The goal here is to avoid drying sulfates or other ingredients commonly found in shampoos that may dry out the hair. 

Before there were these fancy "conditioning cleansers," many people used (and still use) plain ol' conditioners to wash their hair. It's better to use a mild conditioner (the $0.99 Vo5 conditioners are very popular for co-washing) because otherwise you can be left with flat, greasy hair. 

There's no big mystery here as to why those with thick, dry, coarse hair might prefer to co-wash vs. using a traditional shampoo. But those of us with oily hair can benefit from co-washing too, especially if you color-treat your hair and want to keep your color from fading. No sulfates = longer time between colorings. So that's why I was thrilled to find a formula specifically geared toward those of us with oily or flat hair:

The scent of this product is Sugared Melon Mint, which actually doesn't smell quite as delicious as it sounds. It's OK, but not my favorite. It's got a very non-sugary melon scent to it, with a bit of mint. So if don't like super sweet scents, you may actually like this one (I just think it's odd that they put the word "sugared" in the title since it's one of the least sweet melon scents I've encountered!).

This product looks like a basic conditioner--it's an opaque, white cream (nothing fancy, so that's why I didn't take a picture of it).

I have been using this product for about two weeks now, every day or every other day. And guess what? I like it. I don't love it, but I like it. In case you're a newer reader, here's a quick summary of my hair: I have long, oily hair that's very oily at the roots but drier at the ends. I color-treat my hair about once a month or so. The texture of my hair is fine, but I have a lot of it. It's naturally wavy and prone to frizz (you can see what it's like at its worst in the "before" picture here).

The thing about all of the conditioning cleansers I've used is that you need a lot of product to coat your hair. The bottle suggests 4-8 pumps. I have pretty long hair, so I need about 10 pumps. As with all conditioning cleansers, your hair needs to be fully saturated with water before you even try to apply this product. Since it's not a shampoo and it's not a heavy conditioner, it doesn't disperse easily through the hair. Once you apply it to the top of your head, it's not going to flow down to the ends of your hair. You really need to coax it through your hair, but I have tip that might help! Once you've worked this product in as far as it can go and it's still not coating all of your hair, quickly dip your head into the stream of your shower, get your hair a bit more wet, and THEN this product will become easier to work through down to your ends.

After working it in for a few minutes, I like to leave this in while I shave my legs, and then rinse. Rinsing is very easy and this rinses clean without any effort at all. Once it's rinsed, my hair feels soft, but not AS soft as when I use a regular shampoo followed by a regular conditioner. It's not dry, brittle or tangly, but it just doesn't feel quite as soft. The detangling properties of this product are pretty good, even though it doesn't have a lot of "slip."

After my hair dries (whether I let it air-dry or heat-style it), my hair is bouncy and it has a nice amount of volume. It's definitely not flat or sad-looking, so that's a huge plus. My natural waves seem a bit "springy-ier" but it doesn't really feel like my waves are enhanced or that my hair is way curlier than usual. In fact, I couldn't really take before-and-after photos for this review because my hair kind of looked the same, to the naked eye, as when I used my regular shampoo/conditioner combo.

I also want to mention that I deliberately went without washing my hair for three days before I first tested this product, just to see how it would perform on very oily, dirty hair. It actually did a very nice job of cleansing! I didn't feel like my hair was still dirty or greasy after using this product, which is another huge plus.

The thing I don't like about this product is that I do feel like I need an additional leave-in conditioner when I use it. My hair just doesn't feel as soft as I'm used to when I use this conditioning cleanser, so I feel I need to compensate and add a bit of softness to it. But that's just a personal preference, and if you don't mind your hair perhaps not feeling as soft as usual, you could be OK with this. I also don't like that my hair looks and feels a bit greasy again less than 24 hours after I've used this product. For example, if I wash it at night before bed, my bangs look a bit greasy by dinnertime the next day. But to be fair, this happens with most conditioning cleansers I've tried.

FINAL VERDICT: Hair products are extremely subjective and what may work for me may be a total bust for you. But if you have oily or flat hair and you want to try a conditioning cleanser that's formulated for people like us, you might have luck with this one. Conditioning cleansers are not an everyday thing for me--they're something I reserve for when my ends are feeling extra dry or if I'm trying to preserve my hair color a bit longer. So I like that I now have this option in my shower, but it's certainly not taking the place of my regular shampoos and conditioners.

Do you co-wash? If so, what are some of your favorite products? I'd love to hear from you!

The products featured in this post were purchased with personal funds. For more information, click here.