Wen Pomegranate Cleansing Conditioner

A little under a month ago I began trailing Wen Pomegranate Cleansing Conditioner with an open mind, I understand the purpose of cleansing conditioners and who they are best suited for but thus far I have found them to be underwhelming. The beauty world tends to rave about Wen Cleansing Conditioners so I decided to give the whole co-washing thing another chance.

For those unfamiliar with co-washing let me briefly explain the concept:there are two methods, the first is to forget what you've been taught in terms of hair conditioning and reverse wash, i.e condition your hair before washing with shampoo. The theory is that finer hair will not be bogged down by any conditioner residue. The other method, and what most will deem to be the traditional route is to rinse the hair with conditioner and forgo shampooing completely. Now when I say completely, I really mean every now and then; say you wash your hair with shampoo and conditioner three times a week, every second wash you could skip the shampoo step. It seems that the this method is best suited to curly hair, to smooth and add additional moisture to a typically coarser hair texture. It is important to bear in mind that curly hair is naturally drier and will not need to be cleansed with shampoo as often as straighter hair types as there is less oil build up. 

Now that co-washing is very much a thing a whole onslaught of cleansing conditioners have been born, I'm not really sure where I stand as I have been told by a leading hairdresser there is no such thing, it is either a light conditioner or a 2-in-1 product (i.e Shampoo and Conditioner). Despite this nugget of knowledge I did want to give cleansing conditioners one finally hurrah, even just for the sake of research. For the sake of this review I do think it is important for me to state my hair type, after a long Google search it has been decided that my hair is either a 2B or 2C (the hair charts seem to wildly differ). What this means is that my hair curl pattern (if you can call it that) is tighter than a loose wave yet not a tight curl, it is coarse and quickly absorbs water. 

Wen Pomegranate Cleansing Conditioner is a funny ol' product, first of all the brand somewhat tell you to ditch shampoo completely while using it and to use upwards of 20 pumps of product per use. The problem with that is if you wash your hair fairly frequently you will quickly drain the expensive bottle and more than likely end up with greasy, weighed down hair (I imagine curly hair would benefit more). Less than ideal. Use sporadically, perhaps once a week or in the same way you would a typical conditioner I can get on board; it smells great and does leave my hair soft and dare I say it almost shiny. The other downside is the time required to really reap the benefits,Wen suggest that you section your hair while wet, apply and comb through the product root to tip. They also suggest that you leave it on upwards of 10 minutes and who has time to do that frequently? Not me that's for sure. I am slightly bewildered to why this product has reached cult status, it doesn't seem to be all that different from a typical sulphate free conditioner but hey you can't win them all!

Wen Pomegranate Cleansing Conditioner £27 via QVC UK - link.

This post contains a press sample.