Yves Rocher Reviews: Low Shampoo & Lagoon Hair and Body Wash

Yves Rocher is a brand that I’ve known for a long long time. As I was growing up, my mum often had the little catalogues around the house from them and would put in an order every so often. When I got older, she occasionally let me know jump onto her orders too, so I’d occasionally get something small from there, including the Luminelle Mascara which I still use now, although it looks like they’ve stopped doing it on the site – boo!
I recently spotted a few posts Annebeth at The Styling Dutchman had done recently on their products including this one on their Low Shampoo and this one on their Intense Kajal eyeliners, then I just knew I had to put an order in for those products. I got the black and gold versions of the eyeliners, plus a bottle of the Low Shampoo and a few other things. What I love about ordering from Yves Rocher is that you get to choose from an awesome selection of free gifts and samples with your order too (although one of mine didn’t turn up, sad!). So when I got offered to review a few things from Yves Rocher, I jumped at the chance. I’d really liked everything from my own order, so it definitely wouldn’t hurt me to try out some new things!
There are a couple of others to come soon, but so far I’ve only managed to try the Low Shampoo and Lagoon Hair & Body Wash, so I thought I’d do a quick post on those first.

Low Shampoo – Delicate Cleansing Cream

I guess I can’t jump straight into the review without a bit of background first – yay, storytime! When I was a teenager, I would wash my hair every other day. It used to get greasy fairly quickly, especially when I had a fringe and was having to do sport at school almost every day. Now though, I’ve slowly pushed down the frequency of it so that I can sometimes manage to go 4 or even 5 days without doing it. I don’t know a huge amount about the whole no-poo method of hair washing, nor I am very knowledgeable about the different chemicals in shampoos, but I am fairly interested to see if it makes a difference to washing my hair since, after all, our hair wasn’t designed to be attacked with chemicals on a daily basis.
The Yves Rocher Low Shampoo is described as a delicate cleansing cream rather than just a shampoo. The main draws for me when I decided to buy it were that it was both sulfate and silicone free. As I said, I can’t claim to know a huge amount about these, but I’ve found out that sulfates create the lather in your shampoo, and silicones coat the hair with a protective layer. Sulfates can be quite strong though and slowly damage your hair; silicones are the thing that you hear about when people say that shampoos can build up in your hair, hence why it’s recommended to swap shampoos occasionally.
When I tried the Low Shampoo for the first time, it was a little bit strange not having any lather! I found it did take using a bit more product to feel like I’d definitely got all of my hair covered. I made sure to spend a bit more time than usual working it into my hair and scalp, since without the lather it’s a bit more difficult. And I made sure that I rinsed my hair thoroughly too, as recommended. I did almost stop rinsing once it felt like the product was gone, but decided to rinse a bit longer – this was definitely the right thing to do as my hair then went into the “squeaky clean” stage, something that rarely happens nowadays anyway.
And then I made a strange decision – I’ve heard about the whole backwards shampoo/conditioner thing where you use conditioner before shampooing to make sure that it’s all out of the hair. I decided to forgo the conditioner entirely – something I’ve only done if I’m really, really in a rush. I guess I was thinking about there being no silicones to coat my hair in the shampoo, and I wanted to see how it worked by itself, rather than slathering on a thick conditioner which would just coat my hair afterwards.
And the result? Wow. Simply that. I wasn’t really expecting to see or feel much of a difference, but I was really surprised and seriously impressed. I think I was also sort of expecting it not to feel as clean, but no. I dried my hair so I could see the immediate effect and what shocked me the most was the volume my hair had. It felt like after you’ve been to the hairdressers and had your hair professionally washed and dried – almost as if it was lifted above my head, does that make sense?! It felt soft, clean and the volume stayed like that the rest of the evening and into the next day – a feat of brilliance for my hair! Ben even said that my hair looked and felt nice. I allowed him to try it too, and he really liked it – so much so that I think I might be removing it from the shower before he uses it all!
The only downsides? It’s slightly more expensive than I’d be looking to buy an everyday shampoo for (currently £3.45) and is a fairly small bottle (200ml). Then again, it does mean I’m washing my hair less frequently so it’s not being used up as quickly, plus I’ve also bought a slightly cheaper low silicone and sulfate shampoo that does still lather for days when I’m in a rush. Yes, it does take a bit more effort when washing your hair with this, but the results for me outweigh that.

Lagoon Hair & Body Wash

After being so impressed by the Low Shampoo, I was a bit worried about trying this in case it didn’t live up! The colour and packaging to me, while they’re fun and summery, definitely look a lot cheaper than the Low Shampoo. I did really like the name though with “Monoi de Tahiti” and “Lagoon” being featured – made me want to go on holiday!
I’ve recently been doing quite a bit of swimming (I’m currently trying to do 3-4 times a week), so I’ve been trying to keep my hair dry at least one of those times so I don’t need to wash it, but washing it after all the others. I’m quite aware that the chlorine and chemicals in the shampoo I use afterwards can be damaging if used too much, so I’m trying to keep an eye out for ones that are more gentle. I’ve also continued with the not using conditioner thing and am currently only using around once a week to once a fortnight – not sure if it’s making a huge difference, but I haven’t noticed my hair feeling any worse, so it at least I can get ready a bit more quickly!
So this formula doesn’t claim to have all the benefits of the Low Shampoo, but it does say it’s a gentle formula and the ingredients list on the back says: paraben free and silicone free, so that’s working in its favour. I do like the idea of it being 2 in 1 as a body wash and shampoo too – very handy.
I took this with me yesterday for swimming and also got my colleague Laura who’s been coming swimming with me to try it too. On first impressions, the smell could be a little bit much, especially if it was just on a day to day basis. I’d say it’s somewhere between fruity and bubblegum, matches the colour well. But thinking about how I plan to use this (after swimming or on a sunny holiday – well, all the signals the product is giving me are telling me to do this!), the colour, design, name and smell are perfect. I definitely get that tropical holiday feel from it, and I feel like it’ll become one of those scents that will always give you fond memories of the holidays you used it on.
As a shampoo itself, I can’t say it impressed me as much as the Low Shampoo, but it was still nice to use. It does lather, so that’s handy for after swimming when I have 15 minutes to get showered, dressed, make up done and hair dried before jetting off to work. And my hair felt soft enough after using. I dried my hair after using it, whereas Laura left hers to dry naturally, and she kept telling me throughout the day how soft it felt, so that may be the difference – the hair drying may be having some slight drying effects on my hair. We did both agree that we could smell it in our hair afterwards for the rest of the day – it was a lot more subtle than straight out the bottle, so I really liked that, plus scents don’t normally stick to my hair, so that was nice!
One small thing we both noticed though, and a very minor thing at that: the lid was difficult to open! You had to get a nail underneath the bit on the front of the lid which will only end in a broken nail at some point! As I said, a minor thing, but something we noticed.
Overall, I do like it and probably would repurchase it. It’s super easy to chuck in my bag and use after swimming so that I don’t need to take 2 bottles, plus it reminds me of holidays. I’d definitely buy it for a beach holiday too as it claims to easily wash off sand and sun cream.

All in all, well done, Yves Rocher. I used to think of the brand as a bit of a mail order company for more middle aged ladies. But every product I’ve tried so far, I’m enjoying and would repurchase. I have a couple more reviews to come as I haven’t yet had a chance to test those products, so let’s hope they live up to expectations too.
Have you tried any Yves Rocher products before? What do you think of their ranges?