In a world saturated with hair care products promising miraculous results, finding the perfect routine can feel like an endless quest. Walking through beauty supply shops or scrolling through social media reveals a plethora of shampoos, conditioners, and hair masks, each targeting a specific hair concern. While high-quality products exist to address issues like damage, volume, and everything in between, many individuals find that these generic solutions simply aren't enough. This is where the rising trend of customizable hair care products steps in, offering personalized solutions that cater to the unique needs of your hair.
Customized hair-care brands are rising in popularity and efficacy. These brands create personalized products and/or regimens that make it easier than ever for you to have the best hair of your life. After all, hair care isn't one size fits all.
This article explores some of the best custom hair care brands on the market, highlighting their unique approaches to personalization and the benefits they offer.
Function of Beauty stands out as a pioneer in the realm of personalized hair care. After years of scientific research and leveraging technology with MIT-educated engineers, Function of Beauty developed a hair-care quiz to create products that are shaking up the beauty space. The brand utilizes proprietary algorithms to analyze data and formulate products tailored to individual hair needs.
Function of Beauty is known for its customized formulas with a colored flair. On its site, you take a hair quiz, much like Formulate, but it’s divided into three different types: hair, skin and body. Function of Beauty provided the largest shampoo and conditioner bottles among the three brands, which is a nice gesture considering you’re paying for more than $5 shampoo. It made hair super soft and is a surefire step-up from your traditional brand (especially with the hair serum and leave-in conditioner; those were worth every penny).
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Function of Beauty PRO Bond Repair Custom Conditioner Mask self-adjusts to your hair's unique damage level. It can be used as either a conditioner or a treatment mask and uses a patented "Adaptive f3 Bonding Complex" to target different levels of damage and breakage within hair to bring hair back to a healthy state. It also can be customized with concentrates (to add volume, reduce frizz and more) that are sold separately.
Form Beauty caters specifically to individuals with curls, twists, coils, and textured hair in general. Founded by a global community of women from all ethnic backgrounds, Form offers a remedy to the struggle of finding the perfect products for textured hair. The brand takes into consideration factors like lifestyle and even climate-related factors to provide a hair-care system completely tailored to unique strands.
Customers take an online hair consultation quiz to inform stylists about you and your hair. By the end of the click-through, customers are presented with a hair-care regimen that's not only super easy to follow but sure to keep those strands extra fleeky.
Prose takes personalization to the next level with a one-on-one consultation with professional stylists, offering an even more personal approach to your hair care. This thorough process ensures a full-dimension picture of your unique hair and scalp needs.
The two-step Prose process starts with an online consultation to determine your specific hair issues. You can expect questions pertaining to your age, hair texture, hair length, and more. From there, the consultation moves into questions on how you style your hair and your general lifestyle, as well as questions on your top hair goals, preferred fragrance, whether you prefer vegan or gluten-free products, and several others. Basically, it's hella thorough, covering all bases to create a hair-care system that provides you with what your hair actually needs - nothing more, nothing less.
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Prose is a fully personalized hair care brand and subscription service that sends you custom formulas based on your needs (whenever you want and/or need product). Before Prose gets your order, it asks you to complete a comprehensive hair quiz so it can better understand your hair type, texture, and condition. It even takes your location into consideration (since if you live in a city, pollution can be play a big role), as well as water type (soft or hard). You’re also asked to list the “issues” you’re having with your hair.
The brand states that its formulas are based on 80 different factors. “We start with micro details like hair thickness, condition, and texture, then move to the macro: the weather in your ZIP code, your workout routine, stress level, diet, and more. Ingredients are also certified clean, sustainably sourced, and its business practices are carbon-neutral.
In terms of types of products, Prose offers shampoos and conditioners, but they also have styling and maintenance products, like a styling gel, curl cream, dry shampoo, pre-shampoo mask, pre-shampoo scalp mask, hair oil, leave-in conditioner, and scalp supplements. All of which are uniquely formulated for your hair type and condition. You can customize your subscription so you’re getting a specific assortment of these, too. For example, if you just want shampoo one month, and the pre-shampoo treatment the next, you can tweak your monthly subscription. Bonus: You can even pick out the fragrance for each of your products.
After filling out an in-depth questionnaire, Prose takes all your answers into account (including the length and thickness of your hair, how badly your highlighted hair is damaged, and the fact that you have oily roots and hay-like dry ends) and created a custom-made shampoo, conditioner, and pre-wash mask for you.
From firsthand experience with Prose, everything worked as it should, from a shampoo that had a soft lather and rinsed clean, plus a conditioner that effectively detangled my fine hair’s knots. Clean hair brushed through easily, and after being air-dried it felt soft, hydrated, and totally frizz-free. This brand lets you adjust your products and hair care routine as you need to. They have a Review & Refine feature that lets you give feedback and update your hair goals as needed. Prose goes into more detail, taking into account hair texture, level of oiliness or dryness, hair density, porousness, thickness, washing habits, and even your zip code so they can consider regional weather impacts and more. Once they zero in on your perfect formula, Prose gives you way more products to choose from than just shampoo, conditioner, a leave-in conditioner, and a hair mask.
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Prose stands out for its impressive in-house R&D labs and manufacturing facility, as well as rigorous formula testing. The site hosts a "consultation," an online survey that asks you specific questions about age, hair type and length, lifestyle activities and hair goals so it can send the best custom formula for you. "Plus, beyond your hair type, they even take into consideration factors like the season, your local climate and water quality when formulating your custom products," says Franzino. And if you aren’t satisfied with a product, they will reformulate it for you at no cost until it’s to your liking. The shampoo to be sudsy for a sulfate-free formula, and particularly loved the scalp mask, which helped to quell dryness and flaking, but found the conditioner to be too lightweight to actionably detangle her thick, curly hair. Mendez and Butler also like this brand's offerings for their truly customizable options and easy-to-navigate questionnaires. "Prose has nice, sophisticated scent options," says Butler.
Prose is a carbon-neutral custom beauty brand that is reducing waste with its made-to-order model. Containers are made from 50% PCR content (so new plastic is a part of this), 19% fewer plastic pumps were sent in orders through their opt-out program in 2023, and they offset shipping emissions by 100%, which is impressive (you can see their social impact report here) The brand takes its impact on the environment and humans living in it seriously.
The Prose facial cleanser is effective at whisking away acne-causing impurities without overdrying the skin. It feels refreshing, and the lime-forward Pacifica scent, which also has notes of lavender, lemongrass, and cypress is a nice touch. The fragrance is definitely an area where Prose excels. Plus, folks with sensitive skin and noses can choose fragrance-free options, another win for personalization.
The Prose moisturizer is another standout. Based on a skin care profile, “Timothy’s Moisturizer” includes niacinamide, squalene, fermented rice, lime extract, and red algae extract. The serum is hyaluronic acid-based, with added botanicals.
Shtrands simplifies the process of maintaining healthy hair with its customizable subscription-based regimen. Designed to help you achieve and maintain healthy, gorgeous hair, Shtrands will take your routine to the next level in a minimum of two-month intervals.
It’s ridiculously simple. First, you choose a subscription option that works best for you at the time of purchase. From there, you are directed to a short questionnaire to help create your personal hair profile. Finally, submit your info and stand by for your luxury hair-care routine to be delivered straight to your doorstep. It's simple, to the point, and something your strands are sure to be thankful for.
Strands The Starter Set requires a sample of your hair sent in via a testing kit. The brand's scientists then study the composition of your hair under a microscope to evaluate factors like hair cuticle, texture and scalp health to create a special formulation based on your hair type, environment and lifestyle. Using this info, Strands then sends over a complete shampoo and conditioner set. Products can be reordered individually or via a subscription option. If you're not satisfied with your results, you can have products reformulated for free or receive a full refund.
The Hair Lab by Strands employs a questionnaire to create a custom haircare routine made up of the brand's various unique shampoo, conditioner and dose set products at a cheaper price than other custom options. The questionnaire takes into account hair texture, scalp type and more.
Schwarzkopf Professional takes a high-tech approach to customizable hair care with its SalonLab system. Touted as “the first end-to-end ecosystem of connected devices to provide hyper-personalized products and services,” Schwarzkopf Professional’s new SalonLab is reinventing both at-home hair care and the salon experience as a whole.
The SalonLab ecosystem consists of two award-winning devices, supported by the SalonLab Consultant app. First, the SalonLab Analyzer, a hand-held device equipped with near-infrared and visible light sensors that measure inner hair quality, moisture level, and true hair color, passes over your strands from roots to tips to create a digitized hair model for the hairdresser to assess in order to enable a personalized color and care consultation. From there, the app consults the findings and the SalonLab Customizer produces bespoke hair-care products on-site for each client based on the gathered data.
Schwarzkopf Professional is a global haircare brand that uses advanced technology to curate the best products for your hair type. Hairdressers first use a handheld device called the SalonLab Smart Analyzer. It uses light sensors to scan the inner and outer structure of your hair, moisture level and true hair color to create a digitized hair model for both hairdresser and client to better understand your hair type. Then, the SalonLab Customizer prescribes a specific haircare regime based on your hair data. Clients can use the Hair Expert app to consult with experts or re-order products.
Aura Personalized Shampoo is developed by cosmetic chemists and hair experts to meet your hair and scalp goals. The questionnaire asks about hair density, scalp sensitivity and more. What sets this formula apart is the ability to add semi-permanent pigment or neutralizer. If you want to add this feature, it'll help enrich your color, neutralize brassiness or add some extra new color.
When navigating the world of custom shampoos, there are several factors to consider to ensure you choose the best option for your needs.
According to Petrillo, it depends on the manufacturer and how effectively the algorithm of the questions matches up to what actually goes into the products. A company can ask 25 targeted haircare and lifestyle questions about the consumer, but to be effective, the product must include the right ingredients to address the user's specific issues. If so, personalized haircare can actually eliminate the use of multiple haircare products. Otherwise, the consumer has done nothing more than answer a lengthy questionnaire.
It is possible to customize shampoos and conditioners based on a number of factors including hair type, environmental factors, lifestyle and scalp issues, but this requires the company have a chemist, dermatologist or hair restoration physician who truly understands the ingredients and delivery systems needed to make that possible. Don't be fooled just because a product says it's personalized. He recommends researching the brand and studying how it develops formulations, as well as looking for brands that are transparent in sharing its team of engineers creating the custom shampoo formulas.
While nothing can take the place of getting regular trims and avoiding damaging your hair by using too many heated devices, using the right haircare that meets your hair needs can help. Here are specific cases for when you should look for personalized haircare options:
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