What Olaplex actually does to your hair

Olaplex is in a lot of salons now, and it is on a lot of supermarket shelves. The marketing around it is heavy, which makes it hard to know what it actually does and whether it is worth the cost. The chemistry is straightforward once you strip out the language around it.

The chemistry in plain terms ¶

Hair gets its strength from disulphide bonds, which are cross-links between the protein chains that make up the hair shaft. Bleach and permanent colour break these bonds as part of the lightening process. Some breakage is unavoidable. The question is how much.

Olaplex No.1 and No.2 contain a compound called bis-aminopropyl diglycol dimaleate. It works by finding broken disulphide bonds and reconnecting them during and after the colour process. It does not add protein or moisture. It specifically targets bond integrity. That is a narrower claim than the marketing sometimes suggests, but it is a real and measurable one.

When it makes a difference and when it does not ¶

Bond-building makes the most difference in lightening services, particularly when the hair is being lifted more than two or three levels in a single session. For a root touch-up or a gloss treatment, the benefit is smaller because the bond disruption is lower to begin with.

For correction work on previously over-processed hair, Olaplex is genuinely useful. It does not reverse existing damage, but it limits the additional damage caused by the correction process. We include it in all lightening services at Copper Glacier because the cost of not including it, in terms of hair condition over time, is higher than the cost of the product.

The at-home products ¶

Olaplex No.3 is the at-home version. It is not a conditioner and it is not a mask. It is a bond-building treatment applied to dry hair before shampooing, left for a minimum of ten minutes. Used weekly on lightened hair, it maintains the bond integrity between salon visits.

We stock No.3 in the salon at ¥5,320 for 100ml. We recommend it to every client who has had a lightening service with us, not because we want to sell product, but because the clients who use it consistently come back with noticeably better hair condition.

The science is real. The results are incremental rather than dramatic, which is how most genuinely useful things work.