Prose Hair Reviews : Get Rid of Hair Troubles

Prose Hair Reviews

Creating a hair care routine is not an easy task for many of us. While some people are content to use the same shampoo and conditioner for years, the majority of us strive to find products that make us look and feel good.

This is where Prose enters the picture. How much is Prose hair care? For a fee of $25 or more for each bottle, the New York-based hair care company claims to craft a set of individualized hair care products for each client, depending on unique hair conditions, needs, and goals.

We were intrigued as beauty nerds, professional reviewers, and people with difficult hair. So we put some products to the test to see if the Prose hair loss customized solutions could work on two very different hair types in ways that no other drugstore product could.

What Does Prose Offer?

By employing a survey to create a hair regimen tailored to you, Prose hopes to cut through industry noise and shopping missteps. This is in line with a recent surge of customization in the cosmetic sector, which has been seen in everything from shampoo to foundation and skincare serums. While hair care firms such as Function of Beauty and Ouai provide comparable hair care customization services, Prose promises to stand out by providing one of the complete consultation processes available.

What's the end result? A personalized shampoo, conditioner, and mask, each produced from a unique combination of 76 ingredients, along with directions on how, why, and when to use each product. (The brand has now released a pre-shampoo mask, hair oil, curl cream, leave-in conditioner, and other products.) Parabens, dyes, sulfates, and other contentious or artificial substances are not present in any of the products. These personalized products aren't cheap—a single 8.5-ounce bottle of shampoo and conditioner can cost anywhere from $25 to $32, depending on the formula and concentration of active chemicals, and a mask can cost anywhere from $38 to $48, depending on the concentration of active components.

Prose's ingredients "come together to create the most natural recipe for you, with everything you need and nothing more," according to the company's website. It's an encouraging, though hazy, promise. Will the Prose shampoo, conditioner, and mask help with my scalp issues? Split ends, color preservation, and frizz control are all things to consider. I was doubtful that Prose would be able to solve all of my hair problems and provide me with "what I need and nothing more."

Does Prose Really Work - Prose Hair Product Review

"I have no idea what I'm doing with my hair. I, like many others, was a blond youngster whose hair darkened as they grew older, and despite my now-naturally brownish hair, I can't stop thinking of myself as a blond. This has resulted in a lot of processing and experimentation—in the last three years, I've bleached, colored, and cropped my hair so many times that the original texture and color are a mystery to me."

"My hair was looking a little worse for wear when we found out about Prose. I hadn't been to the salon in five months and hadn't bleached my hair in eight, so I had long, brown roots and yellowish-blond ends from going pink and letting it fade out over the white foundation. Due to changing medications and good old hormonal swings, my ends were dry and breaking, and my scalp was greasy and acne-prone."

Jess, now-former health and beauty features editor, is on the opposite end of the hair spectrum. "Not only do I torture my hair professionally by testing hair tools and products on it for a career, but I also regularly experiment with various styles and hair treatments," she says. "On my already-dry, thick, curly hair, the consequence is damaged hair (especially on the ends) and breakage, which is unsurprising. My super-dark locks get highlighted on a regular basis, but I don't cut them often enough to keep them 'healthy,' as my stylist loves to tell me."

"Now, let's talk about my bad scalp," she continues in the Prose reviews curly hair. "My skin is incredibly dry, and I eat like an unsupervised child at a birthday party, resulting in a flaky, dry scalp that feels oily in the center of my head after it air dries. I can see chunks of dry skin floating in the roots of my hair right after washing it while it's still wet. It's both sad and repulsive. And I've yet to locate a color-safe product or a do-it-yourself solution to my humiliating and inconvenient hair problems."

We wanted to see if Prose might assist the hair, which was thick, damaged, and curly with a dry scalp, and my own hair, which was fine, straight, over-processed, and had an oily scalp. I wanted volume, sheen, and scalp balance, whereas the tester sought smoothness and hydration.

Does Prose Hair Care Work? 

The Survey: While there's nothing simple about this 76-ingredient, highly tailored process, Prose's survey is just that: a 25-question assessment with straightforward, jargon-free questions like "How much of scalp can you see on your head?" and "What are your hair goals?" They also consider how frequently you exercise, whether or not you heat style your hair, and the environment in which you live, down to the zip code.

Prose provided a breakdown of each of our hair and scalp features, followed by the ingredients in each of our products after we answered all questions and chose from four smells. Despite the fact that we had quite diverse hair types and goals, there appeared to be a lot of components overlapping in our formulas at first glance—it wasn't until we received our products and read the full ingredient breakdown that we realized the genuine customization.

Unique Formula: Jess stated in her poll that she desired smoothness and gloss but no volume or curl ("I've got plenty, thanks"). Her concoction was believed to be aimed mostly against dryness, sensitivity, dandruff, and hair damage. Despite the fact that my hair is much finer than Jess's and our hair analyses were extremely different, our shampoo, conditioner, and mask formulations on the website appeared very similar. Given the vast number of conceivable possibilities, this raised a red flag.

However, after getting the items and being prompted by Prose hair loss to review our whole, exhaustive ingredient list, it became clear that our formulas were substantially different. Jess' formula featured cuticle nourishment to guard against style and scalp-cleansing jujube bark extract to restore scalp health, while mine included a smoothing agent as well as an antioxidant component to rebalance the scalp.

While Prose's website tends to showcase the same eye-catching ingredients for various customers, it's evident that each product contains more than what you see after completing the survey.

Formulation for test 1:

Formulation for test 2 (Jess's):

Our final product compositions appeared to be pretty similar at first glance, but the ingredient breakdown that came packaged with our products revealed just how different they were.

The Delivery & Usage of the Product: The items arrived promptly in clean, apothecary-style bottles bearing our names. Fun! The shampoo bottle declared me a "fitness fanatic," which is debatable, and Jess's weirdly stated "body boost," despite the fact that she explicitly requested no additional volume. Regardless, Prose certainly tried to create cute labels based on our surveys. The shampoo with conditioner should be used every other day, and the mask should be used once a week, according to the directions. One scoop of a mask, three pumps of shampoo, two pumps of conditioner. My memory is not that great, but the only thing I remember is the whole process was simple.

The Mask: On a Sunday, I started the product cycle with the scalp mask, then shampoo and conditioner. The scalp mask had a pleasant scent and a shiny, thin consistency that was easy to apply but difficult to scoop from the jar. I had to battle the impulse to use more than the recipe called for, but I followed the directions and just used one scoop.

The only issue? The mask needed to sit on my wet hair for 15 minutes, which meant I had to hop in the shower, wet my hair, apply the mask, and then wait. I felt silly walking into my apartment with a product dripping down my back, so I sat in the toilet for a long, staring at my phone. Meanwhile, Jess hung her head over her kitchen sink the first week and stood aimlessly in her shower the second week, staring at her watch. Luxury! I learned to apply the mask as soon as I stepped into the shower and go about my normal routine before rinsing it out—I didn't always hit the 15-minute mark, but it got the job done.

My hair felt like it had already been treated with conditioner after rinsing off the mask, and it left an oily film on Jess' scalp, which she noted "made me question if it would rinse clean, but was definitely soothing for my dry scalp." We each used the shampoo and conditioner according to the directions.

The shampoo was a thick, clear product with a good amount of suds for a sulfate-free shampoo. The conditioner was a bit too thin for me—I have fine hair, but a lot of it, and this item didn't appear to be able to coat and untangle every strand.

The instructions advised combing through my hair while conditioning, but even my Wet Brush couldn't manage the bleached-to-death hair knots I get every time I shower. "Using only the Prose conditioner, there was no way I could get out of the shower without a pile of knots," Jess explains. She didn't (or wouldn't) utilize it in the future.

The Results: For the first few days after the scalp mask, we were both pleasantly pleased by how balanced our scalps felt. As a result of using the mask, I observed a significant improvement in the health of my scalp. The second day after showering, there was less acne, less sebum build-up, and less visible oil. Jess noticed no flakes on her scalp after showering for the first time. But, by the end of each week, we'd all observed our old scalp features reappearing, and the only thing that seemed helpful was re-masking. The mask didn't appear to have long-term healing properties but rather acted as a Band-Aid.

Sadly, neither of us noticed the shampoo and conditioner doing such a good job. My scalp felt improved, but my hair remained dry and lifeless throughout the day, with a proclivity for knotting and fraying. These are the qualities I stated in my survey, and Prose was no better than the other sulfate-free products I was using. Several times during her trial period, Jess was questioned if she'd highlighted her hair. "I hadn't in a long time, which leads me to believe the product was stripping my hair of toner, causing my highlights to appear starker—not a good thing."

We were both due for salon appointments before the conclusion of our individual runs with Prose, so we each had a haircut and color, which always makes you feel fresh and silky-maned. My feelings about the products remained essentially unchanged when I returned to Prose. The mask was ideal for me, and the shampoo and conditioner were adequate, neither better nor worse than what I was using previously. However, because of the deep conditioning treatment I received at the salon, I discovered that the conditioner could now de-knot my hair without the use of additional smoothing spray. It just goes to demonstrate that normal shampoo and conditioner can't take the place of color-treated hair's needed salon care.

My Follow-up: Prose contacted me after the first publication of this post to review their procedure and offered me a new session with their customer care team to perhaps improve my formula. They added that all customers are guaranteed 100% happiness, despite the page on the Prose website that details how and when to contact customer support about it is relatively buried. I accepted, still hoping for the nicest hair possible and hoping that the service could wow me with some formula modification. I spoke with a customer service person over the phone about what I liked and didn't like about my current products, and she recommended that I go fragrance-free, try a mask for my ends in addition to the scalp mask, and purchase a more hydrating conditioner.

According to Prose, the most common method of reformulation is by email—or simply by retaking the survey on the internet. I appreciate that Prose may not have the resources to handle all of their clients who are interested in reformulating, but my phone call was quite beneficial, and I hope they can continue to provide customers with the same one-on-one attention in the future. I also hope that Prose considers giving two masks—one for roots and one for ends—to consumers who, like me, have concerns with both scalp and ends.

Finally, I was relieved to discover that my new "ends" mask alleviated some of my damage and that the fragrance-free composition helped to balance the dryness. Despite this, I eventually turned back to inexpensive products and discovered that my hair was smoother, silkier, and more manageable without Prose. My oily scalp is now easily controlled with hormonal birth control rather than topical medications, and my ends are healthier now that I'm not bleaching as much. Prose may work for some, but it wasn't the right fit for my hair.

Is Prose Hair Care Worth it?

From our thorough consultation procedure and wonderful mask treatments to our disappointing conditioners, our experience with Prose was full of highs and lows. Finally, Jess didn't find enough value in the actual products to justify their cost, and I couldn't say the same.

Prose is a professional and engaging service if you're seeking a fun method to experiment with natural goods or introduce substances you've never tried before. It's fun to have customized bottles labeled with your name delivered to your door—it makes you feel pampered and in control in a way that buying shampoo at the drugstore doesn't. The real question isn't how much is Prose hair care but is it justified? We don't think so.

Unfortunately, neither Jess nor I saw enough results from the actual products to warrant their price tag.

There's a chance your formula will impress you because it's a fully adjustable, personalized service with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Prose's simplicity more than justifies the price for some people who already spend an arm and a leg on a million different treatments to maintain their dry, greasy, color-treated, or tough hair. For folks like myself, who now prefer to use less expensive items, this was a delightful experiment rather than the start of a lifelong love affair.