Hello Klean: Worth it, or a total swizz?

I’ve been using it for five months now, so I have the full picture

To the tune of Faith Hill and Fatman Scoop’s Love Like This, please: All the blonde haired women get your hands up, all the fine haired ladies, get your hands up, all the thin haired ladies, make noise…

If you fall into the category of (predominantly) women who struggle to maintain their hair colour, keep their blonde from going yellow or brassy and fight to cling on to every single god damn strand for dear life, then you – like me – will have been *targeted* by now.

Targeted by your own unavoidable ‘hard water area’, which pumps water with so much mineral build-up that it might as well be a bottle of Tanora. Targeted by the VAST array of ‘miracle’ hair detox shampoos and conditioners. And lastly, and perhaps most alluringly, targeted by Hello Klean, the shower filter company that promises to revolutionise your beauty experience by transforming your water.

Body and hair are both said to be improved by using a Hello Klean, but reader, ALL I was interested in was not looking like Helga from Hey Arnold a mere fortnight after getting fresh blonde in the hair salon.

A fresh head of blonde is not cheap (understatement), and the exquisite high one gets after a colour is so potent that it stands to reason that I would want to eke out the effects for as long as possible. I also wanted to start being a responsible blonde hair owner. I didn’t respect The Blonde for a LONG time, and now that I’m [REDACTED] years of age I need to cop on, basically. Blonde from a bottle for 18 years has made its effects known.

S’w’anyway. Under advisement from my treasured hairdresser and pal Lisa and some borderline aggressive marketing from Hello Klean themselves, I bought a filter. Here are my (ironically unfiltered) thoughts.

Installation was easy. Well, it was easy to watch. I made my husband do it, because anything even remotely DIY-ish gives me the heebies. But genuinely, it looked beyond simple. It really was just a matter of twisting off the old shower head, and twisting the new one on.

SO FAR SO GOOD!

Firstly, I realised a small problem in the sense that the Hello Klean shower head is significantly heavier than my original one, and so the shower head holder wouldn’t support it unless it was at a VERY honky angle. So essentially, it now points more forward than down, meaning my position standing in the shower has descended into the realms of insanity. But that I can handle for the sake of maintaining my hair colour and purifying the water that spills onto my body.

GRAND.

Here’s where we get to the meat and bones of it: it absolutely DECIMATED my water pressure. I’m basically dancing around under a gentle stream of feather-light water droplets, hoping that at some point a proper rinse will happen. Okay I’m exaggerating slightly, but as someone who enjoys powerful water pressure, almost to the point of discomfort, I am dismayed by this.

I understand the filter is bound to have some effect in terms of slowing the water down, but every time I get into the shower I think ‘ugh, here we go’ instead of ‘YES, time to have the back ripped off me’. Which I’m not here for. So why did I persevere for five months? If it was so dire?

WELL YOU SEE.

Two reasons: One, I wanted to give a very well-rounded review to you guys, because I’m nothing if not thorough, and I simply couldn’t stand over it if anyone bought one on my recommendation and was disappointed.

Two, and here’s the BIGGIE…