I Thought My Blonde Hair Couldn’t Get Shiny — Until I Tried These
Sarah Tarca is a beauty journalist, writer and co-founder of Australia’s first dedicated beauty newsletter, gloss etc. Her skills involve applying lipstick without a mirror, bullying people to wear sunscreen and procrastinating washing her hair. She loves her kids, skincare and potatoes in equal measure — almost as much as she loves SkinCeuticals CE Ferulic. Almost. Find her on socials @tarca
Having been an (un)natural blonde for almost 20 years now, I had all but given up on shiny hair. That was a thing brunettes got, not their bleached-out sisters.
It used to really bum me out, but I just succumbed to it being the way things were, until I tried these products, which genuinely had me swishing my hair around like I belonged in a Pantene commercial.
Why Isn’t Blonde Hair as Shiny as Brunettes?
A little context here: It’s not just my hair that was lacking in shine, it was something I’d noticed with all fair-haired girlies over the years. And, since I’m a journalist, I set out to fix my own problems by interviewing many, many hairdressers over the years.
Each one said a variation of these things:
1. Blonde hair reflects more light, and scatters it, so it reads more diffused to the eye.
2. Chemically lightened hair removes the lipids and strips colour from the hair, and it also makes it rougher. Smoother cuticles = more shine.
3. Bleached hair is also more prone to dryness and more porous which means it can look more dull and also not reflect light as well.
The first point is just physics, so, sucks for us, but the other two points, they’re something we can work with.
And when I say “we” I mean, an arsenal of beauty products designed to CPR blonde hair.
Below is an incomplete list of the products I’ve tried that have actually delivered shine I thought wasn’t possible until this point.
Christophe Robin Cleansing Purifying Scrub with Sea Salt
I’m cheating a little here because this product is not new or new to me. It is, however, iconic, and essential in a shiny-hair routine, because product build-up is the enemy of shine.
This was one of the first products on the market to treat the scalp like your skin (because, uh, it is) and imo it’s still one of the best.
It removes the build-up from product, hard water and dead skin cells while also increasing blood flow to the scalp and keeping it healthy. I use it once a week to get it ready for the next step.
Redken Acidic Color Gloss Shampoo and Conditioner
What:
Remember the part about bleach making the hair more porous, and the cuticle rougher? This product is your knight in shiny gloss, riding in to seal those cuticles down so it can go forth and shine.
It does this by using a low pH (“acidic”) formulation to try and rebalance the hair (which, when healthy, is slightly acidic), and smooths down the cuticle so it can go and do its whole shine thing. It’s also got vitamin E and amino acids for strengthening, and it’s sulphate-free, so there’s nothing that’s going to strip oil from you.
Anyway, enough tech talk: this is the first shampoo and conditioner duo I’ve tried all year that have genuinely left me being wowed by my own strands.
The shine and softness were immediate, and there was no annoying “wait 10 minutes” like you need to with treatments.
Kérastase Chroma Absolu Soin Acid High Shine Treatment for Coloured Hair
Moving onto treatments, lamellar water has been big news for gloss-seeking girls in 2025 and with good reason: they work.
They’re a rinse-out treatment that is activated by water, but instead of the lengthy hair mask wait, they’re out in 20 seconds (my kind of deal).
They work by essentially filling in, or plugging, the porous, damaged parts of the hair fibre, which strengthens and smooths it. And, because they’re nano-sized, they deposit much more easily without weighing down the hair.
AVEDA Miraculous Oil High-Shine Hair Concentrate
Now, we’re finally out of the shower, and as much as I love an air-dry, it’s not conducive to shine, so I’ve been DIY blow-drying instead.
I went to the launch of this earlier in the year with low expectations, not only because of my history with lack of shine, but also with hair oil, which generally weighs down my fine hair. I left shook.
The texture is almost serum-like and it uses a blend of natural oils, including Tsubaki seed oil from the famed Jeju islands in Korea.
You only need a couple of drops through damp hair for it to work its magic AND it doubles as a heat protectant.
That’s it, that’s the routine. It’s not overly complicated, and it’s definitely something even a time-poor mum with zero patience for hair routines can manage. But most importantly, it gives the kind of shine that is usually reserved for people who have never met a bottle of bleach in their lives — and that is my gift to all you fellow blondes.
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