Brunettes: Green Shampoo Is Here to Save Your Color

Tone-perfecting products to keep your color looking salon-fresh are more popular than ever (opens in new tab): Blondes can gild themselves weekly with violet masks, redheads can add red gloss to boost warmth, and those with warm chocolate-y strands have blue formulas to keep their hue from skewing orange in the weeks post-appointment. But raven-haired beauties and deep, dark, cool brunettes have been left without something to amp up their color—until now. Enter the adult iteration of Nickelodeon Slime (opens in new tab): Matrix's Dark Envy, a new line of green-imbuing formulas.

The trio—shampoo, conditioner, and a mask—are the first of their kind, and were created to kick unwanted warmth from color-treated or virgin hair. So why won't blue shampoo cut it for keeping cool brunettes cool? The brand's celebrity colorist George Papanikolas explains the simple theory behind it: "When you think of neutralizing shampoos, you have to look at the color wheel. Going the opposite of the spectrum neutralizes the undesired toner: Blue shampoos neutralize orange, but green shampoos neutralize red tones. If you use a blue shampoo to neutralize orange, or violet to treat yellow tones, you'll still have red in your hair."

That underlying redness is whats making your color look more dull and less rich, and the line has a three-pronged attack for keeping that effect at bay: A highly pigmented shampoo for cleansing without fading your strands, a color-depositing mask for weekly deep treatments, and a protective conditioner without the extra color so you don't overdo it.

If you're a warm brunette, stick to blue, because this stuff is potent. But if you're shooting for vampire vibes, just want to enhance your natural tresses, or just want to know how it feels to get slimed (opens in new tab), grab some green.

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