I've been colouring my hair since I was nineteen. I'm thirty-four now, which means fifteen years of bleach, toner, and the particular kind of optimism that makes you believe this time the damage will be different. It never is. My hair is naturally a dark ash blonde, I take it lighter every eight weeks or so, and by the time I'm due for a refresh the ends are dry, prone to frizz, and have the texture of something that's been through a lot — because they have.
I've tried a lot of conditioners. Most of them do something: they make the hair feel softer immediately after washing, they reduce frizz for a day or two, they smell good. What they don't do, in my experience, is actually repair anything. The improvement is cosmetic and temporary. By day three my hair is back to exactly where it was.
I'd started to accept this as the price of colouring. Then a friend who works in sustainable beauty mentioned UpCircle, and I started paying attention.
Why I Was Ready to Try Something Different
I'm a freelance illustrator based in Glasgow. I care about what goes into the products I use — not in a rigid way, but in the sense that I'd rather understand what I'm putting on my hair and skin than not. Most mainstream conditioners have ingredient lists that require a chemistry degree to parse. I'd been meaning to switch to something more transparent for a while but hadn't found anything that seemed likely to actually work rather than just being virtuous.
UpCircle's approach caught my attention specifically because of the upcycled ingredients. The brand uses byproducts from other industries — orange peel wax from the juice industry, for instance — that would otherwise go to waste. That's not just a sustainability story; it's an indication that the formulation is built around ingredients chosen for their properties rather than their cost. The conditioner crème had been recommended specifically for colour-treated hair, which was exactly my situation.
Why the UpCircle Conditioner Crème Specifically
The UpCircle Conditioner Crème with Rosemary Oil and Bamboo Extract had a formula that addressed my specific problems rather than just promising general improvement. The bamboo extract and corn protein for fortifying and repairing — which is what colour-damaged hair actually needs, not just surface conditioning. The turkey tail mushroom and soy protein for scalp health, which I'd been neglecting entirely. The vitamin-rich botanical lipids for protection against breakage, which is the thing I notice most between colours when my ends start to split.
The upcycled orange peel wax and coconut oil for frizz control and moisture were the other factors. My frizz is worst in the days after washing, when the hair is dry and the colour damage is most apparent. A formula that addressed moisture at a deeper level than a standard rinse-out conditioner seemed worth trying.
The glass jar packaging was the final thing. I'd been buying conditioner in plastic bottles for fifteen years. Switching to something reusable felt like a small but meaningful change, and the jar format meant I could use it as a treatment — leaving it on for longer when my hair needed more intensive care — as well as a standard conditioner.
The First Few Washes
The texture is different from any conditioner I've used before — a proper crème rather than a liquid, which means you use less and it distributes more evenly. I applied it from mid-lengths to ends, left it for three minutes, and rinsed. My hair felt different immediately: not just soft in the slippery way that rinse-out conditioners produce, but genuinely smoother, with less of the rough texture at the ends that I'd come to think of as normal.
The frizz on day two was noticeably reduced. Not eliminated — I wasn't expecting miracles after one wash — but reduced in a way that felt structural rather than cosmetic. The ends weren't puffing up in the way they usually do when the moisture from washing wears off.
By the end of the first week I was using it as a leave-in treatment once, applying a small amount to damp hair and not rinsing. The crème format makes this easy — a small amount goes a long way and doesn't weigh the hair down.
Six Weeks On
My hair is in better condition than it's been in years. That's not a claim I make lightly — I've been disappointed by enough products to be cautious about attributing improvement to any single thing. But the change has been consistent and progressive rather than immediate and temporary, which is the pattern of actual repair rather than surface conditioning.
The ends are less dry. The frizz on day two and three is manageable in a way it hasn't been for a long time. My scalp feels healthier — less tight, less prone to the dryness I'd been getting between washes. I've had two people ask if I'd done something different with my hair, which is the most reliable external measure I have.
I'm due for a colour appointment next week. For the first time in a while, I'm not dreading what it'll do to my ends — because they're in a better starting position than they've been in years. That's what I was looking for, and it's what I found.
You'll find it in the Shampoo & Conditioner, Hair Care, Personal Care, and Health & Beauty collections. If you colour your hair and you've accepted the damage as inevitable, I'd suggest it isn't.
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