10 best purple shampoos to brighten and tone blonde hair

Often touted as the holy grail for hair, this purple version of the famous Olaplex is no different. It’s highly concentrated and promises to tone our blonde hair while cleansing and repairing. We did what the bottle recommended and pre-washed our hair with another shampoo to remove any build up, then lathered up with this and let it do its work for the recommended one to three minutes (we opted for a minute and a half). Our hair was left feeling salon-fresh, perfectly toned and with a lovely scent to boot.

This purple shampoo can be bought individually or as part of a set with a Tone Me conditioner. The shampoo comes in 250ml – you won’t be running out quickly if you’re using it once a week. It has a pleasant smell, and the product itself is thick, meaning you can apply it without accidentally redecorating your bathroom in purple hues. It’s a good one for a beginner. The packaging explains how long to leave the product on for (one to two minutes) with a word of warning about leaving it on for too long. Do heed that warning, as it does work quickly. We had to wash ours out of our hair at the one-minute mark, to avoid purple staining.

A personal favourite, this shampoo is a great buy if you’re on a budget but need to lift your blonde. The smell of the shampoo is really pleasant – you’ll be sniffing your grape-scented locks for the rest of the day.

The shampoo can be paired with the touch of silver conditioner (£5.49, Superdrug.com) – using the two products left our hair feeling soft and moisturised with a great colour. The shampoo has violet and blue pigment for intensive toning and works on blonde, grey or white hair.

Washing our hair with this product was a lovely experience. The shampoo is thick and a little goes a long way. We felt that the purple toning was perhaps not as intense as other products, but perfect for use more often during the week when maintenance is the key. We also really enjoyed the scent of this shampoo, as it evokes memories of Parma Violets and the smell fills the shower to add to the luxury experience. Pricier than some on the list, this purple shampoo is worth the money, especially when paired with the illuminated blonde conditioner (£29, Bumbleandbumble.co.uk), which left our hair feeling clean, soft and glossy.

A different kind of shampoo than the others on this list, but one that will save up to two 250ml plastic bottles (and can offer up to 50 washes). We rubbed the bar with water during our shower to create a lather in our hands, then applied it to our hair. Having not used a shampoo bar before, we were pleasantly surprised at the amount of lather there was, how nice it smelt and how soft and shiny our hair felt. All of KinKind’s bars are plastic-free, vegan, cruelty-free, free of parabens and hand-made in the UK – plus they are delivered straight through your letterbox, reducing your carbon footprint. We also liked the fact the bar arrived with a little wooden stand to keep it from staining your shower or bath.

Coming from a brand we’d never heard of, this shampoo was really impressive. It’s a thick, dark purple formula that we think would easily stain, so watch out. Because of this, we didn’t infuse our hair for very long, because we didn’t want to tone our hair too much. However, we know this would be perfect for those trying to get, or maintain silver or grey locks. It left our hair feeling fresh and clean, and with the strong organic lemongrass, lavender and cedarwood scent, it was quite a different experience to the rest of the shampoos on this list, but an enjoyable one nonetheless.

This purple shampoo contains a violet pigment to get rid of irritating yellow tones that can, over time, creep in to coloured hair. The consistency of this shampoo from Lee Stafford is almost jelly-like, and comes with a lovely scent of chamomile and moringa seed extract. It was really pleasurable to wash our hair with and we noticed some brassier tones in our hair completely vanished. This was one of the shampoos that was recommended consistently when we asked our community what they love to use. A great product at a great price.

It’s important to keep your hair toned, but there is such a thing as using purple shampoo too much. Especially when you’re working with a professional formula with strong pigments, it’s possible to end up dyeing your hair purple. For that reason, this shampoo from Fudge is the perfect solution to use everyday as a cleanser with a gentler toning system to keep our locks cool while not risking an accidental dye job. It’s a thinner and paler formula than some of the others on the list, but we felt comfortable washing our hair with it, while not having to keep to a strict time limit for having it on our hair. It smells lovely, too.

We hadn’t toned our hair for a while before using this shampoo and we’re glad we didn’t. The shampoo contains extreme super-violet pigments, and clearly states on the bottle that it’s for professional use only. We therefore used with caution and decided that a few moments was enough for our hair. This is a great shampoo for those with super-lightened bleached hair, or those who are going from dark to light and who need to blast away brassy undertones before adding another colour on top. It’s great, but not for everyday usage. Another shampoo with a gorgeous scent, too.

This was the product that felt the most like ‘shampoo’ to us, rather than a ‘treatment’ for our coloured hair. It lathered really well and felt like it cleaned our hair the way a traditional shampoo would. We enjoyed the scent and felt like this was the product we’d pick up cheaply to have on hand if we wanted to give our hair a quick refresh. It’s no frills and no dramatic results, but it works as it says – a good product for a great price.