Percy & Reed All Lathered Up cleansing shampoo bar

If there is one thing I have learned about myself on my journey to reduce single use plastic waste, it’s that I am fascinated by shampoo bars. After years of using traditional hair shampoo, it’s still a novelty to me that a solid little bar can properly lather up and cleanse my tresses without leaving them a tangled and claggy mess. And as the market has somewhat exploded in recent years, there are now so many options on offer, I am impatiently making my way through as many different shampoo bars as possible, in search of the elusive holy grail bar that I will rely on time and again.

This is how I came across the Percy & Reed All Lathered Up cleansing shampoo bar. I was trawling through Feel Unique looking for shampoo bars to give a whirl, when the Percy & Reed option caught my eye. Percy & Reed wasn’t a brand I was familiar with, and rather shallowly, the clean crisp packaging called to my inner classic and minimalist style personality type more-so than anything else about the product. Based on this alone, I decided to give it a go. The shampoo bar cost £10.00 for a 50g bar, which made it ever so slightly more expensive than the Gruum Har Nourishing shampoo bar I reviewed previously, but after some research and discovering that Percy & Reed was a higher end brand, I actually found the price to be relatively affordable.

First Impressions…

True to their word that the shampoo bar was a more environmentally friendly option by eliminating single use plastic, the bar arrived in a neat little cardboard box with no additional cellophane, which always makes me happy to see. If there is one thing I cannot stand, it’s a company claiming eco friendly credentials, then plastering the item in a load of unnecessary single use plastic.

All Percy & Reed products come with a fine fragrance style scent, and I particularly appreciated the version for this bar which if I recall is called ”A walk through the meadow”. It’s a very fresh and clean scent, which is the fragrance profile I am particularly drawn to for personal care items. A little floral and not too sweet.

The bar had a nice and comfortable profile while holding it, which may sound slightly odd, but when holding a slippery soapy bar, becomes all important. It was rounded and slightly bulbous in the middle, which tapered towards the outer edge. I found it pretty easy to cradle in my hand and swipe over my head to use. I found the bar to be of a good and generous size, as already mentioned the bar had a 50g weight at purchase, and as I typically wash my hair around three times per week, I anticipated getting a good amount of longevity from the bar, which at £10 a go, is pretty important.

I was also super impressed with the latherability of this bar. The website instructions advise that only a couple of swipes are needed for enough lather to cleanse hair, but I am rather guilty of liking an intense lather so I tend to go to town. The lather is up there with the richest lathers I have found in both bar and liquid shampoo formats, so my hair always comes away feeling really clean afterwards. Loving that!

Finals thoughts…

I have pretty mixed feelings about this bar, and to be completely upfront, at the time of writing this post, I am still using the bar and I am still undecided.

As mentioned already, I was mostly happy with the size and scent of the bar. The fact that it was ever so slightly more expensive than comparable bars didn’t phase me too much due to it being a higher end brand and the fact that the fragrance did indeed feel like a higher quality scent.

The bar also seemed to cleanse my hair well. I didn’t notice my hair getting oilier any more quickly than with other bars I have used, and it also didn’t seem to strip my hair of colour. I didn’t notice that it made my hair particularly softer or shinier than usual either, which is a shame, but not necessarily under-performing against comparable products.

The one thing that I am stuck on is that I am pretty sure when I use this bar it makes my scalp itch, noticeably. This surprised me somewhat as the bar itself is formulated without parabens, SLS/SLES or silicones, and the brand seemingly likes to formulate without some of the commonly touted “nasties” that have become a hot topic in recent years with the clean beauty movement. With this in mind, I can only put it down to the fragrance that might be irritating to my scalp, which is frustrating because I really like the clean and fresh scent of the bar. I will caveat this claim that my skin has become incredibly sensitive over the past 2 years, and so while this product might be causing me irritation, it isn’t a dead cert that the product would be irritating for others, although if you find yourself sensitive to, or having an aversion to fragranced products generally, I would probably give this a miss. I did take a look on their website, but this was the only shampoo bar available, so there are no alternatives I could try instead.

With this last point in mind, I have decided that once the bar is used up, I won’t be re-purchasing, as an itchy scalp just isn’t the look I’m going for…

However, if you think the Percy & Reed All Lathered Up cleansing shampoo bar sounds like it might work for you, they helpfully list their stockists on their website.