Sooryehan The Black Fine Shampoo and Treatment

Image of Sooryehan The Black Fine Shampoo (right) and Black Fine Treatment (left). Gold fading into black ombre colours, the shampoo has a pump and the treatment has a flip top

Before I continue with this review, I am in the process of mentally getting to grips with not purchasing any more LG products - AB Muse makes a very eloquent argument on the blog about the greenwashing of their AI marketing announcement and the effect it'll have on human employment:

https://www.abmuse.net/2024/11/lg-h-using-ai-for-marketing-and-why-i.html

I'll keep posting reviews because almost all of my core routine products are LG (I have a lot to go through before I start replacing them) and you, dear Reader, may want to use them. No judgement and the purpose of this blog was to review these products so I'll keep posting.

I'm sure other companies make questionable choices and it's all about the money money money nom nom nom, and they may be using AI but we just don't know about it, etc etc.

Because I find haircare such a pain to get right, I may stick with this regardless. Time will tell!

My hair *sigh*

I am white, I have fine thin hair that used to curl lovely but now it's thinning and I live in a very hard water area, so the curl is unpredictable. It's also very very prone to build up now, even flaxseed leaves my hair super sticky.

I used to be able to wash with anything I liked and style with a basic leave-in conditioner. If I wanted to be super fancy, I'd use gel.

I only had to wash every other day and my hair was perfectly alright. 

Now it kinda sucks. Nothing really works well and I've tried so many products and I'm bored of it.

It was sort of ok but last week I got a cool new hair cut and the styling was even worse (possibly because it's much shorter). This might actually be, to some extent, my saving grace - I've got a new style product (yep, another) and I just use hairspray too.

All seems OK so far - time will tell if I'm actually doing my hair more damage, it's only been a week of doing this.

I was worried about build-up and I'll talk more about that in the review.

Review of Sooryehan's The Black Fine Shampoo and Treatment

I cannot find any reviews on these products so the only way to know what they're like was to order them!

Hardly any shops seem to stock them for UK delivery, either, just KoreaDepart and that's fine because I'm happy ordering from them.

The shipping is quick compared to TesterKorea or Stylevana (although tbh for TK I always forget to check if something has a long preparation time).

Ordered 14 January, arrived 25 January.

Cost

I ordered a set because why not have both products and also there wasn't an option for just one!

The set includes: Fine Black Shampoo 280ml and Treatment 180ml

Price was: $31.85 total ($18 ish for the products, the rest was shipping).

Ingredients

Another day, another risky purchase because I can't find the ingredients list anywhere. This time it paid off!

No coconut oil as far as I can tell from the product insert leaflet so that is a major win.

Here's the leaflet, Google translate at your own risk 😂

Blurry photo of the product leaflet, ingredients for the Black Fine Shampoo

Blurry photo of the product leaflet, ingredients for the Black Fine Treatment

Fragrance

I really wasn't sold on the fragrance at first - although it's far better than the rosemary + menthol conditioner I was using.

Ugh why menthol.

The Sooryehan has a simple, lightish, perfumey fragrance, with a touch of floral and herbal.

It is vastly more pleasant than the Shiseido Fino Premium Touch Hair Treatment mask. Although there are positives to the Fino so I may repurchase if I ever run out lol. 

Texture & Colour

Each product is a deep maroon colour and a cool toned maroony pink when thinned with water.

As far as I can tell, the shampoo is pretty much a standard texture, maybe with more slip than the average shampoo. It foams up really well even in hard water - I tend to use one pump but I've discovered that a half a pump is actually plenty to give plenty of foam.

Although do note that if you're a clumsy applier like me, both will splash the colour around. It's a nice maroon-pink colour on your tiles and it'll probably stain if you don't wash it off immediately. It'll also colour limescale so keep that in mind. However, if you have a removable shower wand type thing, it's easy to swish it over the tiles to remove colour. Otherwise, I find just splashing water does fine.

And even in my clumsiness, I found that I don't get foam everywhere if I just massage rather than rubbing vigorously. 

The treatment is more pigmented than the shampoo so be wary of that.

The treatment is essentially a conditioner I think? That's how I use it in any case.

What I notice with the treatment is that it's more of a thick cream texture than the average texture. It actually reminds me of the Illiyoon ATO Ceramide Concentrate cream in texture but it melts nicely into my hair.

It definitely doesn't spread as well as a more fluid conditioner, although I don't see that as a downside, particularly as it means the colour doesn't just drip off your hair. But it's also more saturated than the shampoo so if you do enthusiastically rub it into your hair and it splashes, immediately wash it off the surfaces otherwise it will stain and you will have to scrub it (at least I do, what with all the limescale).

More fluid conditioners don't feel like they coat my hair as well so it's a positive aspect as far as I'm concerned.

Experience

A caveat: I'm paranoid about staining my bathroom so I didn't use it when I'm in a rush (until I figured that I could massage it which doesn't throw foam everywhere and still works great).

I think the effects are cumulative because I notice that it stopped my colour from fading so much and tones it; my hair is dye was too warm in my opinion and I notice the Sooryehan does cool it down a bit.

It definitely toned the bleached bit that didn't take the salon dye very well (the bleached bit has now grown out and been cut off, bye bye last vestige of purple hair).

I've now gone to a different salon and a much more "ashy" colour (that's what my hairdresser calls it) and it's a very, very dark brown.

When this colour starts washing out, it does go to a lighter dark brown that is warmer than I like. The Black Fine shampoo keeps the colour cooler and darker for longer.

Whilst I bought it to reduce the look of the grey regrowth in between salon visits, it's hard to say if it really does that even when I use it consistently. Unless I'm having feelings too rushed, I always use Sooryehan now so hopefully I can do an update on this at some point. Although when I say too rushed, I actually mean 'this feels like too much effort' which is a perception of fatigue or an anticipation of it. Either way, I'm just gonna call it cosmetics fatigue: when even thinking about using something feels like too much effort. I'll try and come up with a catchier name for it. So the long and short of this is that I use it most days but realistically not every day.

I also wash my hair daily in hard water so I'm pretty rough on my hair. Seriously though, I have to do a daily wash because my curls won't refresh so I end up with awful hair the next day. I've tried using less styling products, washing with conditioner only, changing styling products, changing shampoos, using only leave in conditioner. I'll just live with washing it daily because I don't want to buy endless products that might work when my current ones work fine as long as I wash my hair daily (note: I have bought a lot of different products this year, sigh).

Usage

Both the treatment and shampoo are recommended to be left on for 3-10 minutes to work so I rarely use the shampoo and treatment together because of time pressure. I also don't want to lean over the bath dripping pink water if I was going to do it for the upper end of it.

Effects: shine

Whilst I get crazy glossy hair when I use both together, the shampoo by itself gives me healthy, shiny hair which is great!

I wonder if the double plus shine is partly from the silicones in the treatment. Although it may also just be dye effect or some other thing in the ingredients list.

There's many types of silicones but dimethicone, which is high up the ingredients list is one of the potentially problematic ones for build up:

https://science-yhairblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/riffing-on-silicones.html

And I do get build up very easily. Even flaxseed causes build up on my hair, which is crazy.

However, that's the great thing about the shampoo: it really removes all kinds of build up for me. The Fino mask has dimethicone, which causes build-up for me and then there's the task of removing hairspray.

I know the Sooryehan helps with build-up from the Fino and other siliconey products.

Since using hairspray, I notice that my hair feels a lot drier after I shampoo it with the Sooryehan. Add conditioner and it's fine but it's interesting that my hair feels different. 

I particularly like using a teeny tiny bit of the Fino now, it adds immediate slip to my hair so perhaps my hair does need a bit more TLC now I'm using hairspray. 

Previously, I felt any conditioner was fine and I rotated between five. Yep, I have five conditioners because experiments. On the upside, I do have something for every hair situation so......

Effects: hair loss

Judging this is difficult given my lack of consistency, although I have been using it more often of late.

This is because I generally seem to get less hair come out. Partly this might be because it foams a lot better than the curly hair shampoos which are almost always low foam so I don't have to scrub to get build up off and they don't work well for build-up anyway, because they're meant to be used with a routine that doesn't habe silicones (this is in references to the Curly Girl Method, which doesn't work for my hair at all).

Anyways. I do also find that the Dr Ceuracle Aquarizing shampoo, in terms of foam and how much comes out, is an OK alternative but it's not as good as the Sooryehan. It's not as good at removing build-up, there's no ingredients aimed at hair loss, it doesn't tone my hair colour and I get a bit more hair fall with it.

I think I'll only really be able to comment on this when I've tried it consistently for a longer period.

I've ordered a back-up, which was before I'd made the decision to move on from LG. 

I've also got a Sooryehan The Black Single Essence coming so I'll review that including how it works with the other products from that line (serum, moisturiser, cream).

In summation

I think these are excellent products for my particular concerns. 

It's a shame about the general marketing bullshittery but what can you do?

I did just repurchase, before I'd decided to join AB Muse, so I at least won't have to think about haircare for a while.

I do find haircare vastly less interesting than skincare. I'm always up for trying more skincare so I'm less bothered about finding replacement skincare. 

ETA: I totally left out the Dr Groot hair tonic that AB Muse kindly sent me in our gift exchange 🤦🏻‍♀️ it's because I try very hard to use it but often forget. I now have a reminder on my phone (and still forget but I do use it more often at least). Need more regular usage before I can confirm it's contributing. Hopefully I can come back to this in my update.