Botched Hair Dye Jobs Are About to Become a Thing of the Past

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Say goodbye to botched dye jobs, because those are about to become a thing of the past. Designed to work within the confines of a professional salon, Henkel’s Schwarzkopf Professional SalonLab ecosystem scans your hair, analyzes it, and then its Customizer machine pops out the perfect bottle of shampoo or color — customized for your specific hair type and condition.

These on-demand hair care products come in bottles with a personalized label printed directly from the SalonLab Customizer.

SalonLab Customizer

Most hairdressers will look at the outside of your hair and make recommendations, but thanks to the SalonLab ecosystem, this is the first time that beauticians will be able to actually see inside of your hair, allowing for a deeper understanding of whats going on with your hair at a molecular level. The process starts with the SalonLab Analyzer, which is a handheld device that scans your hair, allowing your hairdresser to see what’s going on inside of your hair. This, in turn, enables your hairdresser to provide you with even more effective advice than he/she could have previously. The SalonLab Consultant app will even provide you with details on how healthy your hair is and what needs to be improved, and it will provide you with a score.

“We can now gain so many more data-driven insights about the client’s hair, thanks to Henkel’s SalonLab technology and the concrete scientific data it gives us… Combining it with our own expertise, we can now assess the hair on a whole new level – the perfect basis for a truly individual consultation.” – Kim Vo, International Schwarzkopf Professional Ambassador and celebrity hairdresser.

When it comes to coloring, the app uses augmented reality to provide you with a live preview of exactly how your specific hair color will look after a new dye job. This way you can be sure that you’re getting the perfect coloring for your hair, before the coloring has been applied, thus eliminating any nasty surprises.

Over the past few years, health and beauty tech has become more and more of a prominent focus at CES, but much of the products that get shown off end up becoming vaporware. Fortunately, Henkel’s SalonLab will not be one of those, and instead, it is likely to overhaul your experience at the salon in the near future. Why do we have so much confidence in this product? For starters, we tried out a demo ourselves and walked away impressed with the level of insight the app provided into our hair health, and of course how cool the augmented reality color consultation is. Beyond that, Henkel is an established company – heck – they are the same guys that invented hairspray, so this is hardly an Indiegogo project that will never see the light of day.

Henkel’s SalonLab will start rolling out to salons this year.

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About the Author

Helena Stone
Noticing that there was a void of female influence in the technology blogosphere, Helena started Chip Chick in 2004. The site grew to become the no 1. tech site for women, which she ran as Editor-in-Chief until 2017. A native New Yorker, Helena holds a Masters in Digital Imaging and Design from NYU. Helena has been featured on MSNBC, Wired, ABC News, People Style & Watch, Time Magazine, Woman’s Day magazine, and other major news outlets. And when she is not busy testing out new gear, she can be found trotting the globe, looking for the next hot gadget.