This $10 Treatment Hair Color Promised Me K-Pop Hair; Here's What Happened

When our Korea sourcing team said we had to try this new temporary treatment hair color  that was supposed to give us K-pop hair, we said, sure, why not? What we didn't realize is that the Etude House Two Tone Hair Color would change the way we looked at hair color.

After working for a hair color brand and being my hairstylist BFF’s guinea pig since childhood, it’s fair to say I’m a seasoned veteran in the fashion color trend. I’ve just about slapped every color in the rainbow on my head — you name it, I’ve played with it. Currently, though, I’ve been loving the strong pop of green against my near-black locks. It had gotten really faded due to some extreme laziness (and my stylist being on his honeymoon), so I searched the Beautytap office for anything that could potentially save the day.

Enter Etude House’s Two Tone Treatment Hair Color, and I was ready to experiment once again. The claims are what got me the most: 10-minute depositing time, conditioning properties with no damage, and one-week staying power, giving me the freedom to experiment with all five color options in a short amount of time. Plus, this product boasts that you’ll have “K-Pop Star” hair. Now, my brain knows that’s just a selling point, but my heart was screaming, “SIGN ME UP!” I wanted to live out my best BTS RM “Fire” fantasy, so I was ready to see what this treatment hair color had to offer.

The instructions were simple enough: Towel dry hair after shampoo, evenly disperse product throughout the hair, leave in for 10 minutes, rinse, blow-dry. For more vivid color, Etude House recommends leaving the color in for “a couple more hours.”

That’s, uhhh, quite a stretch from 10 minutes, so I compromised with 45 minutes, the time I typically do with my other fashion dyes. Here is the result:

Voila! While the “forest green” was actually more of a teal-y moment, my hair was left super soft and plush and my color was even, vivid, and stunning! (To compare my "before" photo, scroll down to the video below.) I was really impressed at the almost luxurious feeling my hair had, especially because I had just deposited a non-professional dye into it (I’m a snob, I know). The texture of the dye is more like a conditioner than a traditional coloring system, so I was surprised to see how well the color stayed on.

Aside from that, this stuff smelled good. Like, unrealistically good. I can’t put my finger on the specific scent, but it definitely had notes of fruity yet sweet, strong-without-the-headache scent. In other words: AMAZING. Even if I didn’t fall in love with the results, I probably would have given it another shot for the smell alone.

One word of caution: A little goes a long way with this product. I intensely underestimated the power of this treatment, because I woke up absolutely covered in blue dye residue when I woke up. My neck, chest, face, pillows, and clothes were tinted, but thankfully, it wasn’t anything a quick shower couldn’t fix.

Despite this minor inconvenience, the color has incredible staying power. When I say “incredible,” I mean INCREDIBLE staying power. For #science purposes, I used a sulfate shampoo (y’know, the stuff that is notorious for stripping color from the hair, inevitably ruining dye jobs everywhere) to see if the color would hold up past its marketed staying time. Five days and three washes later, and it was still going strong!

Overall, I’m impressed. I truly didn’t expect to find a new favorite touch-up dye that is 1) from a K-beauty brand, 2) semi-permanent, and 3) 10 dollars! The staying power has already defeated my previous professional dye, and I’ve yet to experience any sort of fading.

The results were a little bit more subtle with the Etude House Two Tone Treatment Hair Color in Pale Pink, even on bleached hair, so you may have to leave it on for a couple hours. Check out the shenanigans video below:

Have you ever tried the Etude House Two Tone Hair Color or any other K-beauty hair coloring product? What was your experience like?