Are Personalized Hair Brands Actually Worth The Money?

As the Twitterati have noted, the two-in-one shampoo and body wash must be abolished. How are we supposed to figure out oily roots, dry ends and ingrown hairs with the same product? If you've tried five moisturizers and three shampoos in the past year only to come back and read this article, you know exactly what we're talking about. The beauty industry has heard us and has now come up with the absolute antithesis of two-in-ones. We can now pick from a variety of brands who produce customized versions of everything — from vitamin blends to skincare and haircare.

With haircare, a few brands like Prose and Function of Beauty stand out in our Google search results. Both begin with a hair quiz that asks you about your hair goals, the kind of styling tools you use and your hair and scalp types. The results of the quiz are customized product recommendations for your hair. However, this is an expensive quiz, with one bottle of shampoo costing up to $49.99 at Function of Beauty. Unsure about spending that much over a drugstore alternative? Read on to know more before you make your decision.

Most shampoos off the shelf contain harmful ingredients that can damage your hair in the long run, including sulfates and parabens. Both Prose and Function of Beauty emphasize clean ingredients and keep their products free of parabens, phthalates and sulfates, and provide ingredients lists. In addition, Prose gives each element used ratings them based on EWG scores. The Prose quiz also takes your location into consideration. "Everything is taken into account. If you're in freezing-cold Michigan, we add fermented-rice water to help tame static; if you're in New York, there's beetroot extract to remove hard-water deposits. There are 50 billion combinations," hairstylist Faith Huffnagle, the education director at Prose tells Shape.

However, not everyone's convinced. Perry Romanowski, a cosmetic chemist and a founder of The Beauty Brains examined customized formulas and believes they are "a marketing gimmick," Romanowski told The New York Times. "There is nothing measurably different about their formulas in terms of performance." Maryanne Senna, a dermatologist also notes to the outlet, "There are some things we very clearly know can be drying, but then there's a lot of stuff they use that has no evidence to back it up."

Every scalp is different and you'd have to try a bottle of Prose shampoo ($25) and compare it with a colorful bottle from Function of Beauty ($29.99) to know what works for you. Considering drugstore alternatives aren't known to be great (via Insider), these might just be worth it.