We Sorted 100 Clairol Nice'n Easy Reviews and Most of the One-Star Stories Start the Same Way

Why the repeat buyers refuse to switch

Start with the five-star pile, because it is the biggest by a distance: 61 of the 100 most recent reviews. The voice in them barely varies. These are women who know exactly which shade they use, have used it for years, and often buy on Amazon because, as one put it, “they no longer sell my dye in the shops.” Another is simply relieved the marketplace still stocks her colour at all. One recent convert liked her result enough to switch brands and set up a subscription on the spot.

The strongest endorsements come from salon returners. A user of more than twenty years “decided to treat myself to a Salon and yes ok but very expensive and colour never seemed right,” and came straight back. Another went through “several disastrous salon colours with the last one leaving me with near on white hair” before returning to her usual box. The most helpful review in the set, with 22 votes, comes from a long-time redhead who got “fed up paying salon prices when the dye fades after a couple of washes” and summed this dye up as one that “covers all my greys, doesn't wreck my hair and all in all just a decent dye really.” Seven of the hundred separately call out value for money, which at £6.60 a box is not hard to understand.

Clairol's claims about the oil-infused crème being gentle and leaving soft, shiny results hold up well in this crowd. Softness comes up constantly: “Hair soft and shiny. Very pleased.” “My hair is shiny and very soft, as always after using this brand.” Reviewers like the application side too, “Easy to apply, doesn't drip and smells ok,” one notes a “generous quantity of conditioner” in the box, and another collects compliments from people “thinking that it's natural.” Worth budgeting for: one buyer with just-below-shoulder-length hair needed two boxes.

Two dissenting fans deserve a mention before we move on. One long-term user thinks the formula lost something when the oil-infused version arrived, writing that “it's not the same” and that the colour no longer lasts as long for her. Another cancelled her subscription over what she now sees as “a dull all colour fake look.” They are outnumbered by buyers like the one whose colour “lasts for at least 8 weeks and still shines,” but if you remember the older formula fondly, you are not the only one who thinks the new one behaves differently.

The one-star stories follow a script

Now the 19 one-star reviews. Read them in a row and the same story repeats with different shades in the lead role. Someone picks a colour from the box photo, and the result comes out darker, redder, or both. One buyer of the honey blonde shade found it “made it noticeably darker and added strong ginger/red tones I did not have before” and ended up bleaching the colour back out. A light blonde issued a flat warning to anyone like her: “My hair is now dark dark ash brown and ruined. Awful nothing like the box.” A long-time copper redhead hoping for something softer landed on a brown she hated, writing “I've never had a colour be so different and awful from the packaging photograph,” and was last seen pricing colour stripper. She also found the fumes overpowering mid-application, a complaint almost nobody else in the hundred shares.

Notice what is missing from that pile: hardly anyone says the dye failed to dye. The colour took, it just took darker and warmer than the box led them to expect. Even happy customers nod to this drift. A buyer with curly 3b/c hair liked her result while noting it came out “a bit more dark than the picture.” Another wanted a light mid blonde and ended up with what she calls a “bronde.”

The practical lesson is conservative shade maths. 5A is a medium brown, so if your hair is blonde, this box will take you a long way down, exactly as the light blonde reviewer discovered. Old colour in your hair adds depth too: one buyer had “stripped back previous colours” beforehand and still came out “so much darker than expected.” Choose against the hair you have today, not the hair you are hoping for, and treat the model on the front as a best-case result.

The remaining one-stars scatter. A couple saw no visible result at all, including one who left the mixture on for 35 minutes. Two report dryness or breakage afterwards. And a handful trace back to the condition of the box that arrived, which deserves its own section.

About that A in 5A

The A in 5A stands for ash, the cool tone family people choose specifically to avoid red and orange. So it matters that the loudest colour complaints in this batch are about warmth. “Not cool ash, warm gingery undertones,” runs one review title, with the verdict “Awful not at all ash, gingery tinge.” Another buyer chose her shade because it was billed as a cool brown and instead watched red tones surface in natural light. A third used shade 5 on completely virgin hair and was left with “a ginger very warm cast, especially in direct sunlight.” Two more reviews mention green casts: one blamed an out-of-date box, the other had stripped several old colours out of her hair first, so the diagnosis there is muddy.

It cuts the other way too. When the toning works, the result reads natural rather than icy. The most detailed positive review of the medium brown calls it “a neutral colour, neither warm nor cool tones” that is “flattering and natural looking.” One reviewer bought it deliberately “to tone down a very red bright copper and make it more even and it's definitely done that.” Another with dark roots found the colour “still came out nicely.”

The pattern across both camps is that your starting hair decides the result. On hair that is already in the brown neighbourhood, 5A behaves like the believable, neutral brunette on the box. On hair carrying a lot of warm pigment, the warmth sometimes wins, and the two sunlight complaints above suggest daylight is where you will spot it first. If your entire reason for buying is to cancel warmth out of stubborn hair, the reviews say to keep expectations modest.

The grey coverage report card

Clairol prints 100% grey coverage on the box. Across our hundred reviews the scoreboard reads roughly eight clear wins to six complaints, and the wins are often emphatic. A reviewer in her thirties dealing with premature greying did the whole job alone and reported “good full coverage,” with before-and-after photos to back it up. Others are short and satisfied: it “covers all my grey well feels nice and soft after using the conditioner supplied”; it “Works well & covers all my greys for the holidays”; a natural “red head going white” says it “really works.”

The complaints are just as specific, and they cluster at the roots. “Yip it's Nice and easy to do but it definitely doesn't cover grey roots,” wrote one buyer left with an obvious root line above nicely coloured lengths. Another found her scalp and the accidental smears on her forehead came out “darker than my actual hair” while grey still showed through it. The sorest longevity review came from someone whose greys were back within a week, against an up-to-28-washes claim on the box.

Staying power splits along the same line: “lasts for at least 8 weeks and still shines” on one side, “didn't seem to last as long as other colours” on the other. One four-star reviewer even counted the fade as a bonus, since her slightly unnatural shade “faded quite quickly to a colour I liked better.” Our read: grey coverage is a strength more often than not, but the 100% figure is marketing confidence rather than a guarantee, and resistant greys are clearly capable of shrugging this dye off early.

Open the box the day it arrives, not on dye night

A specific cluster of complaints has nothing to do with the formula and everything to do with what turned up in the post. Three buyers reported boxes past their expiry date. One blamed old stock for a green tinge. Another, a 62-year-old covering greys with a light golden brown, watched her hair turn black, got a refund that fixed the invoice but not the hair, and signed off with “BUYER BEWARE..CHECK THE DATES!” The third opened an activator bottle that “smelled bad” and sensibly refused to use it. Beyond dates, one box arrived missing one of its three bottles, and another came without the gloves, caught only because the buyer checked before starting.

None of this says much about the dye itself. With a 4.5 lifetime average across 13,897 ratings, the overwhelming majority of boxes clearly arrive in good order. But permanent colour is an unforgiving place to discover a problem, so steal the routine from the buyers who learned it the expensive way. The day the box arrives, check the date stamp, confirm the three bottles and the gloves are all present, and open the activator for a quick sniff. The missing-bottle buyer found her box was not returnable, so raise any issue with Amazon immediately rather than on the evening you planned to use it.

The bottom line on a £6.60 box

Clairol's marketing says 96% of women would recommend Nice'n Easy to a friend. Our recent hundred are less giddy: 61% five-star, 66% at four stars or above, a 3.79 average against the lifetime 4.5. The gap between those numbers is mostly people who bought a transformation and received a medium brown.

So sort yourself before you shop. If 5A Medium Ash Brown is already your shade, or sits within a step or two of your current colour, the evidence here says you will get a soft, natural-looking brunette with better-than-average grey coverage for £6.60, from a non-drip crème most buyers find easy to use solo. Longer hair needs a second box. If you are blonde, fighting a very warm base, or trusting the box photo to be a promise, the one-star pile is full of people who made that exact bet.

We score it 4.0 out of 5: docked for the shade-chart gamble and the occasional stale box from the marketplace, held up by the price, the finish, and a repeat audience that has spent twenty years not finding a reason to leave. Know your shade, check your date, and this is about as dependable as supermarket-priced home colour gets.