A Pink Bottle With a 1977 Pedigree

Vermillion Red is shade no. 40 in Crazy Color's forty-shade semi-permanent range, made in the UK by Renbow and wearing the "Original and best since 1977" line on the bottle. You get 100ml of ready-to-use colour cream: no ammonia, no bleach, no peroxide, no mixing. The formula is also PPD-free, paraben-free, gluten-free and PETA-approved vegan, a properly rare combination at this end of the market.

The conditioning angle is more than marketing filler. The listing's ingredient callouts name three oils with specific jobs: raspberry seed oil, whose ellagic acid helps fight colour fade by absorbing UVB and UVC rays, sunflower seed oil for hydration, and avocado oil to help prevent breakage. Because the dye coats the outside of the hair shaft rather than opening it up, the brand pitches it as ideal for hair that has already been through bleach.

Crazy Color claims the colour lasts up to 10-12 washes, and the brand has clearly built a loyal base over the decades. Long-time user Raven/Heff sums up the faithful: "This product I have been using for many years and it's never let me down. And you are not going to get a better price than this one anywhere else."

Featured

15% OFF*Limited offer

One Sunday. A week of food, sorted.

23 high-protein recipes, cycle-synced for women who lift.

23 recipes · 60-page PDF · Instant download

£19.20 £16.32

See it on Etsy→

*Seller's discount on Etsy - may end at any time.

Your Starting Shade Decides Everything

Look closely at the brand's own before-and-after chart. It shows results on platinum blonde, light blonde, medium blonde and light brown. It stops there. No dark brown, no black, and that is the single most useful fact on the whole listing, because most of the no-colour complaints in the reviews come from darker or unbleached starting shades.

On light or pre-lightened hair, the results read like fan mail. Sam calls the colour "incredibly rich, bold, and highly pigmented" and was surprised the formula left hair "surprisingly soft and shiny after coloring". Mille-Jo Neil says it "laid perfectly over my pre lightened hair" in one flat, even colour. Aimee Light, starting from light brown to dark blonde, got a week and a bit of bright colour and "didn't even need to bleach my hair". Justyna's verdict: "My hair looks literally like red wine".

Now the other camp. F E: "Didn't work at all for dark coloured hair." Tigerste, with fine dark blonde to light brown hair, says it "didn't even tint my hair let alone dye it". Nathan Burgess slathered it on natural mousy-brown roots for 30-35 minutes and reports it "Hasn't stuck to my roots at all". Jane Clark ended up orange: "even my hairdresser was shocked". Jemma hoped to cover greys and watched it wash straight back out.

There are exceptions. Lalo says dark brown hair "actually works (if you want a dark red)", and Joanne Moule's daughter has very dark brown hair yet "6 weeks on and we are still red". But those buyers wanted a deep tint, not the scarlet on the bottle. If you do, fine. If you want the label shade on unbleached brunette hair, this is the wrong product, and the brand's own chart quietly tells you so.

Gloves, Grout and Pillowcases: The Staining Tax

By our count, 13 of the 65 reviews mention staining or mess in some form, and they come from happy and unhappy buyers alike. Two reviewers independently reach for the same joke: five-star DIL LONGSTAFF says rinsing "made the bath look like a murder scene!", while four-star DoubleOSmith warns "You will get questioned if a murder scene is nearby". Both still recommend the dye. That tells you the pigment load is real, and so is the clean-up.

The transfer continues after dye day. Claira M, a twenty-year home-dye veteran, rinsed until the water ran clear and still found her white pillowcases ruined day after day. Tamj reports it "comes off over everything. Pillows at night, runs down to my t-shirt when I'm in the gym". One buyer signing as L went to bed clean and woke up with a red-stained neck. Frances scored it one star because it "Stained everything except my hair".

Your bathroom needs guarding too. Jemma Morgan, a four-star repeat buyer of this shade and Ruby Rouge, warns it "does stain your grout quite quickly" and sprays her walls with bleach spray straight after rinsing. For skin, five-star Emma has the practical fix: if it marks you, "soap wash the skin twice and it's gone".

One more thing the box does not include: gloves. Cathy Hewitt's one-star review opens "Did not come with gloves", and Teresa's five-star review is titled, in full, "You need to buy gloves it's quite messy". Buy a pack of nitrile gloves with the bottle and lay down old towels. Treat the staining as a tax on the pigment: predictable, manageable, and non-negotiable.

Three Days or Six Weeks? The Fade Lottery

Crazy Color claims up to 10-12 washes. The reviews land on both sides of that number, sometimes absurdly far from it. Five of the 65 reviews say the colour was gone within days or a single wash. Daily-washer Claira M had three days of colour. Two-star kay is the most vivid: "tell me why i dyed this 3 days ago, followed the instructions, and washed my hair today and its already faded??" Julie Crilly got about four days, and Gillyowl and another buyer report it washing out almost immediately.

Then there's the other end. DIL LONGSTAFF dyed up for the Christmas season and reports "months later and it has still not washed out". Joanne Moule's daughter was still red six weeks on. Jemma, five stars, simply says it's "Lasting well".

The variables hiding in those reviews are wash frequency and rinse habits. The brand's own instructions say to rinse with cold water and no shampoo to lock the colour in, and the fast-fade reports mostly come from frequent washers. The happiest owners treat it as a habit rather than a one-off: Sharon Rothero applies it two to three weeks after a full dye because it "really revives and brightens the colour", Tara Cope adds a dose at every wash to keep her colour topped up, and Melanie J, who has black hair, uses it to turn her greys into red highlights that her hairdresser compliments. At this price per bottle, the top-up habit is affordable. Expect a fade lottery if you shampoo daily; expect weeks of colour if you stretch washes and rinse cold.

Check the Seal When It Arrives

Here is the complaint that has nothing to do with hair: seven of the 65 reviews report bottles arriving leaking, unsealed or damaged. Shanel's bottle "came with top not screwed on properly and leaking", Klaudia's arrived half open, and AtomicUnicorn's two-bottle order split the difference: "One bottle had an inner seal, the other didn't and has leaked." 3llie_000 loves the product itself but received a box covered in red dye after a transit leak, and Claire Louise Saunders salvaged what she could from a damaged bottle and was still delighted with the colour.

Consistency gets a mention too. Gillyowl finds the dye "very runny", and Bailey M, a ten-year Crazy Color user, believes something changed: it's "soooo runny now and so hard to apply in comparison to crazy colours normal formula". Whether that is a formula tweak or a bad batch, we can't say from the source data. What you can do is practical: check the cap and inner seal the moment your parcel lands, and open it over a sink, not your cream carpet.

Getting the Five-Star Result: Prep Like the Label Says

The gap between the raves and the refunds is mostly prep, and the listing lays the routine out in detail. Patch test 48 hours ahead: dab a little dye behind your ear or inside your elbow, leave it 45 minutes, rinse, and watch for irritation over the next two days. Allergic reactions are rare with this peroxide-free, ammonia-free formula, but the brand still insists on the test, and so do we.

Next, strand test. Take a hidden 1cm section from the back of your head, saturate it, and time it. The instructions call for 15-30 minutes on freshly shampooed, towel-dried or dry hair, or 45-60 minutes if you want maximum intensity. Rinse with cold water, no shampoo. That one strand tells you exactly what the whole head will do, which is precisely the information half the one-star reviewers wish they'd had.

Reviewer technique backs the label up. Mrs H Pilia left it on her daughter's dark blonde hair for a full 30 minutes, got a result she'd repeat, and "only needed half a bottle" despite thick, long hair. Kerrie likewise used half the bottle and kept the rest for top-ups. Emma, whose transformation drew 42 helpful votes, mixed this shade with Crazy Color's Ruby Rouge, 70% Ruby to 30% Vermillion on her roots and 80% Vermillion to 20% Ruby through the lengths, over a pre-lightened coppery base, for a deep red she describes as intense in daylight and rich indoors. You don't need to get that elaborate, but it shows what the pigment can do with a plan behind it.

Verdict: Brilliant for the Right Head of Hair

We score Vermillion Red 3.9 out of 5, and the decimal matters. Judged only by buyers who used it as designed, on pre-lightened, blonde or light brown hair, with gloves on and a cold-water rinse, this is a 4.5-star product: vivid scarlet, conditioning rather than damaging, and cheap enough to repeat every few weeks. Judged by everyone who hoped it would transform dark brown hair, cover greys or survive daily shampooing, it collapses to two stars.

Buy it if your hair sits anywhere from platinum to light brown (or bleached), you want a loud red without ammonia, bleach or peroxide, and you can live with a messy dye day and the odd pink pillowcase. It also earns a spot in the bathroom cabinet of anyone who already dyes red and wants a between-salon reviver, which is how several of the happiest reviewers use it.

Skip it if you have unbleached dark hair and expect the bottle shade, if you need grey coverage you can trust, or if red transfer on bedding and gym kit would drive you mad. And whichever camp you're in, check the seal when the parcel arrives.

The bottle is small, the commitment is smaller, and on the right hair the result is anything but. You can check today's price on Amazon here.