As the box said if you are thinking in between colors pick the lighter one. I had natural dark brown hair and I wanted to make it a bit lighter, so I purchased medium brown. When I washed my hair, my color became much darker then it was before ! :( Very disappointed and cant wait for it to wash out! The color shown on the box was much lighter. I just hope that this hair color will eventually wash out with no trace! Also I didn't notice any significant shiny hair. I had much better results with just using henna !!! Maybe it will work for someone, but I didn't get the result i wanted.

I was really looking forward to trying this out as it fit what I wanted exactly: a demi-permanent hair colour which was mild and would cover my emerging greys. I have less than 5% grey. I'm colouring hair which was virgin other than a few highlights from a few months back. I have coloured my hair years ago and know what I am doing. Bought it and read the instructions very carefully. Then came the adventure:

- I realized immediately that I should have bought 2 boxes for my just-below-the-shoulder hair. There would not be enough product. I immediately changed to the 'touch-up application method'. This was still not really enough hair colour to properly saturate the hair. I concentrated on the new growth area.

- 10 minutes... does this start when you have completed the full application? The application takes a while since you are going section by section getting to the roots. I did 10 minutes as soon as the application was done. It was too much. The result was much darker than the box colour. My highlights are now mostly covered, although the shade I picked was very-slightly lighter than the highlights. This will fade with subsequent washes... but still.

- Although this was on my hair for about 15-18 minutes from the time I first started the application, the greys were not covered! This is unacceptable. Whatever developer they have used instead of low-level ammonia is not very good. (Also with the excess colour saturation, its not very controlled)

- if you have longer hair, make sure you have a plastic hair clip handy, or you will colour your neck/shoulders like I did. Whatever your hair touches, it colours. I had used conditioner around the hair line, so that was okay. I accidentally touched the wall with colour, and washed it with soap immediately, but it still ruined my paint job.

- washing it out was super easy, and it smelled nice. The conditioner is amazing and my hair felt better after than before. My highlights were double process so my cuticle was rough... this smoothed it.

Overall: Loved the shine, the smell, the feel of my hair. However, it was a waste of money since it didn't cover the grey (even with the extra 5 minutes they suggest) which was the whole idea of buying it.