This at-home keratin treatment leaves my frizzy hair smooth and silky, without the salon price tag

Can an at-home keratin treatment really compete with the salon? In the case of ANSWR's formula, our Beauty Editor says yes.

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ANSWR collage
(Image credit: Future/ANSWR)

Can I tell you a secret? My hair is naturally very curly and frizzy, but I spend a lot of time pretending it's actually the opposite. As you can imagine, this amount of deception is really quite time-consuming – and very expensive too.

Fancy shampoos, the best hair straighteners and the best hair masks will only get you so far. For consistently fluff-free hair without singeing it to a crisp, the best option is an in-salon keratin treatment (also referred to as a Brazilian blow-dry or sometimes hair botox). They work by sealing keratin (the protein our hair is made from) into your strands to smooth them and rebuild damage. The pros? It will give you sleek, frizz-free hair for three to six months, meaning you're less reliant on straighteners and less frightened of going out in the rain. The cons? It takes around three hours per treatment, costs upwards of £150 a go and can actually fade your colour (I went from brunette to ginger during one unfortunate appointment last year).

So, in the spirit of saving money on both keratin treatments and shade-restoring colour appointments, I decided to try an at-home option. Could ANSWR’s £45 At-Home Keratin Treatment be the answer?

A Beauty Ed explores if ANSWR’s At-Home Keratin Treatment can compete with the salon

Promising lasting results (for up to two months) without damage, this at-home smoothing treatment from ANSWR appears to be quite the game-changer for those of us who want to banish frizz and maintain sleek strands on a budget. And as someone who has spent many hours in the salon chair having professional keratin treatments, I was very intrigued to see how it would stack up.

Just like in the salon, applying the ANSWR At-Home Keratin Treatment is a process. First, you wash your hair with just shampoo, no conditioner, and dry it so there isn’t any product in it. This was probably my least favourite part, as it felt against everything ingrained in my brain about the importance of heat protection spray.

Once your hair is dry, you spritz the (quite sticky and sweet-smelling) treatment on, combing it through to make sure you haven’t missed any spots. I mainly focused on the front of my hair and the roots, as I have a lot of fluffy post-partum regrowth here. It’s the part of my hair that annoys me the most and that I don’t want to attack too much with the straighteners. When you’re happy you’ve caught every strand, start the clock and leave it to work for between 40 to 60 minutes, depending on your hair type. Mine is very thick, so I went for the full hour.

When the time is up, you rinse with just water, blow-dry and then straighten. This is the part where you’re sealing the product in, so it pays to be patient and precise. The instructions recommend working in small sections with an iron set to 200°C and to go over each section six times. Because my hair is coloured, I didn’t do quite so many passes, but I don’t think it impacted the final result.

Initially, my hair was very smooth but also felt a bit sticky and full of product, which I didn’t like. Once I washed it three days later, though, it was obvious that it really does work. My hair was so much easier to blow-dry, far straighter and not at all frizzy, and it stayed that way between washes, too, so I found that I wasn't relying on straightener touch-ups so much.

Beauty Editor Jess before starting to use ANSWR (L) and after (R

(Image credit: Future)

The box recommends repeating the treatment every two months, and I would say that after four weeks, I could see it was starting to fade as my hair became more unruly. It definitely doesn’t last as long as an in-salon treatment, but it does cost less than a third of the price for the bottle. My hair is just past shoulder length, so I only use half at a time, and I think £22.50 feels like a very fair price for a month of my dream hair.

Price aside, it is slightly sticky, smells a bit sweet and still slightly time-consuming (about two hours from start to finish), but there’s not the thick, burns-your-eyes-a-bit, Calpol-ey smog of an in-salon one, nor do you need to make small talk with your hairdresser for three hours. I teamed it with a face mask and a book for the hour wait, so it felt more like a pamper night than a chore.

I’m now on my third bottle. I will be making sure I’m stocked up to get me through the inevitable frizz that comes with spring showers, and would recommend any other secretly curly ladies to do the same. I won’t tell if you won’t…

Jess Beech
Jess Beech

Jess Beech is an experienced fashion and beauty editor, with more than eight years experience in the publishing industry. She has written for woman&home, GoodtoKnow, Now, Woman, Woman’s Weekly, Woman’s Own and Chat, and is a former Deputy Fashion & Beauty Editor at Future PLC. A beauty obsessive, Jess has tried everything from cryotherapy to chemical peels (minus the Samantha in Sex and The City-worthy redness) and interviewed experts including Jo Malone and Trinny Woodall.

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