PALETTE

PALETTE is a basic hair-color brand, the kind people reach for when they want boxed dye rather than a salon visit. By our assessment, it stands out less for polish than for sheer range: the line is built around many shades and familiar supermarket-style packaging, so it is easy to understand at a glance. The trade-off is the usual one with mass-market color, which is that the result depends a lot on starting hair and careful application, and the box can promise more certainty than hair actually gives back. In practice it is a straightforward at-home dye job, with all the mixing, timing and glove-wearing that comes with the category. Compared with salon color it is cheaper and simpler; compared with gentler glosses it is more committed. It suits people who want an ordinary, no-frills box dye and are fine doing the work themselves, while anyone wanting precise color correction or softer treatment should look elsewhere.