Lush Gentle Lentil solid shampoo.

I didn't become a Lush fan until around 2010, and when I read back on some of the products that used to be available and have been discontinued before I started to buy from the company, I get jealous when I see something that I think would be perfect for me. While reading tons of (mostly very positive) reviews of this particular product, I was even more eager to try it, and after waiting about a year, it was released in the Lush kitchen- Lush's weekly range of special-edition products released in limited batches. I knew I had to buy it.

This product is the Gentle Lentil solid shampoo bar. Those who have read my reviews of solid haircare, such as Jason and the Argan oil shampoo bar, will know that it doesn't often agree with my dry, easily tangled hair type. But as Gentle lentil is specifically created to be (as the name suggests), a gentle wash for easily tangled hair. It is more geared towards children, but being a child at heart and being a fan of the fragrance of the bar, I was still eager to use it and report back on my results.

Gentle Lentil is a little boring-looking, cream-coloured block dotted with brown lentils. Compared to Lush's brightly coloured shampoo bars, this isn't one you'd notice right away. This is probably part of the reason the bar was discontinued, as unless people knew what it was, they would likely walk past it without giving it a second glance, in favour of the more colourful bars and bottles of shampoo. However, sometimes it's the boring-looking products that offer a lot, so I try not to bother too much about what the products look like on the outside.

The bar shares the scent with the Butterball fragrance family from Lush, a cocoa butter and ylang-ylang dominated fragrance. While the butterball bath bomb is mostly dominated by the cocoa butter scent, giving it an almost chocolatey fragrance, the Gentle lentil shampoo bar has the ylang-ylang at the forefront, giving a more floral version of the Butterball scent. Personally, I prefer the bath bomb's fragrance, but they aren't too different, so fans of the bath bomb will appreciate the scent of it's haircare sibling. The Butterball scent is one of my top fragrances from lush, I wish they would bring out a perfume version.

To use a shampoo bar is very simple, but it does take some getting used to if you regularly tend to use a liquid shampoo. All you have to do is wet the bar, and either lather it up in your hair (as I do) or lather it in your hands and then apply the lather to your hair that way. I found that Gentle lentil didn't lather up as well as I am used to with shampoo bars, instead providing a slightly oily foam, which slightly worried me, as I wondered if it would leave my hair greasy instead of cleaned. But after I had conditioned and dried my hair off, I found my hair was very tangled, almost as if I had over-shampooed. This really disappointed me, as I had been hoping for a long time that this particular shampoo bar would work for me.


I gave it another chance, using less than I had before, but again, it made my hair feel dried out and was impossible to brush, even when using an abundance of conditioner after shampooing. The bar of shampoo itself also was reluctant to dry, and you lose a lot of product when it just sits on your bathroom shelf melting. I have honestly come to the conclusion that Lush shampoos, particularly their solid haircare range, just don't work for me, and I am very reluctant to spend money on their expensive haircare again.

So despite looking forward to using Gentle lentil and appreciating the scent (Lush, make it  a perfume!) I won't be repurchasing and I don't recommend it.

Price £5 for 100g