Product Reviews: Shea Moisture vs Kinky Curly

The above hair was freshly washed and styled with both products below then sealed with a mix of castor and sweet almond oil.

I’ve been using both these products for a couple of months now and thought I’d do a review of them even though you can find tons of reviews online. Every head is different right?

The Kinky Curly Knot Today (KCKT) leave-in conditioner. You hear enough bloggers rave about this stuff so I had to pick up a bottle, especially when I saw it locally for an amazing price. I bought it about two months ago and I still have over half a bottle left so a little goes a long way. I often mix a small amount of it with some fresh aloe juice so this helps to stretch it and of course, aloe does amazing things for my hair too. What I love so much about this leave-in conditioner is how light-weight it is. Exactly what a leave-in is supposed to be. It has lots of organic ingredients, spreads easily and it detangles like nobody’s business on both my curly kinky hair and munchkin’s kinky curly hair. I used to apply it every day but I’ve cut back to every other day or every two days these days simply because my hair care practices no longer see me needing to wet my hair daily. My moisture game is on lock plus my big, dry ‘fro is something fierce too.

The ingredients for the Knot Today are: organic mango extract, organic slipper elm, organic marshmallow root, organic lemongrass, cetyl alcohol, behentrimonium methosulfate, citric acid, phenoxyethanol and natural fragrance.

Don’t worry about the sulfate listed, I googled it and it’s not one of the bad ones it seems. More on Curly Nikki here. After I add it to my wet hair, I simply seal with my oil mix of castor oil and argan oil and I’m out the door. When my hair is dry, it’s fluffy, soft and so shiny. This one’s a holy grail product.

This one is another one that came highly recommended on the blogs as a styling product. Its the Shea Moisture Organic Coconut and Hibiscus Curl and Style Milk, and Curl Enhancing Smoothie. I really asked for the smoothie because that’s the one I kept reading about but my friend who was in the store saw the milk and got both for me to try. I’m so happy they did!!! The smoothie is waaay too thick for my light curls but it is still a keeper for munchkins hair. I use it in her hair after I’ve applied the KCKT leave-in to do her twists and braids. It is perfect for that purpose and I may revisit it myself when my hair is longer and I start to do braid-outs and twist-outs because I’ve read where it helps to keep the twists defined but for now it’s way too heavy for a simple wash and go. It smells amazing too.

The milk is great in my hair, I use it after the leave-in to help keep the frizz at bay when my hair is dried. Only, I’m not sure if it’s a holy grail product. My hair doesn’t get that frizzy, I’m not sure I really need it. I could maybe use it in place of the leave-in and if I purchased it before the leave-in then maybe it would have been my holy grail but I’m already in love with the KCKT and it is readily available in Jamaica while Shea Moisture isn’t. It’s not a bad styler, but I’m open to trying other products.

Do you use any of these products? Are they working out for you? Are there any styling products that you think I could switch out the Curl Milk for?

Related: I switched out Shea Moisture for Cantu, read more here.