How can you achieve an instant update on your look? Just refresh the colour of your hair.

Hair with overgrown roots that look vastly different from rest of your dyed locks dull your style quotient. But too much ammonia is not going to be good for your locks either.

Style and protect hair colour with High Hair Style Foundation

Juicy Shower Moisturising Hair Mist by Liese

While keeping your visit to the salon for a colour refresher to about four months after your last colouring session is a good idea, it also helps to use hair colour that uses little, or no, ammonia.

Otherwise, it is just as useful to opt for styling products that protect your hair colour while keeping your hair in good shape.

Here are some recommendations to add to your kit of hair styling aids:

High Hair Style Foundation, by Wella Professional

Keep hair colour from fading with this protection milk in a spray. Formulated with a shine enhancement complex, glucosamine, the spray helps to volumise hair while keeping colour from fading.

Retails at $36 from selected professional salons.

Boost your moisture factor

Dry, frizzy hair is not sexy. But if you hardly have time to apply a hair mask regularly, a fuss-free way to achieve better-looking locks and tame unruly locks is a spray mist.

We like the Juicy Shower Moisturising Hair Mist by Liese. The raspberry extract injects moisture into hair, and a fruity fragrance means it doubles up as a hair perfume as well. A quick spritz makes this a great post-lunch perk-me-up, or even just before you head from office to your dinner date.

The price makes it great value-for-money as well.

The Hair Mist retails at $14.90 and the refill retails at $16.90 from Watson's stores.

Pantene's 3-minute miracle ampoule

Dye hair without the damage with L'Oreal Professionel's Richesse

3-minute miracle

Which woman doesn't have a busy schedule? Which is why our beauty aids must work in a jiffy for us.

Another quick makeover for hair is Pantene's 3-minute miracle ampoule. After shampooing and conditioning hair, apply it to still-wet hair to deliver an intensive dose of conditioning ingredients. The ampoule helps to revitalise the damaged the surface layer of hair cuticles and forms another layer that mimicks the hair's protective layer.

The result is less friction when combing hair, and hair does not experience as much damage.

A pack of three 15 ml 3-Minute ampoules retails at $9.50

Ammonia-free colour

The next time you are thinking of colouring your hair, ask your hair colourist about an ammonia-free colour. We like the rich colours and the promise of hair care from L'Oreal Professionel's range of no ammonia colour services. Richesse and Hi.Richesse maintains your hair's softness and suppleness, while Nuancelle strengthens sensitised hair and repairs damaged cuticles for a glossy finish.

The best thing is you can ask your colourist to customise a colour - just for yourself.