Clean Color, Conscious Care: Why The Gilded Lily Went All In on Maria Nila

I have one rule about the products we put on our guests' hair: I won't offer anything I haven't done myself.

That rule sounds simple. In practice, it narrowed the field considerably.

After 17 years in the beauty industry, I've watched a lot of brands make a lot of promises. Professional-grade performance. Color that lasts. Formulas that are "better" in some vague way that marketing departments can explain but chemists often can't. I've used enough of them to know the difference between a product that sounds good on paper and one that actually holds up under the conditions of a real color service on real hair.

My first real introduction to Maria Nila was in April, at a couple of events they held here in Chicago. I wasn't expecting much, honestly. What caught me off guard was the styling products. The performance was different in a way I noticed immediately, and it made me want to go deeper into what else they had. That curiosity is what started everything.

What I found was a brand that matched the standard we hold every service to at The Gilded Lily. And since June 1st, 2026, Maria Nila is the color and retail line we run on.

A Family Garage in Southern Sweden

Maria Nila started in 1999, in a small garage in southern Sweden. Ann and Ulf Wikström saw a gap in the professional haircare market: products that could perform at a salon level without relying on animal testing or animal-derived ingredients. Ann drew inspiration from her great-grandmother, Maria Nila, who lived by the Sámi principle of respecting nature and wildlife. That's where the brand's name comes from, and it's where its values started.

Today, Maria Nila is found in 45 countries across three continents, and it's still a family-run business. Everything is developed and manufactured in-house at their own factory in Sweden, which runs on solar panels and a circular air condensation system that feeds residual heat back into the production process. Less energy per unit. More accountability for what ends up in the bottle.

I want to sit with that for a second, because it's easy to read sustainability claims and let them blur into background noise. What's different here is the specificity of commitment. Maria Nila is the first Swedish hair care brand to be climate compensated. Every year, they calculate their emissions from production, packaging, and business operations, and offset what they can't yet eliminate through tree-planting projects run by Plan Vivo, a non-profit organization. Since 2017, their community of customers and salons has contributed to the reforestation of over 1.2 million square meters of forest across Nicaragua, Kenya, and Honduras. These aren't offset purchases sitting in a spreadsheet somewhere. They're working reforestation projects with real communities, documented and publicly available on their site.

They also hold B Corp certification and are registered with The Vegan Society, PETA, and Leaping Bunny. Not one of those. All of them.

These aren't marketing badges. They're third-party verifications with actual standards behind them, and they matter to what I put in people's hair.

What "100% Vegan" Actually Means in a Color Service

"Vegan" gets used loosely enough in haircare that it's worth unpacking what it actually means when you're sitting in our chair.

None of Maria Nila's ingredients, formulations, or finished products are tested on animals, anywhere in the world. Every product is 100% vegan and contains no animal-derived ingredients or by-products. That covers everything: the professional color our stylists use during your service, the retail products you take home, and the treatments we apply at the shampoo bowl.

The question I always get is: okay, but does it perform?

The professional Color Collection delivers 67% increased shine compared to competitors in clinical testing, 25% less color fading through US patented technology, and up to 41% less breakage after coloring through a pre-bonding complex. The system runs across 80 permanent shades, 34 demi permanent shades, and six pigmented mix shades, all in 100% recycled aluminum tubes.

Those numbers come from clinical testing. And in practice, what I've seen since we made the switch is color that holds tone longer, and hair that comes out of a Full Blonding Session feeling different than guests expect. Lighter without the brittleness. Brighter without the brassiness arriving two weeks later.

The "Play Date" That Changed Everything

We didn't arrive at Maria Nila lightly. The Gilded Lily had a 7+ year relationship with another color and retail brand before we made this switch. That's not a decision you make because a product looks nice on a shelf.

What pushed us there was education, support, and the way Maria Nila treats salons.

In our industry, brand support has become something a lot of companies talk about and fewer actually deliver. What Maria Nila did was invite our team to what they called a "play date." Their educators showed up to The Gilded Lily with products and color, spent several hours with our stylists, answered every question, let everyone get their hands in it... and required absolutely zero commitment from us. No contract. No pressure. Just: here's what we have, see what you think.

I had never seen a brand do that before. Not once in 17 years.

That's what genuine investment in salons looks like. When a brand is willing to spend a full morning with your team before asking for anything in return, you learn something real about how they operate. We signed on because the products performed. But the way they handled that day told us everything about what kind of partner they'd be.

Why We Went All In on Maria Nila Color

Guests occasionally ask about the products on our shelves, and specifically why our color and retail lineup comes from one place. It's a fair question.

The short answer is continuity. When we use Maria Nila color during your service and then recommend Maria Nila for your at-home care, we're working within the same formulation ecosystem. The color-protecting chemistry built into the professional service is designed to work alongside what you're using at home between appointments. That's not a coincidence. It's the point.

We still carry Milbon, a line we love and trust for other services. But the decision to go all in on Maria Nila for color and retail came down to one thing: when the color formula, the toning gloss, the shampoo, and the bond builder are all built to talk to each other, your results last longer. Color fades less. Hair stays healthier between appointments. Guests come back for maintenance instead of fixes.

That's the outcome we're after every single time someone sits in our chair. Maria Nila makes it easier to get there consistently.

What's Actually in the Chair at The Gilded Lily

Here's what Maria Nila looks like in a real service at 2741 N Spaulding.

For color services, our stylists work with a professional color system built on pre-bonded formulas. That means the color is protecting your hair's bond structure during the lightening or coloring process, not just after it. It's why hair coming out of our Full Blonding Session tends to feel different than guests expect.

At the shampoo bowl, the retail lines follow the same logic. Luminous Colour is what we reach for after a color service when we're rinsing, washing, and conditioning. Structure Repair is what goes on hair that has some chemical history. Head & Hair Heal is what we use when a scalp needs attention before we can do anything else.

The one product I reach for most often and use at home myself is the Structure Repair Bond Builder. It's a lightweight spray that reinforces strength by rebuilding bonds broken during color or chemical processing. It has 450-degree heat protection and UV protection built in, which means it's fighting color fading every time you style. It checks a lot of boxes in one bottle, which is why it flies off our shelves. I tell almost every guest about it at some point.

Two Women-Owned Businesses That Made the Same Bet

This part is a little personal, but I think it belongs here.

The Gilded Lily is women-owned and operated. Maria Nila was built by Ann Wikström, who started mixing formulas in a garage because she saw a problem in the industry and decided to fix it herself. Their guiding values are to be friendly, stay curious, and act honest. If you've spent any time with how we run things on Spaulding Avenue, you'll recognize those as words we'd use too.

That's not why I chose them. I chose them because the products work, because the education and support are real, and because the values behind the brand hold up when you look closely. But it's not nothing, either, to know that the brand in our color bar was built the same way this salon was: by someone who cared more about doing it right than doing it fast.

The women who come into The Gilded Lily notice these things. They're not looking for the cheapest option or the trendiest one. They want to know what's in the products, where it comes from, and whether the people behind it actually stand behind it.

Maria Nila does. And so do we.

What This Means If You're Thinking About Booking

Every color service at The Gilded Lily starts with a thorough consultation, and part of what we cover is your hair's current condition and which products are going to support the result we're building together.

If you've been using box color, or rotating through whatever was on sale, we'll talk about that. If you've had a color service somewhere else that left your hair feeling compromised, we'll talk about that too. Maria Nila's Structure Repair line and the Head & Hair Heal collection exist specifically for hair that needs to rebuild before it can do something new, and we know how to use them.

The consultation form takes a few minutes. What it gives us is everything we need to make sure your first appointment at The Gilded Lily starts with a plan.

Start your consultation here →

Or browse our full service menu at Luxury Color Sessions → to see which session fits where you are right now.

With love from your girl on Spaulding Ave, Mal 🤍

Book with our team when you're ready →

Mallory Seisser is the owner of The Gilded Lily, a women-owned luxury hair salon at 2741 N Spaulding Avenue in Logan Square, Chicago. She has 17 years of experience in the beauty industry as a stylist, educator, and R&D salon technician.