Cone free

it means silicone free essentially, lots (most) conditioners, hair styling products have some form of silicone in it which coats the hair, its usually dimethicone or dimethiconal I have found but if you look at the ingredients anything that ends in cone or conal will be a silicone. I have switched to using superdrugs own brand stuff, they have shampoo and conditioner for all hair types including coloured hair and they also smell great and are nice and cheap. (superdrug own brand also never tests on animals which is always great 🙂 )

Does anything ending in "conate" count as a silicone...?

There are a couple of really great threads with info on how to spot cones in ingredient lists.  I'm searching for them now (I thought I had them bookmarked... :/ ).  I'll be back to post them once they've been located.  🙂

EDIT: I'm back with some links to get you started...  🙂

This thread on Shampoos and conditioners has loads of info on cone-free products and how to spot them in ingredient lists, particularly reply #14 from Firefox7275:
http://www.hairdyeforum.com/index.php?topic=5758.0

A thread with questions/answers on the Curly Girl Method (cone-free, co-washing):
http://www.hairdyeforum.com/index.php?topic=7339.0

Courtesy of Babe_Hawx: Here's a link to a curly girl list of silicone free heat protector sprays, its an American site so it should list products that are available for you http://www.naturallycurly.com/curltalk/general-discussion-about-curly-hair/68512-cg-friendy-heat-protectants.html

EDIT AGAIN:
I knew I had some info saved... but I had saved this as a text document on my computer.  I'm not sure if this came from this forum or the curly girl forum... so if someone needs to be credited for this info, please chime in and let me know so I can save it with proper credit to the OP.  I'm really sorry I didn't save that info!  🙁

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Yeah ideally, USUALLY family store basic conditioners are a good place to start checking ingredients. I'm sure if you took a pic of the ingredient list and posted it we could let you know if it's any good but here's some helpful info off curly girl:

Silicones that are not soluble in water and build up on the hair: Cetearyl methicone, Cetyl Dimethicone, Cyclomethicone, Cyclopentasiloxane, Dimethicone, Dimethiconol, Stearyl Dimethicone, Amodimethicone (and) Trideceth-12 (and) Cetrimonium Chloride, and Trimethylsilylamodimethicone. Note: Trideceth-12 and Cetrimonium Chloride are only considered a silcone when both are combined with Amodimethicone.

Silicones that are slightly soluble in water and will build up on most types of curly hair: Amodimethicone, Behenoxy Dimethicone, and Stearoxy Dimethicone.

Silicones that are soluble in water and safe to use (they are not listed with PEG in front of them): Dimethicone Copolyol, Hydrolyzed Wheat Protein Hydroxypropyl Polysiloxane, and Lauryl methicone copolyol

I'm not sure if this is the correct way to co wash but here's my method:

Wet hair (if u r doing this in the bath make sure u use a jug of fresh tap water not water that has bubble bath in it)

Take a jug add an egg cup amount of water to jug

Squidge into the jug/water about the same amount of the conditioner ( needs to be a silicone free one,i use tescos coconut)

Use your hand to mix it up until it froths

Either put in an old (clean & rinsed out) cosmetic bottle or if your feeling accurate and quick you can just slowly pour from the jug to your head

Start at the very top of your head, apply 2/3 rds of the mix and massage in, just rub as if you were shampooing, then the remaining mix onto the lengths, don't over distress hair though ( if you wouldn't like your face being rubbed into 40 thousand rough tree trunks, try not to rub your delicate hair into each other, massage it and scrunch it instead)

Use the jug to rinse out well,

Use a regular sized blob of conditioner and condition lengths as per usual, leave for 5 mins if your hair is damaged