Is the way you wash your hair preventing hair growth?

We all want it, luscious healthy hair. But, did you know that most of us are washing our hair incorrectly, with damaging products or too much? We’re here to tell you the best way to wash your hair! 

To start with, it’s likely you are washing your hair too often, which causes breakage of the hair strands and will likely be preventing your luscious locks from growing.  We recommend washing hair 2 times per week at most, and working your way up to less frequent washes. Once per week is ideal. 

“I wash my hair every day, how can I start washing less?”

It’s actually really common to wash your hair every day, we were raised that way too! Unless you were blessed with locks of steel and amazing genetics, it’s likely this habit is causing more harm than good. 

We suggest training the hair to be washed less often, by simply adding one day to your hair schedule. So if you’re washing your hair daily, switch to washing your hair every second day for a few months and then slowly add more days. This way, your hair will slowly learn that it doesn’t need to produce so much oil, because you won’t be stripping your hair of oil every single day. This will create happy hair that is less likely to break = yay! 

So now that we know how often to wash your hair, let's get down to the nitty gritty of the correct way to wash your hair to encourage and promote healthy hair and less breakage. 

The products: 

If you really want to give your hair the best chance at success, it’s time to ditch those drugstore shampoos. The cheap products sold at the supermarket are too sudsy and damaging to your hair and are not created using ingredients that care for your hair. 

Our product of choice is Kerastasé, and if money is of concern, we recommend buying bulk sizes from sites like Catch of the Day to save on the costs (plus now we’re washing our hair less, you’ll be using less of the products which make it cheaper too!) 

In the shower you’ll need: 

• A good,  salon quality shampoo. 
• For blondes, a purple shampoo. 
• A good, salon quality conditioner. 
• High-quality hair mask

Let’s get wet! 

Alright, we’re finally ready to get into the shower and wash our hair, here’s what you need to know to provide the best chance of success for your hair. 

1. The temperature. It’s a known fact that women shower hotter than men, but this heat is actually damaging your hair. We recommend showering with lukewarm water to prevent damage to your hair follicles. 
2. When you shampoo, you only need to shampoo the scalp, forget about the hair strand - we are only wanting to get the shampoo into the skin on our head. Use the pads of your fingertips to scrub (quite vigorously) the shampoo across the point at which every hair comes out of your scalp!
3. Wash the shampoo out - using lukewarm water and ensuring the hand motions & water and moving in a downwards motion only. 
4. For our blondes - purple shampoo time! Note that purple shampoo is the only kind of shampoo which you are allowed to put on the entire hair strand. You want to get the shampoo over every strand and leave on for 5-7 minutes for best results. 
5. If you’re washing your hair every 7+ days, you’ll want to head back up to step 2 and re-shampoo your hair again after the purple shampoo, on your scalp only, to ensure you’ve removed the build-up of oils on the scalp. 
6. It’s Mask time! Now let’s put your hair mask on your hair, starting from the mid-strand and working your way down, and then bringing whatever is left on your fingers to the top of the hair. As your scalp naturally produces oils, there’s no need to put the mask up there! Leave the mask on for 5 minutes or as directed. 
7. Rinse out the mask using luke-warm water and ensure the hands and water are only moving in the direction of the follicle. 
8. It’s conditioner time! Using your conditioner, apply to the mid-strand and ends of hair and use what’s left on your fingers to apply to the top-strands. 
9. Rinse out using lukewarm water - ensuring that you don’t spend less than 1 minute doing this as you want to ensure some conditioner stays in. 
10. You’re done! 

Congratulations, you’ve just had a (hair loving) shower. 

Now that you’re out of the shower, it’s time to put some extra product into your hair to ensure it has the help it needs to be as strong and healthy as it can be. 

The products needed post-shower are a good-quality detangler, hair balm & serum. 

1. Once you are out of the shower, we recommend drying the hair with an old-shirt as the fibres are not as damaging as that of a towel. We also recommend putting the hair up on the top of your head to dry out rather than scrubbing dry with the towel or t-shirt. This ensures that you’re not damaging the follicles. We then use this time to moisturise our body and do anything else required after a shower. 
2. Once ready to tackle your hair, remove the towel or t-shirt from your head and spray in some detangler spray. 
3. Then you’ll want to get a paddle brush or comb and comb through your hair. Starting from the bottom and working your way is the best way of gently brushing your hair. 
4. Then mix a pea size amount of hair-balm and hair-serum together into your hands and apply to the mid-strand and ends of your hair, working your way up with whatever product is left in your hairs. 
5. Then we suggest letting your hair air-dry, but if you must use heat, make sure you use a heat protectant. 

If you follow these steps religiously, we guarantee your hair will love you for it!