How to: Dry Hair
Protecting and preventing dry hair is something that we have to work at every day. Just as you use cleanser and moisturizer to take care of your skin, we need to do the same for our hair. Here are some key tips and tricks to help repair and maintain your beautiful locks.
Prevention
Prevention is key when it comes to keeping your hair moisturized. It is easier to maintain healthy hair than it is to fix it. To stave off dry hair, make sure you:
- Shampoo: Choosing a shampoo that is formulated for your hair type is important. Shampoo is designed to clean your hair follicle and cuticle, by removing product and environmental deposits. If your cuticle is not clean, it creates a barrier that will get in the way of moisturizers.
- Condition for moisture: After every shampoo, make sure that you are using a conditioner. If you already have dryer hair, using a conditioner that is designed for dry or damaged hair will add extra moisture. Regardless of your hair type, everyone needs conditioner. If you have finer hair, you still need to be using a conditioner.
- Comb Carefully: Dry, damaged hair is in a weaker state, and therefor will be more fragile. When your hair is wet, it stretches more, and if it’s already damaged, it can break instead of springing back naturally. Use either a wide tooth comb or a brush that is designed specifically for detangling. Brushing the knots out before washing your hair while it’s still dry will also help with breakage as it’s easier to detangle dry hair. Start by brushing the bottom of your hair and working your way up to the scalp.
- Drying gently: When you rub your hair with a towel, you can frizz and rip the cuticle. It’s less damaging to squeeze the water out of your hair softly. Again, you can start at the bottom of the hair and work your way up. You can also use a micro fiber towel or old t-shirt if you feel like your towels are not soft enough.
- Limiting Heat: Try to limit the amount of days you are using your hot tools. When using hot tools, try to keep the heat as low as possible and make sure you are applying heat protection before putting any heat on your hair. Heat protection act as a buffer to limit heat damage. To spread out days between using hot tools, you can use a dry shampoo to help prolong your style.
Repair and controlling damage:
Dry, damage hair only worsens over time, because of continuous abuse. The only real way to get rid of all damage is to cut it off. But there are things you can do if you’re not ready to do a big cut to help the look and feel of the damaged hair.
- Deep Conditioner: Using a deep conditioning at home treatment will help strengthen some of the damaged hair. These masks have ingredients such as proteins, amino acids and oils that will help make your hair softer, smoother and shinier. Depending on the damage to your hair and how often you are washing, using a deep conditioner once to twice a week, in addition to shampoo and conditioner, is ideal.
- In Salon Treatments: Having an in salon conditioning treatment is also key. You can add it on when you’re having another service done, or go in for the treatment alone. The treatments that are done in salon are stronger than anything you can take home. These are not treatments that need to be used every day, but once a month or so is great. They’ll load up your hair with incredibly concentrated protein and moisture.
- Avoid washing your hair every day: Shampoos strip your hair of dirt and sweat, but they can also remove your natural sebum (the natural oil your scalp produces). When repairing dry, damaged hair this oil is essential. Washing every other day or less is okay. If you struggle with oily scalp and hair, try a dry shampoo in between washing. Every time you wash your hair, you are activating your sebum glands. So the more you wash, the more oil your body produces. If you can start washing a little less, your body should become accustomed to it and won’t produce so much oil.
- Leave in Treatments: when you use a leave in treatment, you are giving your hair an extra bit of “umph” that it gets to soak up slowly. Depending on what problems you’re wanting to target, you can get a leave in that is designed specifically for it. If your hair needs more strength to help rebuild, you would pick out a treatment with that in mind. Regardless of your hair type, leave ins are an essential part to healthy hair.
- Brushing your hair: You don’t need to brush your hair 100 strokes a day like the old wives tail tells us, but brushing your hair is actually helpful. When you brush your hair from root to end, you distribute the sebum oil along the hair shaft which will add natural moisture to more dry areas of your hair. Just be careful to use a brush with wider, softer bristles and don’t rip at knots.
- Rinse out harsh chemicals: Swimming in chlorinated pools and salt water can be very drying to your hair. Make sure you shampoo or rinse out these chemicals fairly quickly after you’ve left the water.
- Shield your hair from the sun: Before spending some time in the sun, spray your hair with a protective sunscreen to help reduce damage done by the heat and UV rays. Wearing a hat will also help with this, but if there is any hair left out in the direct sun light, make sure it has sunscreen on it. There are specific products you can purchase that are designed to be sunscreens for the hair.
- Wearing loose styles: When we wear our hair in tight hair styles, you put pressure on already weak hair, and put tension on the hair around our hairline. We also need to be aware that when we put our hair up, we often subconsciously put the hairband around the same place on your heads. So try a loose braid, or be aware to move your pony tail or loose bun in different spots on your head.
- Regular trims: it is essential that we regularly trim our hair. The reason being that when we have split ends, they will continue to split up the hair shaft and create more damage the longer they are left. Your hair grows on average about ½ inch a month. We recommend that you get a trim every 3 to 4 months. So you can take off ½ inch per trim, and retain 1 to 1 ½ inches of healthy hair at every trim.