Shampoo

How to find the right shampoo

Shampoo is the most important foundation of haircare. If your hair is not clean none of our conditioners, treatments, or stylers will work as intended (think of polishing dirty floors). A good shampoo should leave your hair feeling soft and clean, not matted and dry. 9/10 times when a guest sits in my chair and their hair has been feeling dry it is due to under cleansing. 

Finding the right shampoo for you be determined by 3 factors: 

1. the frequency in which you wash your hair. The more often you wash, the gentler your shampoo should be. If it has been a week since you've washed a gentle shampoo won't be strong enough to get your hair clean.

2. how difficult to remove your styling products are. Unless we are straightening out curly hair, our stying products should be water soluble. This means we want to avoid hair oils (oil and water do not mix), raw butters like shea butter, or products that have a lot of silicone (a microplastic). These products coat and repel water, which can be helpful when straightening out curls, but will cause buildup and dryness if not fully removed. 

3. your lifestyle. You may need a stronger shampoo is you have a very active or dirty job or lifestyle like a personal trainer, swim teacher, athlete, or landscaper. 

How to properly shampoo hair

Make sure your hair is very wet when the shampoo is applied. work in the shampoo and layer with water as many times as needed until you achieve foaming. Double shampooing is okay if your hair is not lathering. 

Avoid curcular scrubbing motions, as this may cause more tangles. instead use small back and forth scrubbing motions on your scalp.

If you have put any styling products on your ends you must remove the stylers by shampooing your ends in order to avoid buildup and dryness. If you only washed and conditioned, feel free to skip shampooing your ends.

Moisturizing Shampoos

These are best for frequent washes with water soluble products or after washing with a strong shampoo if your hair is not foaming up. If it's been more than 3 days since washing, you've worked out, or you are using oils or silicone based products I recommend something stronger. 

These shampoos are so gentle I recommend a clarifying shampoo once in a while if your hair is starting to feel dry or your products don't work as well as they used to.

best gentle shampoo 

all purpose shampoos

Use these shampoos if your hair gets weighed down easily, if you use a lot of product, or if you wash less than 3x a week.

Clarifying Shampoos

Think of these as exfoliants for your hair. Here are some signs it's time to clarify:

 -your hair has been feeling dull or stiff
-you think you need to change up products that previously worked
-your roots look greasy right after washing
-your hair is matting together and getting more tangled than usual
-your hair feels dry and it wasn't caused by chemical or heat damage

Please do not only use these shampoos, your hair will be very sad. 

Purple shampoo

Purple shampoo will cancel out yellow tones in your blonde and grey hair. 

Be mindful that purple will not cancel our orange tones, so your hair will need to be fairly light in order to work. 

If you have some uneven brassiness but some areas of your hair are very light avoid using this as it will turn your light pieces grey and do nothing for your brassy spots, making everything look worse.

This shampoo is very strong and should only be used as needed. Overuse will darken and dull the hair.

purple shampoo