I always read this in factoids designed for women–wash your hair less, it’ll look great! Natural oils! Shampoo companies are evil corporations!
My hair felt a bit dry a few months ago so I tried washing it less (as opposed to every day). Eventually it looked awful and it got flakey and oily. I’m back to washing it every day (skipping a day here and there) and it looks better than ever.
Does this work on anyone? I mean, I have a lot of hair so I guess it gets oily fast. And it’s always looked great, so maybe this advice is designed for people who have less hair/thinner hair? What do you guys feel?
I stopped shampooing every day and now shampoo twice a week, and I think my hair is happier. Of course, I frequently look like one of Dr Suess’s creatures is sleeping on my head, so there is some tradeoff. My hair is really dry and somewhat curly.
I have fine straight hair, and it’s terrible advice for me. My scalp is normally neither dry nor oily, but when I skip a day or even shower later in the evening than usual, my hair gets oily and flat.
It works for me. I wash mine every other day. It’s always kind of dry looking the day I wash it. The next day, it looks healthy and shiny, but not oily. I could probably go longer with it still looking good. But after two days, I can’t stand the way it feels.
I wash my extremely thick, curly hair every other day, and it usually looks slightly better on the second day. I occasionally go several days without washing it, and it doesn’t seem to suffer tremendously.
Hmm, yeah, I don’t have curly hair. It’s straight with sort of a wave (goes really straight if I blow dry) and it’s very, very thick. Plus, I work out a lot, so that’s probably why it’s so bad to skip too many washes for me.
I have medium length very thick hair cut in layers. It looks like Hell the day I wash it, and the day after - very soft, shapeless. I have no patience or ability with curling irons, gels, mousse, etc. After the natural oils come back, it looks super and I don’t have to do a thing to it. So I wash it about twice a week. (When I wore it long, parted in the middle, it was all greasy from my scalp to about 3 inches down, all dry and messed up from there on. It was a chore washing it every day. Getting it cut was a wise decision.)
I have straight, fine-textured (but lots of it) hair and I don’t wash my hair more than 3 times a week. I also regularly get compliments on how shiny my hair is, so it works for me.
Keep in mind I also have extremely dry skin, which may have something to do with it (I might correspondingly have a dry scalp that produces less oil).
This exactly. I’ve also stopped blow-drying my hair and have switched to shampoo without sodium lauryl sulfate, and my medium-thickness, wavy hair looks as healthy as it did when I was a child and is actually shiny. When I was in high school (washing and blow-drying every day), my hair was the flat matte brown of wet tree bark and practically as rough. Now it’s soft and glossy.
Wavy, extra thick, shoulder length hair checking in. Yes, it works for me. It looks best on days 2 and 3 of the wash cycle, resulting in a twice a week shampoo and conditioning. If it gets funky “shaped” in the meantime, I wet it down slightly and restyle it. It doesn’t get even remotely greasy looking until day 6, although I only rarely let it go that long.
Straight, fine, waist length hair here. I wash my hair once a week. I used to wash it daily, but it was always dry and dull looking, I wanted to try shampooing it less, but never could get through the breaking in period where your hair looks like oily hell. A week long rock climbing trip into the back country helped get over that. I would like to try the no shampoo hair cleaning, but I think I am too chicken.
Once a week I wash my hair twice, and then condition it with a small amount of commercial conditioner mixed with a tablespoon of jojoba oil and added twenty drops of tea tree essential oil and ten drops of peppermint essential oil. It makes my scalp tingle, and my hair smell nice for a week!
I have thick, slightly wavy hair and I wash it every other night. The next day it tends to be dry and unruly, but on the second day it’s softer and more tame. It tends to be kind of oily at the end of the second day though, especially where I’m constantly pushing my bangs back.
Thick, “naturally curly” (read: does whatever it wants to and gets frizzy if moisture looks at me cross-eyed) hair, and washing less often works better for me. I try for every other or every third day; if I wash every day the frizzyness goes crazy.
I wash, condition and mousse my very curly thick hair every day if I am going out, every other day if I get to stay at home. If I go longer than that my head itches horribly and my face breaks out in red itchy blotches.
My hair never seems dried out, but I keep it trimmed and I think I was blessed with really strong hair anyway.
I stopped washing my hair every day and I am pleased with the results. I have thick, curly hair that I flat iron and I’ve never had an oily hair day so not washing/conditioning it every day has given me more shine.
Yep, me too. My constantly too dry scalp can’t take it if I wash my hair every day, except during the summer, but I can’t go more than two days without my hair itself it getting sort of oily, either.
Long, thick, curly hair. I wash my whole head of hair about once a week, but I spot shampoo my bangs every day or every other day because they tend to get greasy lying against my face.