Many times I have tried going for days between shampoos but it always leaves my hair greasy, limp and flat and my scalp itchy. My hair only looks good when I shampoo every day. Sometimes if I am not leaving the house, I will skip a day, but it gets so greasy that it looks wet at the roots.
I have a lot of hair, but it’s very fine. It generally looks best the third day after I wash it. So I typically don’t wash it more often than every three days, sometimes longer.
This is for when it’s long (shoulder length & below). I’ve had it chin length. Oddly, when it was shorter, I needed to wash it more often. When it was longer, it needed washing even less often–say once a week.
This would have described me ten years ago. Back then, I almost needed to wash my hair twice a day. Certainly I couldn’t let it go longer than once a day. The intervening ten years has seen menopause come and go and my hair is a lot drier than it used to be. I now wash it every three days and I’ve noticed a marked improvement in its condition. When the humidity drops, I can go as long as four days.
My good results are less money spent on shampoo!
Since I quit workin’, my food bill and personal hygene bills have plummeted! 
I wash my hair about twice a week…
a.) I hate taking the time to wash/condition/blow dry/style it, and
b.) I like my hair best 2 or 3 days after I wash it.
When my hair is super clean it doesn’t hold a style. And it has less volume. It’s so clean it’s almost slippery.
A day or two later it has more fullness, less frizz and when I style it, it holds the style. If my bangs get greasy I just wash those; if my roots get a little greasy I sprinkle a little baby powder on them, flip my head over, fluff and I’m good to go.
Lots of my friends wash their hair daily. I can’t imagine taking the time to do that every day. Washing my hair adds over half an hour (if not more) to my routine; I just don’t have the time or interest.
FTR I have medium-long hair…thick but fine-textured and (mostly) straight.
Exactly – including “your hair could be in a Pantene ad” compliments. Well, compliment – someone said that once.
I wash my hair every third day, though I often put it in a pony tail on the third day.
I wash my hair every day, but only because I work out hard enough every day that it gets wet with sweat. I wash in the morning, put it up, exercise around noon, blow dry a bit, and put it back up.
I get more compliments on my hair in the afternoon then in the morning. I think it makes it look thicker or something.
I have wavy, shoulder-length hair that tends to be dry, and it is definitely better when I don’t wash it every day. My stylist suggested that I was it as little as I can get away with, but it feels greasy to me on the third day, so I generally don’t go that long, even though I think it would look even better. I do wet it every day, because it looks like hell if I try to go anywhere with bed head and it looks frizzed out if I brush it when it’s dry. My routine is wash and condition every other day (just shampooing the scalp, as per my stylist’s suggestion) and to rinse it out, massaging my scalp with water and conditioning the ends on the off day. It also never sees a blow drier, because that way lies split ends for me. I like it normally, though now I’m growing out an unfortunate experience with highlights (my hair doesn’t like coloring either, apparently).
Every day during the week mit conditioner, none on the weekend unless social engagements require it. I have thick strawberry blonde hair. I stopped combing it a few months ago and it looks better because of that.
46 yo M
Yup. I wind up washing it at least every other day, because of my workout schedule, but my hair really is happiest when I wash it every third day or so. I *do *wet it and condition it every day, because it’s an irredeemably matted mess after it’s been slept on.
My hair is actually in really good condition, which I credit partly to the non-daily washings, but mostly to the fact that I don’t brush it, I don’t even own a blowdryer, and I only flat-iron it when I dye it (so that I don’t have to wet it for a couple of days). My hair is very much wash (or wet) and go.
Ditto. I’ll skip a day because I know I’m not leaving the house, but if I’m going out in public, my hair must be washed and completely done every day or it looks horrible.
Ha! I could just see the directions on the shampoo bottle: “For best results use less often.” Like anyone in the marketing department would ever seriously consider putting that on their client’s products.
I wash my hair about 2 or 3 times a week, but I also make sure to brush my hair with a boar bristle brush every morning and night. This practically eliminates my hair snarling and re-distributes the oils on my scalp to the ends of my hair. It also makes shampooing and conditioning a lot easier.
Bingo!
Try this, works for me (10+ years):
Everyday: Apply conditioner (NO shampoo), work up as you do with shampoo, and rinse immediately.
You’ll be amazed how much crud comes off with pretty much any wet, slippery stuff - and you won’t be stripping your hair - it is quite able to regulate amount of oil required.
I have three textures on my head: wavy (20%), curly (60%), and tightly curly (20%). I wear it short.
This may freak people out, but I only wash my hair every three weeks or so. I used to be on a once/twice a week regiment, especially when I was doing field work (of course if I had mud and bugs in my hair, I’d wash it immediately). But my hair doesn’t get dirty very quickly with my current lifestyle. It’s naturally dry, as is my skin, and when I wash it too often, it gets all frizzy and poofy. My hair doesn’t start looking nice until it has accumulated about a week’s worth of oil. It’s absolutely fabulous by the third week. But as I get to the fourth week, it gets greasy. Then I wash it with just a pea-sized amount of shampoo and a lot of conditioner. Repeat the process.
I guess I could speed along the process by supplementing with hair products, but I’ve always hated putting stuff in my hair. I don’t like how most products smell, I don’t want shiny, greasy, stiff-looking or fake-looking hair, and when I have stuff in my hair, I feel like I really must wash it out at the end of the day.
No one else has mentioned this, so I figured I’d throw it out there: don’t you start to smell your hair if you don’t wash it? On the days when I’m not leaving the house, I don’t wash it, and I can smell the hair oil. It doesn’t reek, but it smells like the inside of my husband’s baseball hat, and I don’t particularly like it. On the extremely rare occasions when I’ve gone more than two days without washing, the smells becomes more pronounced and definitely not OK. I can also smell other people’s hair if they haven’t washed it for a while, so it’s not just a personal thing.
I wouldn’t go out in public without washing my hair, partially for that reason, and partially because my scalp feels oily to me after a day, definitely after two. Could be psychosomatic, as I have very thick, wavy hair, which is the type you all are saying could profit from missing a few shampoos. Damn my overly sensitive nose!
Very, very thin, curly hair. I don’t wash it every day. I generally wash it around twice a week. Of course I am sure, like the oil on our faces, the oiliness of our scalps varies week to week with our hormonal schedule, so sometimes it needs more washing, sometimes less.
My hair doesn’t smell bad to me. I think your nose might just be a little sensitive, Rubystreak, but hair unwashed for a couple of days doesn’t immediately start reeeking; just like you don’t actually have to take a shower daily. (This I do, however - can’t pry my eyes open properly without a shower.) It just smells more natural like the oils in it.
But it could also be that your hair does smell bad. Not personal, mind you! Just might be your sweat smells bad to start with. I have met such people.
I have wavy to curly, fine yet thick hair, and it’s rather oily. When I wore it long, I could skip a day of shampooing now and then, but no longer. Now that I wear it short, it seems that I have to wash it every day or it’s horribly greasy. I wonder if this could have anything to do with PCOS; that sure as hell has kept my face oily all these years. I haven’t tried simply rinsing and conditioning, though, as I usually use a combined shampoo and conditioner. I do have some separate products now so I could try it. I also use this weird hair stuff to keep my bangs from curling up (my hair gets straighter the shorter it is, but the bangs still want to curl), so I have to wash that out after I use it.
It might depend on what’s in your water. I know my hair has been more manageable since I’ve been living here (I can get away with not blowdrying!)
Personally, my hair is so thick that it takes a few days for the oils to come back enough that I’m happy with how it looks. Right after it’s been washed it has too much body and it’s both more difficult to manage and just doesn’t look right to me. It also takes forever to dry, so daily washings would drive me batty–I just don’t have that kind of patience.
XY here:
My hair is so oily that I could probably get away with washing it with lye twice a day.
For me, going even one day without washing my hair leaves my hair looking unsightly and super-heavy and limp. Looks like someone dumped Mazola all over my head. I can get away with it only if I’ve got a very short haircut.
EDIT: Oh yeah – arrow-straight hair, but thick. Probably a big factor in why it gets so limp-looking so quick.