How many of us have come back from a hair salon with “perfect hair” and wished we could recreate this everyday! More often than not we experience bad hair days that cause us so much frustration.
Cristina from Absolutely Gorgeous shares a few basic hair care tips we can follow to ensure fabulous hair all the time.
Basic Tips to follow to ensure fabulous hair all the time.
* Watch the ingredients You want the most gentle shampoo possible. Check bottle labels to see if the shampoo or conditioner contains the lathering agent sodium laureth sulfate. This ingredient is incredibly drying & will leech moisture from your hair.
* When you wash your hair, take more time washing your scalp than the ends of your hair. Hair ends don't get all that dirty (unless you've got large doses of styling products layered over them), but the scalp can get oily and accumulate dead skin cells that need to come off. In addition, the scalp can almost always benefit from a massage, which will increase healthy circulation and help the hair that's developing in the follicles.
* Avoid washing repeatedly. You needn't wash your hair repeatedly to ensure remarkable results, so why not skip a shampoo or two? Remember, the more you wash your hair and the more styling products you apply, the greater the amount of buildup that adheres to your silky strands.
* Changing Shampoo brands. Using the same shampoo over & over can cause build-up on hair, so some beauty experts suggest you change out shampoos every time you finish a bottle. Other experts think this is a myth & hair doesn't get 'used to' shampoos. Build-up, however, exists & if you believe it's best to alternate shampoos, you'll love this tip.
* Too much conditioner or conditioner that isn't thoroughly rinsed out can make hair go limp. Using a shampoo that contains conditioning agents plus a conditioner can often result in buildup on the hair, making it heavy and lifeless. So unless you have extemely dry hair, generally, a shampoo is all that is needed or use your conditioner only where you need it, not necessarily all over or near the roots and scalp.
* Be careful to thoroughly rinse shampoo out of your hair. Leaving traces of detergent cleansing agents behind can make hair sticky and flat, not to mention serve as a source of scalp itching and irritation.
* When using a blow dryer, hair is easier to style and control when it is damp but not wet. When it comes to blow drying, hair can be fickle. It takes some experimentation to find out how damp your hair needs to be to get the best smoothness. It is also less damaging to hair to blow it dry with a styling brush when it is slightly dry; wet hair is more vulnerable to damage than dry hair.
* Always dry the root area first. This will provide the most fullness and control the basic shape of the style you're trying to achieve.
* Never use a curling iron on wet or damp hair. The heat from a curling iron can easily exceed the boiling point of water. The water content inside the hair shaft can actually boil if you apply a hot curling iron to it, and cause serious breakage and damage in that spot.
* When blowing your hair dry, do the roots first. Drying the roots up and away from the direction you want will achieve fullness and create the foundation for the rest of the hairstyle. Once the roots are done, you can smooth or curl the rest of the hair. If you leave the roots until last, they may already have dried in a direction you didn't want them to go, making them harder to shape. The length of the hair is easier to manipulate even if it is somewhat dry.