If you are like most women, you probably assume that having great hair is all about having a great shampoo and conditioner, and nothing else. But in reality, there is a lot more that goes into proper hair care and maintenance than just that. Hair is very fragile, especially when compared to the rest of your body and so keeping your hair strong, healthy and looking beautiful can use all the help it can get! Therefore, here are our favorite hair care tips that every woman should keep in mind in order to maximize the strength and beauty of their hair as much as possible!
Don’t wash your hair every day
Although shampoo and conditioner are very important to maintaining the beauty and strength of your hair, it is important not to overdo it. Women in particularly are quite overzealous when it comes to hair maintenance, washing their hair with hair care products on a daily basis. However, this can end up having a detrimental effect on your hair by systematically weakening the hair over time as it becomes dependent on the shampoo and conditioner to keep it strong. Therefore, at the very least, do not wash your hair every single day. Try washing it every other day, or leaving at least one rest day every few days.
Another bonus tip: on days that you wash your hair with conditioner, rinse it out with cold water as opposed to hot water to help maintain your hair’s strength.
Be consistent with your hair care products
Despite what you may think about the hair care industry in general, individual shampoo and conditioner products are specifically formulated and can vary quite a bit from other similar products. And while this won’t necessarily have a detrimental effect to your hair, switching up shampoos and conditioners to often will limit how effective they are in strengthening your hair and making it look beautiful.
Unless you have a really good reason to change your hair care products, don’t continuously switch them up for every wash. In fact, only change hair care products if you aren’t seeing positive results from them after at least a week or two, or if they are causing irritation on your scalp (in which case change your shampoo and conditioner products right away!).
Apply natural oil to your hair to supplement shampoo and conditioner
While shampoo and conditioner definitely have their benefits when it comes to hair care, they do sometimes end up stripping your hair of essential vitamins and minerals. This is why washing your hair too often can result in weaker, less shiny hair. So instead of just washing your hair sparingly, you can also help keep your hair strong and beautiful by applying oil directly to your hair.
Popular oils include coconut oil and olive oil, but in reality, any natural oil works perfectly fine for this purpose. And all you have to do is take the oil and generously apply it to your hair, ideally starting from the roots. Slowly and carefully run the oil throughout the entire lengths of your hair, either using your hands or a comb. Once the oil is covering all of your hair in its entirety, leave it in for at least 20 minutes. Note that if you plan on walking around the house and doing something else in the meantime, you should use a hair pin or similar to pin the hair up on top of your head, to keep your oily hair away from your body or clothes. And finally, make sure you wash it out using cold water!
Again, this is a great way to keep the strength and health of your hair in proper balance, when used in conjunction with regular washing of your hair in the shower.
Be gentle with wet hair
After just having finished applying shampoo and conditioner to your hair, you may feel like your hair is invincible in the moments just after stepping out of the shower. However, when you hair is soaking wet that is actually when you can damage the hair the most. Be especially careful when drying your hair right after you shower, making sure to avoid tugging or pulling on the hair too much. Using a hair dryer is also highly discouraged as the extreme heat can do some serious damage to your wet hair. In our opinion, the best way to dry your hair in a safe was is to run a large comb through your hair very slowly. This will help to pull water out from your hair, essentially helping to dry your hair that way.
Our hair is so important to our beauty standards as women, making it extra important to keep our hair on point at all times. While shampoo and conditioner are absolute staples to great hair, it is important not to overdo it, by giving some rest days where you don’t use these products, as well as by making sure that you stick with a shampoo and conditioner combination for at least a week or two before trying out something new. Even then though, supplementing your hair routine with some natural oil application directly to your hair is highly suggested to keep your hair particularly strong and healthy. And as a preventive measure, always make sure that you are particularly gentle with your hair when it is wet just coming out of the shower. Keep all these tips in mind and you can bet that you will end up with beautiful, shiny and most importantly healthy hair!