Top 10 Hair Care Tips and Tricks for Best Hair Care at Home
Top 10 Hair Care Tips For the Best Hair Care At Home
Though there are many more than just 10, we’re going to break it down into only 10 tips but elaborate on each one adding a few more tips and explaining why it’s important for the best hair care at home.
Top 10 Hair Care Tips – Tip 1
- Use the Right Products
Choosing the correct products for you can be a challenge sometimes because no two people’s hair chemistry is the same. For one person a product might be their miracle product, but for another it might not.
But there are a couple of general rules that apply to everyone-
❌ Do NOT use products that are not made for hair. For example, bar soap, or body soap for the hair. These products have different purposes, like killing germs on hands. Thus they have different ingredients that can damage the scalp and hair, and can buildup on the scalp, and even clog follicles and not allow hair to grow anymore.
👍 Do use sulfate-free and silicone-free shampoos.
Is Silicone Free Shampoo Good?
❌ Do NOT use clarifying shampoo as a daily wash. Clarifying shampoo is good, but it is designed to strip buildup, so if you use it everyday when there is no buildup to strip it will strip the good stuff. Which will then leave the hair dry and the pH off balance.
👍 Make your own chemical-free cleansers and conditioners. This ensures that you don’t have any surprise ingredients or chemicals that will hurt your skin and cause hormonal imbalances.
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Other Product and Washing Tricks for the Best Hair Care at Home
👍 Use hair oils and masks!
Hair oil works as a leave-in conditioner. If you use too much hair oil does make the hair look greasy but if used sparingly – only 2-4 drops – it will coat the hair and leave the hair soft and hydrated.
Hair masks should be used once per week for extra moisture without building up on the hair. Generally, using hair masks helps the hair grow faster too! With the extra blood circulation of the application, massage, and rinsing the mask out, AND the moisture that soaked into the scalp and hair will encourage health and growth.
Top 10 Hair Care Tips – Tip 2
- Avoid Hair ties, Braids, Dreads that are Too Tight!
Extra tight braids, dreads, or hair ties creates too much tension on the hair, which stretches the cuticle, crushes the cuticle, and causes breakage.
Once the cuticle is damaged there is no repairing it. A damaged cuticle makes the hair unable to retain moisture, and allows the hair to break and fray even more.
Dread locks require a ton of back-combing and a special hook to lock the hair and tangle it to the point where it is extremely damaging and very difficult to detangle if the wearer no longer wants dreads. To touch up dreads it requires tightening the lock right up to the scalp, which creates tension and like discussed above, is very damaging to the hair.
Best Hair Care at Home Tricks for Preventing Tension on the Hair
✔️ Instead of rubber or plastic ties, use fabric or silk elastic hair ties or scrunchies.
✔️ Braid the hair tight enough that it won’t fall out but not tight enough that it hurts your scalp or pulls on your skin.
❌ Don’t brush your hair wet.
When the hair is wet the water compromises the hair’s elasticity, meaning it makes the hair stretchy. If you brush your hair while it is wet, the brush grabs so much of the hair with the many bristles and stretches the hair to the point of breaking. If the hair doesn’t break in the brush it definitely stretches the cuticle, making tiny little breaks in the cuticle.
👍 Comb wet hair instead of brushing. The comb doesn’t stretch the hair as far or as strongly as a brush because it isn’t as wide as a brush.
Tip 3… Lifestyle
- Consider Lifestyle Factors
What are lifestyle factors? Alcohol. Poor diet. Smoking habits. Little to no exercise.
It only takes repeating an action 3 times for it to start becoming a habit. Be intentional with making good choices and building habits for your overall health and hair health.
Hair is an afterthought when it comes to overall body health. If the body is sick or needs more focus in other areas the hair comes after that.
If you are overall physically and internally healthy, the healthier your hair will look and feel too!
Tip 4 – Reducing Stress
- Let’s Talk About Stress
Stress increases cortisol in your blood. Cortisol is a hormone that can cause alopecia or hair loss.
Exercise and other healthy habits decrease cortisol in the blood, as well as release endorphins and other happy hormones like oxytocin into the body which increases good mental health and overall moral for the average everyday.
Does Exercise Help Hair Growth?
👉 If given the option, choose water over other sugary or alcoholic beverages, this is not only good for your overall health but also better for your brain to be able to process stress
Does Drinking Water Promote Hair Growth?
👉 Go for a walk and take time for yourself to de-stress and make a healthy work-life balance
Work-Life Balance in the Salon – Preventing Burnout
👉 Taking vitamins and supplements help give the body an extra boost of energy so that it doesn’t have to try to fight and try to find the nutrients it needs elsewhere. If the body is fed and has the nutrients it requires the hair will be healthier
👉 Eating rich proteins like beef, chicken, fish, and tofu will enrich the blood and feed the body with nutrients that will be carried to the scalp and follicles to encourage growth
Top 10 Hair Care Tips – Tip 5
- Avoiding heat
The outside of the hair shaft is called the cuticle, it lays like shingles on a roof. When the cuticle is exposed to heat it lifts, allowing moisture to leave the hair. Hot water and hot tools (blow dryers and curling irons etc.) lift the cuticle and dries out the hair even more. The lifted cuticle also makes the hair look frizzy.
👍 Wash with lukewarm water or cool water, not hot water.
Rinsing the hair with cool water allows the cuticle to lay flat, trapping moisture on the inside. A closed cuticle also makes the hair look smooth and keeps color from fading faster.
👍 Always use a heat protectant before blow drying or using a curling iron or flat iron
Hot tools blow open the cuticle with it’s high heat settings and can actually burn the hair itself. If the hair is wet or damp at all when a hot tool is used, the high heat will cause the water to boil inside of the hair, cooking it from the inside out.
Heat protectant products actually coat the hair and this allows the product to burn before the hair does, avoiding the damage altogether.
👍 Use blow dryer diffuser
A diffuser is an attachment that goes on the blow dryer itself to disperse the hot air evenly onto the hair which makes it safe for even curly hair! This keeps the hair from being blasted with super hot air in just one spot.
👍 Air drying the hair
Allowing your hair to dry naturally. Meaning towel blotting your hair after a wash so that it’s not dripping and let the air suck the water out of the hair, and evaporating. Air drying takes time, which means you have to plan ahead so that you aren’t rushing out of the house to work with a wet mop on your head.
Air drying eliminates the blow dryer entirely and can help eliminate frizz!
18 Quick Tips to Get Rid of Frizzy Hair Overnight
Tip 6 – Notice and Eliminate Product Buildup
- Any and All Products Buildup on the Hair
Product buildup happens no matter what products you use. Shampoo and conditioner, and styling products.
If you are using styling products everyday, or washing your hair everyday there is a higher chance that you will have more buildup than if you wash and style once every several days.
✔️ Utilizing clarifying shampoo to remove buildup is how you go about this process.
Clarifying shampoo is not a daily cleanser. It is designed to break down wax and silicone buildup from other shampoos, hairsprays, gels, pomades, mousses, and other products and strip them from the hair. If used too often it will also strip the good oils too often.
✔️ Make sure the scalp is nice and clean, scrubbed well but not to rough to create lesions, but enough to eliminate dead skin and a possible buildup of sebum -natural oil made by the scalp- but be sure to hydrate the scalp afterwards!
🛑 Hydrate 👏 The 👏 Scalp 👏
After clarifying the hair and scalp BE SURE to hydrate afterwards to restore the scalp’s natural pH to prevent excess oil to be made and your hair becomes greasy.
How to Train the Scalp to Not get Oily or Greasy
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Tip 7 – Getting a Haircut
- Get a Haircut every 4-12 Weeks
Maintaining the ends of your hair will help you be able to see the growth better and keep the hair from breaking the length that it just worked very hard to grow.
You should get your hair cut once every 4-12 weeks (1-3 months).
Let’s clear one thing up… a ‘trim’, a ‘haircut’, and ‘just the ends’ are all exactly the same thing. The exact same number of hairs are being cut and therefore hairstylists and barbers charge the same price for their haircuts.
👉 Cutting off the split ends (which are completely normal!) helps the hair from breaking more.
Do Split Ends Stop Hair Growth?
Tip 8 – Brushing the Hair Properly
Only brush the hair dry, never wet!
Like mentioned above in Tip 2, brushing the hair when it’s wet and the hair’s elasticity is the most compromised don’t brush the hair until it’s dry. It’s okay while it’s dry, but not when it’s wet out of the shower unless you use a comb or wet brush.
A wet brush is designed to have a more narrow head and fewer teeth that are more spread out than a dry brush. This doesn’t create as much tension on the hair and stretch it like a wide brush with lots of teeth would.
Another kind of brush is a boar bristle brush is designed to smooth hair, not detangle it. It will not work on wet hair at all. These brushes also can be made out of plastic and are great for scrubbing the scalp when the hair is dry to remove dead skin and scalp buildup.
How to Remove Scalp Buildup
👉 Reduce scalp buildup by parting the hair in half inch sections and use the corner of the bristle brush to lightly exfoliate the scalp.
👉 Or you can use granulated white sugar or salt mixed into your regular amount of conditioner and massage that into the scalp to exfoliate. But you CANNOT use this method every time you wash or else you will buildup sugar on your hair, or dry out the scalp with salt.
Exfoliating the scalp in either of the two methods above should be done once per month and hydrated with a moisturizing mask afterwards to help the scalp recover from the tiny scratches exfoliating leaves after the dead skin is scraped away.
Best Hydrating Hair Mask for All Hair Types
How to Train the Scalp to Not get Oily or Greasy
Properly Combing the Hair
👍 To properly comb the hair you simply lightly spray leave-in conditioner or massage hair oil into your tresses, beginning at the bottom length begin combing the hair until you reach the scalp and it is all smooth.
❌ Never tear through a tangle or yank on the comb or brush, this will tear the hair and only frustrate you even more.
If you are having trouble with a bad tangle, just apply more oil (only two drops at a time!) and work from the outside of the tangle inwards toward the center of the knot. Smoothing the outside of the tangle before tearing into the entire thing and causing breakage.
Top 10 Hair Care Tips- Tip 9 Protect From Chlorine
Chlorine is a chemical that prevents fungus and algae to grow in water. It dries out hair and creates a sticky buildup on the hair that can turn hair green.
Preventing and removing chlorine from the hair is easy. Simply wet your hair with clean water before getting in the pool. And put conditioner on the hair without rinsing it out.
To remove chlorine from the hair simply use clarifying shampoo after you swim. Apply the shampoo and allow it to lather up, massaging it into the hair for 1 minute. This gives the product enough time to do its work and remove the chlorine.
Hair is like a sponge, it will soak up whatever you put on it. The hair will soak up the water and whatever room is left in the hair will be used up by the conditioner and the clean water will be sealed in. There is no longer any room for the hair to soak up chlorine. And using a clarifying shampoo afterwards will remove any chlorine that might have sneaked its way in or on to the hair.
How to Use Clarifying Shampoo – Ask a Hairstylist
Finally Tip 10 – Important for Daily Hair Care Routine
- Deep conditioning
What is deep conditioning?
Deep conditioners are rinsed out. Masks are left in for a period of time and then rinsed out. Both achieve the same results but still can’t replace each other.
There is a place for both. Using a deep conditioner replenishes the hydration in the hair and on the scalp, balancing the pH to its natural 4.5-5.5 and helps keep the ends of the hair from splitting.
A hydrating mask deeply conditions the hair in the same way but isn’t used every time that you wash. It’s important to use both to maintain healthy and hydrated hair and scalp.
The best deep conditioners and hydrating masks have vitamins that are excellent for eliminating free radicals on the scalp and nourishing the follicles to encourage faster growth. Especially for a natural hair care routine and daily hair care regimen.
FAQs for Top 10 Hair Care Tips
How to take care of the scalp?
Exfoliate the scalp frequently and hydrate it afterwards to avoid buildup and keep the hair healthy and encourage growth.
Exercise regularly to stimulate blood flow which eliminates toxins that slow hair growth.
What is a natural hair care regimen?
A natural hair care regimen is usually for curly hair but can also be used for all types of hair.
A regimen for natural hair care is when you shampoo once a week, only condition every other wash and air dry only. Afterward a hair oil is usually applied as a leave-in conditioner.
A natural hair care routine–
A natural hair care routine can look different for every person. But usually goes along the lines of chemical-free products, sulfate and silicone-free shampoos, and deep conditioners. Sometimes even homemade moisturizers!
I personally love homemade conditioners and leave-in conditioners for natural hair care routines!
Some hair care tips for long hair–
Hair care tips for long hair include the same as listed in this article.
- Use the right products
- Avoid tension and tight ties in the hair
- Consider lifestyle factors
- Reduce stress
- Avoid heat
- Remove product buildup
- Get a haircut
- Brush the hair properly
- Protect from chlorine
- Deep condition
For long hair wearers, usually getting a haircut, brushing properly and deep conditioning often enough are the struggle. Be diligent with these hair care tips for long hair and your locks will remain healthy and beautiful.
