Is Silicone Free Shampoo Good?
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Is silicone free shampoo good? Or is it bad?
Why is silicone in shampoo anyway? Do I need it? If not, why is it bad for me?
As a cosmetologist and barber for my entire career, I’ve personally seen firsthand what kind of damage silicone does to hair and how to prevent it.
Is silicone free shampoo good?
Yes. Silicone free shampoo is good because it does not build-up on the scalp and hair as quickly as shampoo with silicone.
What does silicone in shampoo do?
It’s not dangerous, don’t worry. Using a silicone shampoo won’t kill you. It just might build up on your hair, cause it to break, and clog up your follicles so your hair doesn’t grow as easily.
Silicone is the plastic that the big shampoo production companies use as a filler in their product to dilute the shampoo. The only “benefit” it has for your hair is that it coats the hair strand itself (the shaft) and makes it smooth, shiny, and fills in dents and microscopic damage that may have been caused to the strand recently.
However, the downside to using shampoos with silicone is that it builds up and eventually is worse for your hair, and your scalp.
Why is that bad?
Because silicone is still plastic. As it builds upon each hair strand it will become sticky, have you ever felt that on your hair? When you go to wash your hair and it just tangles so bad you can’t run your fingers through it?
Sometimes when it’s dry but mostly only when it’s wet. That is the silicone buildup on the hair itself, once wet it sticks to other strands that have buildup causing the tangles.
DO NOT force your way through your hair at this point, you WILL BREAK YOUR HAIR!
What do you do about it now that it’s so built up you can’t comb your hair?
Clarifying Shampoo
Clarifying shampoo is specifically designed to remove buildup. Which is awesome when you’re trying to remove buildup.
Clarifying shampoo is also excellent to remove buildup from chlorine (hello swimmers!) and other hair styling products (hairspray, gels, and yes, silicone shampoos, etc).
You can find clarifying shampoo at any professional salons in your area. Or, if you’d like to experiment yourself, add baking soda to your shampoo (not straight in the bottle, but take some shampoo in a bowl or container and add a tablespoon or so to it, mix and shampoo).
I personally and professionally recommend using Paul Mitchell Shampoo Three.
DO NOT use clarifying shampoo every time you wash your hair. It’s designed to strip hair, so if you strip already cleansed hair and there is no buildup to remove clarifying shampoo will take the good, natural products your scalp produces with it.
Find Paul Mitchell Shampoo Three on Amazon Here!
How to Use Clarifying Shampoo – Ask a Hairstylist
Why did they start using silicone in the first place?
Most generic shampoo brands have silicone in it (Suave, Pantene, Garnier, being the worst that I’ve seen).
Whose idea was it to put silicone in shampoo anyway? It actually didn’t become a thing until the 1980s. And the original intent was to fill damaged hair. But the long-lasting damage, the silicone building up, becoming tangly, clogging the pores and follicles in the scalp, and weighing the strands to the point of breakage.
I can’t find ‘silicone’ on my ingredient list…
But what does silicone look like on the ingredient list? When you look at the back of your shampoo bottle, silicone isn’t listed. What it’s listed as is any of these; ‘dimethicone, cetyl dimethicone, cetearyl methicone, dimethiconol, stearyl dimethicone, cyclomethicone, amodimethicone, trimethylsilylamodimethicone, and cyclopentasiloxane’.
So all of this news and you ask, “What do I do now?” you might ask. It’s not necessary to completely scrap your current shampoo products. Just be careful with them. Use the silicone shampoos scarcely. And purchase a better quality shampoo to flip flop washes with.
So what silicone free shampoo do I use instead?
My personal favorite brand in my entire professional career as a barber and cosmetologist is Original Sprout. It was originally designed by a hairstylist for her sensitive-skinned daughter. It is a vegan, gluten, soy, dairy-free product line. No silicones, no parabens. It is PH balanced exactly with the skin so that your skin isn’t thrown off by the soap and left to bring itself back into balance. And it’s not tested on animals.
And BONUS! Original Sprout works as a lice repellent! Best Shampoo for Allergies and Dry Hair
Original Sprout has a variety of leave-in conditioners, and curly hair product lines that are absolutely excellent!
Find Original Sprout Shampoo and Conditioner on Amazon Here!
Happy hair day!