Wash-Day, Rescheduled
Move it to Thursday evening and the rest of the week sorts itself out. For years I washed my hair on Saturday morning, which is to say I washed my hair at…
Move it to Thursday evening and the rest of the week sorts itself out.
Five steps Four products One wash, three days of upkeep 35 minutes, once a week
Pick the evening, not the morning
Count back two days from the day your hair needs to be good, and wash that evening. Thursday is the safe default. Early enough that it dries before bed, because wet hair swells and swollen hair under a pillow for seven hours is where the breakage happens.
No product · technique
Clarify every third or fourth wash
Scalp only, one minute, then out. A clarifying shampoo strips silicone and the calcium your tap water leaves behind, and it is very good at it — which is exactly why it is not a weekly product. Used every wash it takes the softness and the colour with it.
Product Clarifying shampooTen minutes, ears down
Squeeze the water out first — conditioner on soaking hair is conditioner in dilute form heading for the drain. Apply from ear level down, twist it up, and leave it for ten minutes while you do something else. Two minutes is a rinse-out conditioner with ambitions; thirty adds nothing.
Product Deep conditionerProtectant on damp, then rough-dry
Wait until the hair is genuinely damp rather than dripping, then spray and rough-dry on medium heat, fifteen centimetres away, to about eighty per cent. Protectant raises the temperature at which damage starts. It does not make hair fireproof, and a straightener on damp hair boils the water inside the shaft.
Product Heat protectantDry shampoo, the night before
Apply on the evening of day two, to roots that have not gone yet, twenty centimetres away, then brush it through and go to bed. It absorbs the oil as it arrives instead of sitting on top of it in a visible grey layer. Applied at eight in the morning, it is powder on grease and it reads as powder on grease.
Product Dry shampoo