What is your experience with dry shampoo?

I tried about a dozen dry shampoos before discovering Batiste and I never went back. It’s great – it doesn’t leave white residue after rubbing it in, even on dark hair like mine, and it doesn’t take much to get the job done. It also doesn’t leave my hair stiff like some of the others did.

As for tips, I have none. It’s not a magic product. You spray it on your roots, rub it in, and it soaks up excess oils. The rest of the styling process is up to you. Dry shampoo is a one trick pony.

Ha! Just bought some yesterday and have not used it yet. Hope it doesn’t turn powdery because then it will look awful. Looking forward to trying it out. However, I cannot say I was impressed when I used dry shampoo for dogs on my little snow white friend. I realize dogs and humans are not the same, but the regular dog shampoo won hands down. Let’s see what will happen when I use it!

@livelaughlove21 sounds disappointing! So you only use a bit, you don’t lather up the whole head of hair, right? Just a bit on your fingertips?

@ZEPHYRA It’s not disappointing at all. It does what it’s supposed to do and nothing more. You don’t put it on your fingertips and there’s no lather. It’s a powder spray – spray it on your roots, it’ll look white, then you rub it in with your fingers until all the white is gone and the oil is absorbed. Then style as usual.

Dry shampoo is full of chemicals I don’t want in my house. If your hair feels greasy every day, perhaps your conditioner is too rich. Try putting the conditioner only on your ends and don’t wash your hair every day. I doubt your hair is getting ‘greasy’ in just one day unless you are exercising and sweating.

Dry shampoo removes oils in the hair. You could do just as well with kitty litter.

I have used this (without the essential oils) as a stop gap measure between regular shampoos. It worked well on my hair.

Baby powder works just as well.

@gailcalled Not just as well, no. I’ve used baby powder before. First, you must use a light hand and if you put even a little too much, the white tint is nearly impossible to get out of dark hair. Also, the results don’t last as long. My hair starts to look greasy again a few hours after applying baby powder, but a quality dry shampoo lasts all day. I know girls that only wash their hair twice a week thanks to dry shampoo, it never looks or smells dirty. I don’t do that, but baby powder certainly would have the same effect.

I won’t even bother commenting on the kitty litter thing…

@OpryLeigh I’ve used dry shampoo, I think the one @livelaughlove21 is the one in the cupboard. As she says, it does the job. I rarely use it. If I’m working from home, I just don’t wash my hair so often. Doing this has led to me being able to leave my hair a couple of days without it being oily at all.

Here is a thing about going “no poo” and what the alternatives are, if you are interested.

If your hair looks great shampooing every day why try to fix something that isn’t broken? I don’t get it. Right now the trend is to say it’s bad to wash your hair every day, I say ignore it. I can skip a day, but my hair us dry, my scalp is dry, my face, body, I’m just in the dry side. Your not.

I’ve never tried dry shampoo, but my sister is very familiar with it and says it’s good.

@JLeslie, it’s because washing it so much strips the natural oils from your scalp and hair and so makes them drier. I believe washing your hair also stimulates increased oil production and so it needs more washing not less because you keep washing it. Plus we’re using a lot of chemicals on our body and putting them down the drain and into the environment. So it’s actually not such a benign process.

^^Except the OP doesn’t seem to need to worry about stripping.

I can put oil on my face and it gets absorbed. My husband is naturally oily, he has the opposite problem. There isn’t one answer that works for everyone.

Plus, @cazzie says the dry shampoos have chemicals. I trust her to know about chemicals. Maybe some brands are natural.

Well she does. The washing is probably causing her scalp to over produce oil. That’s what I mean about washing over-stimulating oil production. So we wash our hair, which leads to our hair and scalp being too dry, so our body produces oil to counteract that dryness. In the end it’s a vicious circle and our hair quickly looks oily and lank because of the increased oil production. So we wash more and dry our hair and scalp out and our scalp produces more oil and so it goes on.

There may be other reasons as well that she wants to cut back on regular washing. It’s time consuming, for one, and halving the number of times that she washes her hair also helps to cut costs.

The first link of mine is chemical free.

@Earthbound_Misfit I have my doubts about that based on my experience and people I know. I’ve never seen drying out an area cause more oil. Those people are oily in my experience.

Depending on the pH of the shampoo and even lowering the pH of rinsing your hair, you can try to help the condition of your hair. All the bullshit about ‘pH balanced’ shampoo is exactly NOT the best for your hair. The more on the alkaline side your hair products are, the worse for your hair. Here is a good article. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4158629/

Baby shampoo creates the most static electricity on your hair. And thus, actually promotes breakage, but it isn’t pH balanced to hair (about 3.67), but to our tears (closer to 7.0).

There are some schools of thought that suggest a final rinse with a pH lower than that of your scalp helps close or minimise the oil ducts at the base of the hair shaft.

^^Interesting. By final rinse do you mean the conditioner? The most important product I use is conditioner. The shampoo can be crappy, but if the conditioner isn’t what I need my hair is a huge horrible tangle. It’s best when both the shampoo and conditioner are good of course.

Also, if the oil ducts might be minimized that would mean for oily heads it is helpful to wash your hair. Right? Assuming the pH contained in it is helpful.

I just go back to if it’s working for the individual why screw around with it.

I don’t use a hair dryer, unless I have to wash my hair before going out in the freezing weather, but I avoid that best I can. Ordinary conditioners make my roots feel greasy at the end of the day, so I use a spray-on, leave-in conditioner and when it feels really dry, I have a hydrogenated castor oil I rub on my semi-dry hair and a lovely smelling Argon Oil leave on solution.

Over washing your hair can result in more breakage and dryer ends, but if the OP isn’t having problems with those two things, then it may not be a problem for her.

Thank you for you answers. @livelaughlove21 I’m sure I can get Batiste over here (UK) so will check it out.

@JLeslie the main reason for wanting an alternative is to save time. I have long hair which takes ages to dry which isn’t usually an issue but my time management isn’t great so it would be useful at times. Also, I recently stayed in a hotel that was having a problem with the hot water system. Having a cold shower didn’t appeal at all (especially as the weather is so cold here at the moment!!) so I just washed the important bits using the sink and piled my hair into a top knot. For the rest of the day it felt greasy and disgusting!

@JLeslie, this is supposed to be written by scientists, doctors and the like. You’re entitled to disagree of course. As to whether the OP should or should not change her hair washing process, she asked the question so I guess that suggests she wants to cut down on her hair washing and as she’s explained her main motivation is time.

Now we know it’s mostly about time, we didn’t before. If it’s a time thing then it makes perfect sense to try it.

That article does not look like it was written by scientists. Terms like sort of and no references to studies, doesn’t give me much confidence. @cazzie is a scientist. Back over a hundred years ago there were parasites and other animals living in hair because it was not washed regularly. They went for more than two days obviously. This is much like women being depicted as beautiful when they were curvy and fat by our standards today. The trends, old wives tales, and even the scientific knowledge changes and goes back and forth with new information.

Actually, @JLeslie , I’m a regular visitor and contributor to the broadcast at Naked Scientist. A group of us assemble online and listen to the broadcast and send questions and comments through twitter on Sundays. It is actual questions answered by actual scientists from or associated with Cambridge University.

They were discussing not washing your hair, ever. Of course, results will vary for the individual and the scientist was only giving his own anecdotal evidence of his own experience.

The OP is trying to save time. I suggest she wash her hair as normal, but only apply the conditioner to the ends and completely avoid the roots and scalp. I believe, this way, she should be able to skip every other day of washing. If she is like me, she can find a hairstyle for the days she doesn’t wash that simply scoops up the hair and pins it in place to fit under a hat. I tend to use of these beauties when I’m in a hurry (which is often and became an issue when I became a mom) https://sheenaspace.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/hair-clip.jpg Clip it up or a messy bun or a chignon and you are ready to go.

I have very thick hair and a pretty oily scalp, and used to wash my hair every day. Like @cazzie, when I became a mom that was no longer an option, and had to cut back to a twice a week wash. I used a cornstarch and clay mix to cope in the beginning, and then realized that sebum production did, indeed, decrease after a few weeks.

@JLeslie You mention the parasites and ‘other animals’ living in hair because it was not washed regularly. You are quite wrong. Lice actually prefer and flourish better in clean hair than oily hair. They get a better grip on clean hair. The poor ended up with lice because of living conditions they were exposed to, not because they didn’t wash. Regularly washing your hair does absolutely nothing to avoid having lice. In fact, for people with chemical sensitivities, I always recommend a castor oil mask wrapped in plastic around the hair to suffocate the little bastards. Follow up with a spray of lemongrass on hats, hoods and around anywhere the little buggers might find a place to hide, but without a host, they will die and their life cycle can be cut off quiet easily.

I wasn’t even thinking about lice. I certainly never feel like I am more or less likely to get lice because of how often I wash my hair. I think it has everything to do with being in close enough contact to “catch” it.

I thought there were other parasites in larger quantities from not washing. I might be incorrect.

Still, shampooing advice does come in trends, there is no getting around it.

@JLeslie what sort of ‘other animals’ did you have in mind?

I’m not sure. I just remember “learning” back in Victorian days the big hairdos were a place for critters. Maybe it is an old wives tale? We do have mites living in out hair I would guess? Just a guess. Similar to on our skin.

Anyway, your information was quite interesting and we basically agree each person figures out what works best for their head and hair.

I use dry shampoo. I straighten my hair every day, and my problem is if it gets wet, it goes super curly frizzy mess… Even at a little drop of water. I use dry shampoo so i don’t have to worry about getting oily hair if i shower the night before and not the morning of. It works well for me. Good luck :) and dry shampoo isn’t like a liquid, its more like a hairspray kind of thing, so it never messed up the way my hair is styled.