photo: istockphoto post designed by kristin ess

Alright, time to give you the rundown on this little bottle of magic we call dry shampoo. It’s one of my favorite products on the market today and I love teaching people about it! I’m always surprised when people sit in my chair and haven’t heard of it. I can talk about it all day, and I’m about to…

What is it?

Dry shampoo is a super-fine powder that comes in spray-on, dust-on and shake-on forms. Its main purpose is to soak up the oil your scalp produces, which is what makes our hair look dirty. This brilliant cylinder of dust can literally take the hair from looking oily and limp to looking freshly blown out in one quick POOF!  Consider it like facial blotting papers, but for your hair.

What are the benefits of dry shampoo?

Where do I begin? First of all, when you apply dry shampoo, you’re allowing your natural oils to stay in contact with your hair longer, which we know is good. The reason we don’t usually like to do that is because after a while, it looks, um, gross. Dry shampoo = best of both worlds. Oils can stay put, nourishing the hair, while the powder takes away the unwanted sheen! (I really want to add a link to “unwanted sheen” but i won’t.)

Some of you thermally straighten your hair with a blow dryer and/or flat iron. When you do that, you want to make it last as long as possible so you’re not over doing it with heat styling. Putting dry shampoo on freshly straightened locks can easily extend the life of a blow out. Think of it like this; high temperatures cause condensation + gland stimulation at your scalp. Oil, sweat and moisture lead to curls coming back. Applying dry shampoo to the roots before working out or stepping out into warmer weather can significantly slow that down by soaking it all up!

M’ladies with short hair and bangs. I know I don’t have to tell you that your hair comes in constant contact with your forehead, picking up the oils from your face, causing annoying, unwanted separation which you justify by calling it “whispy”. A burst of dry shampoo WILL. FIX. IT. It also gives incredible added texture to short, cropped hair when applied on top of a water based pomade or paste.

Most of my clients with thick, coarse or naturally curly hair used to think they couldn’t use dry shampoo. Truth is, they can and should. When hair is super thick, curly or coarse, it naturally lacks moisture because oils don’t travel down the hair as quickly. It could need more time between shampoos! Going one extra day between washings can help natural oils make their way down the hair shaft that much further. If the hair is very dry, try lightly applying dry shampoo on the part only, and putting a little jojoba oil on the ends. Jojoba oil is the closest thing to the oil our scalp produces.

The only people who don’t really need dry shampoo are those of you who don’t produce much oil or those of you that have a dry scalp. The few who can go 3-5 days without so much as a glimmer of unwanted sheen are very lucky. Just be sure you’re properly conditioning and getting nourishment to the ends of your hair!

When do you put it on?

Dry shampoo goes on air dried or blow dried hair. Not on wet hair. Originally I thought it was best to put dry shampoo on your roots when it started to look dirty. Maybe 2 or 3 days after you blow dry, and that’s still great! But my favorite thing now is to put it on right after I blow the hair out.  That way, as the oils come out, it “catches” them. This keeps it from getting dirty and flat to begin with. I’ve come to find that dry shampoo on clean hair leads to extra bounce and volume. I use this trick on photo shoots a lot.

Where do I get it?

There are lots of different kinds of dry shampoo out there today. It’s become widely available and insanely popular so you won’t have a hard time finding it. You can find it at the drug store, or next time you go into your salon, ask your stylist which one they recommend. Test it out! See how your hair feels and most importantly how it looks!

How do I apply it?

You want to apply dry shampoo where hair might appear dirty. In other words, if you’re wearing your hair down, you don’t need to apply underneath in the back, mostly just on the top, maybe around the part and along the front hairline. If you’re wearing your hair up in a bun or ponytail, you’ll want to get underneath a little bit. The ultimate trick with ANY dry shampoo is patting it in. Not brushing, not wiping with your hand, just patting it lightly until it blends in. This is how you stay away from it looking “powdery”.

xxkristin