How often should a girl wash her hair?
A lot depends on how curly and how oily your hair gets. Curly hair needs less washing than straight. Sometimes if you have really oily hair cutting back on washing can cause your scalp to produce less oil — but other times you’ll just end up with a really greasy head. Everyone is different. After discoverying the recommendations on naturallycurly.com, I went for a month without using any products in my hair. I massaged my scalp under hot water in the shower every day, then combed. My hair wasn’t smelly or greasy at all, but it was kind of limp. Now I’m back to washing every other day. I have curly hair, but it’s not all that long or thick so washing isn’t much of a chore. Also, since I can’t really brush my curls when they’re dry, and just use a comb when they’re wet, I kind of have to wash just to keep it from getting too tangled. My mom has a friend with long thick hair who washes once or twice a week and deep conditions once a week. She is a
I should think the number one factor in maintaining healthy, happy, long hair is simply this: the quality of your brushing. If one were using a natural-bristle brush and doing the requisite “100 strokes a night”, you’d be distributing that natural, conditioning, scalp-oil down the length of the hair shaft. A good brushing will also remove a lot of dust, dirt, and dandruff from your hair, further lessening the need to wash it. Shampooing will remove the oil from your hair and scalp. Your scalp needs oil. Without it, it will be dreadfully unhealthy. (Your hair needs oils, too, but it’s not a health issue; hair is dead.) Your scalp will make more oil in reaction to having been stripped of its oils. This can lead to a nasty cycle, where the scalp kicks into overproduction because some jerk keeps taking its oil away. Oh noes! I think Jerry Hall is onto something. The ultimate answer is probably somewhere between Hall’s once-a-month and the shampoo industry’s once-a-day. Dammit, now I’m goin
My hair is very thick and has a natural coil pattern. The detergents in shampoo dry out my hair and leave me with a mess of knots and frizz so I do a conditioner wash (which is different than just conditioning) every couple of days. I know that different hair types can also use a light conditioner instead of shampoos. The most important thing is that you periodically stimulate the scalp, make sure that you are using a something that will remove hair-styling product buildup and be careful not to strip your hair of important oils. It’s up to you to figure out what works best for your hair, usually through trial and error. You can read more about the ‘no poo’ method here.
I have pretty much the same hair as fshgrl, and I also wash once a week under optimum conditions. Sometimes I use a hair product that’s fairly greasy, and that stuff is like a time bomb that goes off after 36 hours, giving me a giant pile of frizz on my head until I wash it out. I can’t just condition my hair, though, because my scalp needs the washing once my hair gets wet. Even getting caught in the rain makes my scalp itch.
