If you want to have great hair, you need to look after it properly. So many people treat their hair badly and then rely on products to fix it again but if you go overboard on products you could damage your hair more and then you end up in a vicious cycle. If you aren’t taking good care of your hair every day, you’ll struggle to make it look good. Even if you’re doing all of the right stuff, you could still be making simple mistakes that undo all of that hard work. These are some of the biggest hair care mistakes to avoid at all costs.
Too Much Color
When you want to change your look, coloring your hair is one of the easiest ways to do it, but it can get a little addictive. If you’re changing your hair color every couple of months you could be doing some serious damage. In order for the dye to get into your hair, it needs to break down the protective barrier on your scalp, which is why hair dye has peroxide in it. But when you break down that barrier often, it doesn’t always replenish itself properly. The chemicals in the hair dye also dry your hair out quite a bit. That doesn’t mean that you should never dye your hair but you need to make sure that you’re not doing it too often and you’re taking good care of it when you do. Check out this list of the 13 best shampoos for colored-treated hair for some extra protection. Special shampoos will add extra moisture to the hair and repair a lot of the damage done by the chemicals in the dye. If you continue to use normal shampoo when you’re using hair dye often, your hair will end up getting worse.
Brushing After You Wash
Brushing can take its toll on your hair so you need to be careful when you do it. Your hair is weakest right after you’ve washed it and it’s still wet but most people don’t realize that and they brush after showering. The best thing to do is actually brush your hair before you get in the shower and wash it. You can also brush it through while you’re showering to get out any knots before drying it afterwards.
Not Brushing All The Way Through
While it’s important that you don’t brush your hair too much, you need to make sure that you’re doing it right. The natural oils in your hair are the best conditioner and most of them sit at the top of your scalp. If you’re only brushing the ends of your hair, you aren’t redistributing those oils throughout the hair and getting the benefits. Make sure that you do long strokes all the way from the top to the bottom of the hair, not just through the ends.
Washing Too Often
Most people just wash their hair every day when they’re in the shower but that’s not actually the most healthy thing to do. When you’re washing it every day, you strip out all of those natural oils that are so good for the hair. If you don’t give them time to build up properly, your hair will soon dry out and you’ll have to use more conditioner to keep it nice. For most hair types, you should just wash it once every couple of days, however, if you’ve got fine hair the rules are different. Fine hair gets greasy a lot quicker than thicker hair so it does need to be washed most days.
Towel Drying
Your hair needs to be treated carefully but you probably get out of the shower and dry it vigorously with a towel. If you’re doing that, you’re breaking down the protective layer that we spoke about earlier and you’re also pulling and tugging at the hair. You’ll get a lot of breakage and problems with frizzy hair. When you’re towel drying your hair, you should blot it gently instead of scrubbing it dry and roughing it up. It’ll take you a bit longer to dry your hair but it’ll make it a whole lot healthier.
Heat Protection
High heat is one of the worst things for your hair but it can’t be avoided if you need to blow dry it and use straighteners or curlers on it. The good news is, there are plenty of products out there that can protect your hair from heat, the bad news is that you’re probably not using them enough. Before you expose your hair to heat of any kind, make sure that you’re using a good amount of product designed to protect it properly. It’s also worth using a warm setting rather than a red hot one, it’ll take more time but it’s worth it if it keeps your hair looking better for longer.
Hairspray Before Straightening
When you’re styling your hair with spray in it, you might hear a sizzle from time to time. You probably don’t think much of it but that’s an indicator that you’re doing some damage to your hair. Those sizzles come from the alcohol in the hairspray burning into your hair. It’ll dry the hair out and even burn it a little which is obviously bad news. You don’t know what could be in the products that you’ve got in your hair so it’s always best to straighten your hair without any product in there and then apply it afterward.
Fixing Split Ends
There are plenty of products out there that claim to be able to fix your split ends but they can’t. They might be able to make them less noticeable for a while but they won’t actually get rid of them completely. If you try to fix them after they happen, you’ll end up in a cycle of expensive products. The best thing to do is to prevent them in the first place by avoiding the rest of these hair care mistakes.
If you don’t take good care of your hair, your morning routine will involve a huge collection of products before you can get it looking good. But if you avoid these mistakes, you’ll have great hair all the time, without all of the efforts.