I Share My BEST EVER Products for Dry, Damaged Hair
I reported on hair products for over 5 years on the Shrimpy McGee YouTube channel. These are my favorite shampoos and conditioners for frizzy, ultra-dry hair.
Hey all! Helen here. It’s hair week! In this post and later this week I’m offering up some of my best tips on hair care. Today’s article is for everyone, and in a few days you’ll get “How to Have Your Best Hair Day: Advice From a Hair Loss and Hair Damage Sufferer” delivered right to your inbox. That’s going to be a paywalled offering. Why not sign up to help support the work I do right now for $5 a month, and you’ll get the whole article immediately in a few days?
My BEST EVER Products for Dry, Damaged Hair
Last month, I took a very last-minute trip to Las Vegas including a roadtrip to Palm Springs. My first time in the low- and high-desert! It’s dry there, and the wind whips sand at you. I’m from the Great Lakes region, we have lots of water and little sand…I felt like I was on Mars! But with palm trees, Snoop Dog cars (check the cars out on my Palm Springs video) and good food (shoutout to Dave’s Hot Chicken!).
After a few days, my whole body started to revolt in skin flakes and crispy hair. I came back looking like this…
You think I’m joking? It took me a week to pull myself back together into a semi-hydrated state. Wow, the desert doesn’t play. I saw landscaping workers and locals getting in their steps alike with ALL their skin, arms, neck, lower faces covered to fend off the sun and probably the dust too. I made a couple home videos of the trip that I posted to YouTube which I’ll plunk at the bottom if you’re interested!
📹 Detour: I still like making videos and its truly a Vexing Bourgeois Conundrum™ that I can’t/won’t because of trolls and YouTube brass being stupid, but I put these up anyway just for funsies so that my family and friends can see it. If you’re reading this, you’re my friend too, so go have a look when you’re done reading! They’re only a few minutes each.
What I Learned After Years of Testing Shampoos and Conditioners
There is no one-size-fits-all shampoo and conditioner combo that will suit everyone. For every five people that buy and love my holy grail shampoo, there will be one person who tells me she returned it or gave it away cause it didn’t work for her. Trial and error and, frankly, wasting a bit of money has been my personal path to discovery and will realistically be yours too.
The above is why I now suggest for you to buy trial sizes or travel sizes. This is in sharp contrast to my old advice: I used to advocate for buying from somewhere you can return luxury products (like Sephora or some drugstores) but I learned that the sad truth is all that if you’ve opened the bottle to use one teaspoon of shampoo, big retailers won’t take the chance it’s been doctored or tampered with, so that full shampoo bottle gets squeezed down the drain. It doesn’t even get a second life as a tester bottle.
Sephora is PLENTY rich and doesn’t need my endorsement, but very broadly, the shampoos and conditioner brands Sephora stocks tend to be pretty good. This is just the law of supply and demand. If the brands they carry suck and Sephora is getting lots of returns on specific products because the formulation is bad, they won’t carry them. I’ve seen brands come and quickly go at Sephora for this reason.
Nearly every shampoo makes my hair frizzy. Even some high end Kerastase shampoos like Chronologiste! They are not built the same, and I’ve tried many.
Volumizing shampoos are usually very drying. They volumize your hair, which means they dry out the cuticle and make it look fluffy, which it does by reducing the oil and cutting the grease from your hair and scalp.
Shampoos come in two formulations: opaque or clear. One thing I’ve noticed is a clear shampoo often (but not always) is more drying than an opaque (creamy) shampoo. Opaque shampoos seem to have more conditioning/moisturizing ingredients in them, which probably contributes to their creamy look. This is not something many of us notice, so have a look at your shampoo next time you’re in the shower.
How I Pick Shampoos
What you’re about to read comes from my Ultimate Hair Care Guide. That guide goes much more into hair loss products, so if you want to read that and support my work, sign up to be a paid subscriber for $5 a month. We’re all getting subscription fatigue—I know I am, but I’m still determined to support creators, artists and writers on a one-to-one basis because I know it helps them do what I love to enjoy. Heavens knows how much money I throw at Sephora, I can’t even buy an eyeliner pencil for $5 there, so I’m happy to support my fave creators for pennies a day.
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Why I Don’t Like Drugstore Shampoo
Anyway yes, shampoos. There are basically zero drugstore shampoos that I endorse, because they are drying. The higher end shampoos almost always have gentler, nicer smelling and more hydrating qualities. I’m frugal and believe me, there would be nothing more I would enjoy than spending $4 on shampoo rather than $40.
That Said, L’Oreal Is The Best
If I must go for drugstore shampoos, I stick with L’Oreal: to be specific I like Extraordinary Oil for Dry Hair (link here) or the Everpure Lotus shampoo for volume from the Elvive line (link here). These are both affordable and a step up from Pantene and Dove. My rule is when in doubt, always pick L’Oreal over any drugstore brand: they have more moisture and better ingredients in them. Even Pantene “Moisture” shampoo leaves my hair frizzy and brittle.
Are You Using Too Much Shampoo? How to Tell
Shampoo should last you a long time. If you’re going through a bottle a month, I suspect you’re using much more than you need and it’s probably toasting your hair. Try using a smaller amount and washing twice. In my next newsletter I’m going to tell you about the five dabs method: Upgrade to a paid sub and you’ll find out what this is!
These are the Shampoos I Like for Dry, Damaged Hair
➡️ For moderately dry hair aka my hair most of the year: Kerastase Bain Satin 1 shampoo
➡️ For color treated hair: Pureology Hydrate shampoo (don’t use a lot, it can be drying if you use too much. It makes a heavy lather.)
➡️ For less hair loss in the shower: Discussed in my Ultimate Hair Care Guide
➡️ For fine hair: Ouai Fine Hair shampoo
✅ For bleached, very frizzy, very dry damaged hair: Olaplex shampoo AND conditioner (they work well together)
Your mileage will vary with shampoo effectiveness. It’s important to note that there is so much going on with the chemistry of hair and scalp: you can have dry hair but an oily scalp, you can have sensitive skin and oily hair. There are so many combos that it would be impossible for me to totally nail what will work for you.
Conditioner: What Should I Use?
Conditioner is a realm where I’m less sure-footed. I can readily tell when a shampoo is working for me or not, but something about my hair is very resistant to conditioner. Be it the porosity, the thickness: I don’t know, but I’ve never found there to be a huge difference between conditioners so usually I buy them discounted in a set, or buy from the drugstore (specifically the Viviscal I’m about to mention).
These are the Conditioners I Like
➡️ Viviscal Gorgeous Growth Densifying conditioner. Smells great, very herbal/woodsy, and does a nice light job. Available at Target and the drugstore (Shoppers Drug Mart for my Canadians.)
➡️ Alterna Caviar Bond Repair Conditioner.
➡️ Olaplex, but only when used with the matching shampoo.
How to Apply Conditioner
I don’t know if I invented this strategy for reducing hair loss at the conditioner stage, but here’s my best tip, and the audience feedback from my YouTube days is that it works well. It also really infuses your dry strands with conditioner.
You can read about how and why it reduces hair loss in my Ultimate Hair Care Guide here.
Method: Don’t rake the conditioner through with your fingers. Instead, spread it through your hands and squish it in from the bottom. Once you start that raking motion, you’re doomed. My squish technique is from the curly girl world where they call it “squish to condish”. However, I immediately noticed that the bonus from doing it this way is that less hair comes out in the shower.
Air dry or blow dry?
I’ve used the blow dryer, I’ve air dried my hair. My hair typically doesn’t get more damaged with the blow dryer so in the winter, I use it. In the summer when it’s much warmer, I air dry. I don’t have strong feelings either way, so I encourage you to experiment and not get hung up on the “rules” others tell you about how to dry your hair. We all live in different climates with different work/life scenarios: there is no one best way.
Leave in conditioners, hair masks
Again, like conditioner, something about my hair makes it not really absorb leave-ins and masks.
With one exception: Olaplex. (Olaplex right now is under lawsuits for causing hair loss. I shrug at that because there are lawsuits against any popular product, so it’s basically meaningless. The 28 plaintiffs are suing for $75K for hair loss damages. You can read more here. From what I understand about the physiology of hair loss, I think this will be hard to prove but I wish them well—I always have empathy for hair loss sufferers. I still like Olaplex though and will continue to use what I already have.)
In my experience, the Olaplex line is worth the hype. If your hair is very dry and damaged, there’s nothing I’ve found that works as well. Somehow the shampoo and conditioner lock together and leave you with soft, manageable hair. The leave in treatment works amazingly well.
The fragrance in it though, ugh. The more I use it, the less I like it. It’s strongly floral and very clingy.
Perhaps stick to a trial size set if you want to try it out, as it seems to be quite divisive: some love it and some hate it.
How I Tame Flyaways and Frizz: My Curling Iron Method
I attempted to write out an explanation for this but then I thought, sometimes a video is worth a thousand words, so here’s my technique. Jump to about 0:48 to skip my intro and get right to the curling iron technique. (And FYI, this video is not public on YouTube, right now it’s hosted there but available only here for you to enjoy on Substack. Maybe I’ll release it publicly later on in the month. As mentioned above, I’m still grappling with content creator resentment issues 😬)
Products:
➡️ L'OREAL PARIS ELNETT HAIRSPRAY https://go.shopmy.us/p-706503
➡️ CONAIR CURLING IRON https://go.shopmy.us/p-752389
Hair Oil?
I use Briogeo’s oil (here’s a Sephora link). Hair oil for me isn’t a cure for dry hair, but it can leave me with less flyaways and shinier strands, which I appreciate.
Let’s Sum Up
Avoid drugstore shampoo and treat yourself to a fancy trial size
If your hair is really crispy AF, use Olaplex shampoo and conditioner
Conditioner doesn’t work that well for me, but I like Viviscal Gorgeous Growth Densifying conditioner and Alterna Caviar Bond Repair Conditioner
The hair oil I use is by Briogeo, which is easy to get at Sephora
Don’t use too much shampoo! Less is more, you don’t need a huge head of lather
Best Products: Desert Island Picks 🌴
Shampoo: Kerastase Bain Satin 1
Conditioner: Alterna Caviar Bond Repair
Shampoo/conditioner combo if I had bleached hair, which presumably I sorta would if I was on a desert island: Olaplex
Hair oil: Briogeo
Well friends, I hope that was enlightening! If you don’t have the mental or financial bandwidth to support me with a paid subscription (I get it!) you can still help! Share this out on your socials, drop a heart or send me an email to let me know you liked it or comment if you have any questions!
And if you’re buying any of this via Sephora, here’s an older post I wrote on how to squeeze rebates and AWESOME SAMPLES out of Sephora! “How I Get the BEST Sephora Samples”
Warmly,
Helen
P.S. My home videos from Joshua Tree and Palm Springs/Coachella Valley, February 2023.