shampoo Archives - David & David Hair Salon Plymouth

If you’re reading this then you’ll probably agree that having your hair done is one of life’s essentials. Popping to your local salon to relax with a book, have a deliciously decadent head massage and be made to look fabulous is one of life’s little pleasures.

Since the lockdown started and our salon closed its doors, we’ve been hearing from lots of our lovely clients who are desperate for a cut or have roots crying out for a touch up. Not being able to get to a salon is proving a hugely frustrating time for lots of you, so we thought we’d offer some respite with a helpful guide of how to look after your hair during lockdown!

How to Cut Your Hair at Home

Our first tip about caring for your hair whilst the salon is closed, is how to cut your hair at home. Our advice is – JUST DON’T DO IT!

Hair cutting is a highly-honed craft and there are so many ways it can go wrong without the proper training, so the chances of a hair disaster when trying to cut it at home are high.

Hair stylists train for years to understand the inner workings of hair and to become professionals in their field. Our highly-trained stylists have spent many years gaining the experience required to execute creative professional hair cutting and styling here in the salon. If you try to replicate this at home it’s likely you’ll end up with a wonky ‘do or something much shorter than you hoped for which will need salon assistance! Something which we sadly can’t provide right now.

Going DIY isn’t just a style risk, it can also damage your hair. We bet that very few of you have professional grade hair cutting equipment at home… reaching for the kitchen or office scissors is a common mistake which causes split ends due to the blunt blades. As well as having specifically designed blades for cutting hair, professional hair cutting scissors are manufactured from the hardest stainless steel. You just won’t get the results you crave from using tools you find at home. Blunt blades will ‘fray’ and split the delicate hair shaft meaning it will look more frizzy and less well-kempt as a result. Certainly not the look you’re after!

Now is not the time for a grand re-style. If you want to have a new fringe cut in or want to cut your long hair into a dramatic bob, we strongly advise waiting until we’re open again so we can perform this transformation for you. If you are absolutely desperate and need to trim your (already-existing) fringe, or nab split ends at home then we advise using the sharpest professional hair scissors you can get your hands on (anything else will wreck your hair’s structure) and exercising complete caution. It’s important to realise that you can always take more away, but you can’t stick hair back on (!) so a gentle ‘nibbling’ at overhanging fringes and gentle very small snips at the ends will be the safest way to avoid a hair disaster. And remember, if you’re cutting your hair while it’s wet it will look even shorter once it dries.

Dyeing Your Hair at Home; The Pros and Cons

Shudders… some of the most dramatic hair fails we’ve had to fix in the salon have come from home hair dye efforts. Home hair dyeing can be SCARY. Think tobacco-yellow bleach jobs, half-head inky black/deep orange ombre efforts, and hair snapping clean off due to the bleach being too concentrated from a cheap home bleaching kit. Hair dyeing at home is really rather risky because unless you have pure never-before-dyed hair, you don’t know what the home dye kit colour will do to the remnants of colour you already have on your hair. Hair colouring is a science- the chemistry behind it and the carefully balanced ratios of colour agents is something we take years to perfect here in the salon.

Embracing grey hair and letting your silvery strands peek through can make you become a new more confident ‘you’. Whether salt & pepper-y, silvery or ashen, your natural shade of grey may be both chic and flattering so why not try to let yourself go au naturale? Even aside from it being the hottest hair colour of the season, showing off your silver locks with pride and magnificence can be incredibly empowering!

Professional colourists use a precise combination of art and science to create custom formulas that are suited to the texture and colour of each individual client’s hair. Whilst we make it looks effortless (!), when we apply colour in the salon we have a pretty good idea of how the hair in question will respond. Also, a home dye box doesn’t say how much ammonia is in the product; as a result, you might be applying far more ammonia than is necessary to get the job done, and that can be very damaging for your hair and cause irreparable damage. You also need to be very careful that you are not allergic to any of the ingredients and that you take care to do a patch test at least 48 hours before using a new dye. We do this meticulously in the salon, and it’s extremely risky to use a dye you haven’t used before without doing a patch test in case of allergic reactions.

Unless you’re one of the rare exceptions, your hair will not look like the colour it tells you it will on the box and you will ruin the colour we have worked so hard to achieve here in the salon. Someone with fine hair can get a completely different result than a person with coarse hair, even is they use exactly the same box of home hair dye.

If you’re a regular here in the salon then you would’ve invested a lot of time and effort with your stylist to create the style, condition and colour you have achieved over the years. To ruin this by using an £8 home hair dye box will take you back to square one and it could take many appointments to correct the home hair dye damage!

If you really must home dye your hair, then there are root sprays and powders available which can touch up roots in a less scary, non-permanent way. If you think this might be for you, then we advise that you look for the best quality professional ones on the market. Feel free to contact us for advice, we’re always here to help!

Salon-Quality Shampoo, Conditioner and Styling Products

We really don’t advise using supermarket shampoos and conditioners if you can help it. All they do is cover up dry brittle hair. No shop bought products can “heal” damaged hair — all they do is coat the hair strand to change the appearance or how manageable it is. Many brands do this with silicone, which makes the hair feel smooth and shiny, but some people find this builds up over time and makes their hair heavy. Professional-quality hair products are able to penetrate the hair shaft to provide it with nutrients which strengthens it, rather than just coats it.

For all those missing salon-quality products and craving beautifully healthy hair, you can now buy your favourite Keune UK products from our online storefront partnership with Keune. This easy and convenient way to purchase any Keune products online and delivered to your door is proving an incredibly popular way of keeping your hair salon-tastic during lockdown. Just click here to shop the range.

In a Nutshell

We know it’s hard but try not to do anything too drastic to your hair at home before we can see you again. We envisage the salon will be opening by July at the latest so we are really looking forward to getting back to (the new) normal and making you all look fabulous once more.

The safety and well-being of our clients and staff is absolutely paramount and we have being crazily busy behind the scenes to ensure that when we re-open the salon it will be as safe as it can possibly be with social distancing and protective measures firmly in place.

Every stylist in the salon has recently undergone a Barbercide training course to ensure that they are well-versed in the most up-to-date information about safely working in a hair salon post-lockdown.

We are (nearly) ready for you! We just have to wait for the nod from the government and then we’ll re-open our doors with a big welcoming (socially distant) smile. We can’t wait to get back to business! xx

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If you’re reading this blog, then it’s probably fair to say that you care about your hair and you love how you feel after a trip to our busy Plymouth hair salon. The real reason your hair looks (and feels!) so good after a visit to David and David is because professional stylists understand that the key to happy hair is a well-executed shampoo and condition.

Our regular clients benefit from the good advice from our talented stylists about maintaining your hair in between appointments, but you’d be surprised how many people ask us about how often you should wash your hair.

For this reason we thought we’d debunk a few myths here in our definitive hair washing guide! Have you been washing your hair wrong forever? Is your in-shower technique helping you reach your hair’s full potential, or is it actually hindering you? Find out below…

How Regularly Should You Wash Your Hair?

Washing your hair every day strips oil from your scalp and in turn, encourages hair follicles to produce more oil which leaves hair greasy. This makes you want to wash your hair more, which makes your hair greasier, which makes you wash your hair more, and so the cycle continues… these shampoo manufacturers are cunning! Of course everyone’s hair is different and it depends on your hair’s length, condition and porosity (as well as how active your lifestyle is), but as a general rule you should only wash your hair once or twice a week (and even less if following the Curly Girl Method!). When you go longer in between shampoos it will also give your hair more moisture in the long run and help to break the damaging cycle of over-washing and over-stimulating oily hair follicles.

What Kind of Shampoo and Conditioner Should I Use?

Most shop-bought shampoos and conditioners contain harsh, drying sulphates which can be damaging for the hair (ammonium laureth sulphate, ammonium lauryl sulphate, sodium laureth sulphate, sodium lauryl sulphate are common ingredients to look out for). These common detergents found in shampoos damage the hair and make it uncooperative. Try using professional salon-approved shampoos if you want salon-worthy hair between appointments. Here in the salon we use (and sell) Keune So Pure range, Boucleme products for our curlies and Moroccanoil shampoo. Feel free to experiment with different products to see what works for you- everybody’s hair is different. Just avoid the nasties found in shampoos which will only serve to damage your hair and put you right back in that cycle of ‘treating’ the damage with the product that is causing the damage!

How to Wash Your Hair

So now you’ve chosen quality hair care products, we can let you know how you should be washing your hair. For such a common practice, you’d be surprised at how many people get this wrong!

Shampoo

It may be an eye-opener to learn that shampoo is actually for washing your scalp, not your hair. Technically when you’re shampooing you shouldn’t be washing your hair at all, you should be washing your head; focus on the roots and really work the shampoo in well with your fingertips (not nails!) and avoid applying shampoo to your actual tresses as this will cause tangles and make your hair dry and brittle. If you wash your head really thoroughly rather than just scratching the surface, you’ll need to wash your hair less and the damage will be minimised. The good news is that by washing your head (not your hair), your shampoo will last longer because you only need to use enough shampoo for your scalp. So bottles last a lot longer, bonus!

Conditioner

With conditioner it’s the opposite story… you need to apply conditioner to the bottom two-thirds of your hair (not your scalp) in order to fully drench the hair strands with moisturiser. This will leave it healthier, shinier and by leaving it on your hair for 5 minutes it will really penetrate the hair shaft to leave it feeling much stronger and less prone to damage.

As with shampoo, everyone’s hair is unique so find a conditioner which works for you and your hair type; a leave-in spray conditioner might feel lighter and less rich than an in-shower version. Those with fine hair may find that they don’t use much conditioner at all, whilst those with thick/curly hair may need to use a leave-in conditioner in order to quench the thirst of dry and brittle hair.

George Northwood, who looks after the hair of Alexa Chung, Meghan Markle and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley says,

“Really wringing out the hair before you apply conditioner really helps too, because excess water will only dilute the product. And apply it particularly to the ends if you’ve had balayage, or if your hair is a bit split and in need of a cut.”

Conditioners are packed with ingredients that are intended to attach to the strand and improve the appearance and health of your hair, but if you don’t rinse them out well you will find unwanted product build-up over time. To combat this we recommend using a clarifying shampoo once a month to help strip some of the residue left by conditioners.

Top tip: Clarifying shampoo is also good for preventing unwanted yellow tones in bleached hair.

How to Dry Your Hair

The way you treat your hair post-wash is vital to ensure you don’t un-do all your good work and damage the wet hair when it’s at its most fragile. Using a wide-toothed comb rather than a brush to detangle wet hair will minimise damage.

Hair is a complex structure made from keratin – the same protein in fingernails – and is often described as being like a rope within a rope. The outer protective layer which is made of calcified keratin is called the cuticle, and the centre of this toughened exterior is the cortex. The moment you wet your hair it changes the molecular structure of the strand; when water is applied to hair it swells up and is instantly weakened. The longer hair stays wet the worse its condition becomes – even though hair can absorb just under a third of its weight in water. The constant swelling and slow drying causes hair to crack and leaving irreversible damage so never leave your hair to dry naturally or go to bed with it wet.

Rubbing hair with a towel may break it and the resulting different lengths of hair strands will look frizzy. After gently towel-drying your hair (dab it, don’t scrub it!), it’s a good idea to use some kind of heat protectant to limit the damage caused by hairdryers and styling tools. Your hair should be fully dry before applying heat to your delicate wet hair, so make sure that it’s fully towel-dried before turning on the dryer. But you knew that right?

When using a hairdryer make sure that you hold the nozzle pointing down the hair to flatten the follicles and maximise shine. By working with the hair shaft rather than against it, you’ll be keeping your hair happy and healthy. Hold the hairdryer 6 inches away and start with a low heat before building up to a hotter setting at the end. Never use straighteners/curling tongs on hair which is near-dry or damp. Your hair must be fully dried to minimise damage to the shaft.

And that, is all you need to know!

Please share your thoughts and your personal top hair care tips over on Facebook or Instagram, we can’t wait to hear from you…!

David & David Hair Salon Plymouth

Plymouth's Premier Boutique Hair Salon

Category: shampoo

How to Look After Your Hair During Lockdown