Keeping your Summer Hair in Top Condition

Hair health activist and colour alchemist, Reneé Potgieter, gives us some of her top tips that you can use at home to enhance your beautiful locks for the summer - with no extra work.

18/01/2021

 

 

 

 

 

It's summer and many of us are enjoying an easier laid-back approach to our beauty regime as we head back to work. Especially those of us working from home, are getting to enjoy the lack of stress every morning presented by our previous battles with our hair and indulge in the precious extra time to embrace the finer things in life.

Hair health activist and colour alchemist,Reneé Potgieter has over 25 years experience and she believes that a less is more approach to our hair is what leads to healthy, beautiful locks. To ensure your hair stays gorgeous all summer long, we asked Reneé for some of her top tips that you can use at home to enhance your beautiful locks for the summer - with no extra work…

 

 

 

 

Embrace no heat styling

Practising no-heat-styling isn't hard to do since it is just to avoid using artificial heat on the hair. If your hair is not looking as good as it should and you want to restore health, vitality, and strength, the no-heat styling method works because your hair structure contains hydrogen bonds and when any form of artificial heat is applied this manipulates the hair, thereby controlling its shape.

Radically responsive to moisture, the temporary hydrogen bonds affect your hair the moment steam, water or sweat hits and the time and affort put into styling disappears in seconds. These temporary bonds are responsible for controlling the temporary texture of your hair. However, if you manipulate them consistently with styling, long-term damage occurs to these bonds and your hair suffers a sort of “memory loss”.

If you use a hairdryer, hair straightener or curling tongues on your hair all the time such as when curling your hair, making your curls straight or using frequent blow-drying eventually forces your hair to forget their true natural form and you could eventually end up with a hair crisis every day. The only natural way to ensure this doesn't happen to your hair is to work with the structure of your hair rather than fight against it. Feeding your hair in place of relentless styling will work to bring out the best in your hair structure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having said that, don't expect to one day wake up with perfectly styled hair. There will still be days when your hair will need a bit more attention than others, but with just a drop of a light styling aid and a kiss from a hairdryer here and there, and your hair will begin to work with you instead of against you. When you go to bed at night, this is the perfect time to apply  a nourishing treatment to your hair so that when you wake, your hair is nourished and ready to cooperate. Check out this blog post at Allurium Beauty to discover more about caring for your hair without heat styling.

 

 

 

 

Use natural styling products

If you regularly go to the beach on your summer holidays, have you noticed how great your hair looks after a day at the beach? There are two reasons for this. The first reason is that there are no mirrors for you to consistently fluff yourself in, letting you embrace your hair and its reaction to the elements. And the second reason is that seawater acts as a filler to help smooth out the microscopic ridges on the cuticle layer of your hair shaft - these are what create hair irritation, thereby acting as a natural styling aid. Put simply, you would use a Styling Aid to help control frustrating hair as it works by smoothing out the cuticle layer when we leave our jaor to air dry without any artificial heat being applied.

Despite popular belief, damage is the main contributor when it comes to creating unmanageable hair structure. If your hair is in bad condition it will be frizzy and result in you using styling aids that do more damage than good. And keep in mind that, even though there are hundreds of styling aid products out there - less is more and all of them will become redundant once your hair is in a healthy condition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A good quality styling aid is essential at the start as they are specifically formulated to not coat the hair with silicones or other heavy ingredients that do more damage than good. When using any natural styling products such as salt sprays, it is important to read the ingredients to ensure that they are of high quality to ensure any products you use are free from parabens, alcohol, and any other nasty chemicals you can’t pronounce.

 

 

 

 

Reduce and naturalise your colour

You probably know that every time you apply a colour treatment to your hair, you expose it to harsh chemicals - no matter how gentle the product. The more chemical exposure to the entire length of your hair shaft, the more compromised the entire cuticle layer will become and the worse the damage to your hair will be.

Any attention given to your hair should involve a less-is-more approach to colouring. This means being open to blending techniques such as balayage - a technique for highlighting hair, that creates a graduated effect for asymmetrical, natural-looking results. The regrowth when using this technique is far less stark and will allow you to extend the period between your colouring sessions.

Giving some thought about how you colour your hair goes a long way and the difference between your natural colour and the chosen colour should be as minimal as possible. You want to aim for the softest regrowth, one that bridges the gap between your natural colour and the colour treatment and this shouldn’t be more than two shades. The more difference between your natural hair colour and colour treatment, the more obvious your regrowth, ultimately forcing you into colouring more often and therefore affecting the condition.

 

 

 

 

Make sure to feed your hair

Elasticity and porosity are the building blocks of naturally good hair structure, so it is important to care for these building blocks by nourishing your hair. Hair treatments that contain natural botanical oils are available in all sorts of forms that include treatment masks and conditioners. This process doesn’t need to be another laborious thing to add to your day and can be applied overnight with your hair loosely tied up.

Thankfully, natural oils are making a comeback, taking a note of inspiration from numerous ancient traditions. Once again, make sure you use top-grade pure oils such as jojoba, for moisture, and almond, for a strengthening protein boost. These natural oils are so pure they become solid when you put them in the fridge which is a great indicator of quality.

The summer season is a time where we become more mindful of all the things we are blessed with, so sit back, relax and let your natural beauty shine through. You already have the hair of your dreams, you simply need to let it down.