The Natural Hair Guide

Natural hair wash day regimen

I finally decided to wash my hair yesterday evening as it was time. Over the years my regimen for wash days has changed drastically. I didn't know about Protein treatments (or anything similar) so wash day mainly considered of shampoo and deep conditioner. Today, I'm going to share my current wash day regimen with you. I do skip out on some of these steps if I'm really pressed for time but this tends to be my wash day each week. I'll insert photos of most of the products I used and walk you through what I did and why underneath.

Step 1: Pre-poo. I used a mix of Aloe Vera Juice and Water to spray my hair until it was damp. Next I applied coconut oil over the top to seal in the moisture and put a bag over my head. Aloe vera is a great moisturiser and it also helps to repair and rejuvenate your strands too. Honestly, I use coconut oil here because it's one of my oils I have that I don't mind wasting - not because it works wonders on my hair.

Step 2: About 30 minutes later I shampoo my hair. I prefer to wash my hair in 4 sections as it's a lot easier to manage and can help me detect all of those pesky knots. I shampooed with a combination of some old Shea Moisture shampoo I had left over and the Mane Choice one pictured above (it was my first time using this). I only shampoo my hair once as otherwise I'd use up the half a bottle in one go. I apply shampoo to both my strands and my roots (although I know a lot of people only apply it to the roots) to help really clean my hair.

Step 3: I get out of the shower and apply my protein treatment. Usually I use hair mayonnaise as I find that it works best without stripping my hair of absolutely everything but I've ran out. When I don't use hair mayonnaise, I use rice water. I spray this on my scalp and strands. Personally, I experience a decent amount of extra growth when I use rice water but I can't comment much on the shedding as that isn't particularly a major issue for me. I leave this on for 15-30 minutes.

Step 4: I used to rinse off my protein treatment before I applied my deep conditioner, but I now tend to just apply my deep conditioner on top to save moisture and time. My holy grail as I mentioned before is the SM Manuka Honey one but I've recently started using the Mane Choice one. Once applied, bag goes on again and I chill for another 30 minutes.

Step 5: I don't mind having a deep conditioner that doesn't have much slip because I tend to use a conditioner aswell (which I make sure has slip). I'm not a Cantu fan and I wouldn't say that this conditioner has much slip but I like the thick consistency as I use a very liberal amount of product on my hair. This is when I detangle my hair using my wide tooth comb. Sometimes if my hair is extra tangled, I split those 4 sections in half to see what I'm doing. After this, I rinse it off and get on to styling.

Step 6: Styling depends on what hairstyle I'm going with but I'll comment on what I did yesterday. I decided to try out a new hairstyle (it was an EPIC fail) but all I did for each section was: spray water to hydrate hair, Mane choice leave in, Olive oil, Mane choice butter and then Aloe Vera (straight from the plant). This was my first time ever leaving Aloe Vera on my hair but due to my low porosity hair it sucked it up like a plant. I did some very minor brushing (being very gentle as I don't like to use a brush).

And that's it! Side notes: usually when I shampoo or condition, I will leave the product on the sections I've already done whilst I go ahead and do the next sections.

I tried to make this a lot more brief than last chapter and I hope you enjoyed it. As always, please go and check out my blog: kinkstherapy.com 

Hopefully everyone else is having better luck with finding products than I am during this time.

Until next time.