The Complete Guide to Water Only Hair Washing

If you’re a fellow curly girl, then you know life is basically one long stretch of trying product after product. You try one thing that works wonders for everyone else and it does nothing for you. You find something that works amazing for you! Only for it to quit working three months later. And your bathroom closet is absolutely filled with half used products that cost upwards of $50 a bottle! Thank you hair industry for punishing us for having curly hair. 

I got incredibly tired of this game. It sucks. I’ve literally spent thousands of dollars and hours on my hair, and nothing has stuck. I was beyond tired of researching products, having long wash days, and feeling like my hair was a second job. 

I really just wanted to stop using all the products and be able to wash my hair and dry it and be good to go like any normal person. 

So, I started an experiment. I totally stopped washing my hair. Yep, cut out the shampoo and the conditioner (yes, even the no poo stuff) and the gels and creams. 

It’s called water only hair washing.

What is water only hair washing

It’s a real thing, I promise! See, soap and shampoo is actually a fairly new thing. At least the shampoo of today. Even in the early 1900s women weren’t washing their hair nearly as frequently as we do and when they did it was with more natural things like olive oil, vinegar, or tea. 

These more natural ingredients don’t strip the really important stuff off your hair, the sebum. Even if you have curly hair and have gone the no poo (aka no sulfate, alcohol, paraben, etc) route, those shampoos are still stripping your hair, just not quite as bad. Does your hair feel squeaky clean after you wash it and before you condition? Maybe even a little dry? Like you NEED that conditioner? 

That’s because the shampoo not only stripped the dirt off of your hair, it stripped your natural sebum oils too! Sebum is the body’s natural way of conditioning and protecting our hair. Sure, we need to cleanse it from dirt every so often but that sebum isn’t actually supposed to be removed. 

But, we start using shampoo from such a young age now that it seems insane to not use shampoo! You might even be seen as dirty or unhygienic. 

If you stop using shampoo and conditioner and the styling products and only wash your hair with water, the sebum your scalp produces can finally spread down your hair and protect and condition it. Pretty cool, huh? 

I’ve tried this for the past three months, and I can confidently say my hair has never looked better or been easier to style. It’s like my hair WANTED to be left alone! And I pinky promise that it doesn’t make your hair smell gross. 

Here’s my routine: 

Step 1

Clarify your hair. To start fresh, you have to strip all that gunk off your hair in the form of gels or conditioners or other products. This will be the last time you use shampoo! If you don’t want to use a harsh shampoo, then try washing with apple cider vinegar or baking soda.

These are better options if you’re already not using products with sulfates. I personally used a clarifying shampoo that did have sulfates, because I knew I had a lot of buildup in spite of being no poo.

This is the last time you’ll use shampoo and get those sweet suds, but your shower tunes can stay .

Step 2

Don’t wash your hair ever again. Kidding, kinda. You’re not going to be using shampoo or conditioner again. Whenever you wash your hair it will only be with water and your hands. Water doesn’t strip sebum and warm water (not hot) can help move the sebum down the strands of your hair, so it’s a win win!

Your hair is probably going to feel dry and kind of gross at first, but you just have to suffer through it. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

It’s up to you how often you want to wash your hair with water only. Some people do it everyday, but these are mostly people with straight hair. I personally washed my hair once a week, otherwise my hair got super dry washing it that often and I felt like the oil didn’t have enough time to accumulate and be spread down my hair.

This is hard to admit but after my clarifying wash I didn’t wash my hair for another two weeks, because I knew I would need the oil to really build up to spread down my hair. I wouldn’t recommend this as a regular thing, but it was fine for the first time.

Step 3

If you have straight hair, you’ll probably suffer through an oily phase where your roots are super oily and your hair is limp. But, if you have curly hair like me, the top of my hair got oily and the problem was spreading that oil down to the rest of my dried out hair.

So, you have to manually spread the oil. This is something you’ll have to do pretty much daily for the first couple of months and then only on wash days after that. Time consuming initially but worth it. First, you have to warm it up so it wants to spread, though. This means you massage your scalp for several minutes, and you should start feeling the oil on the tips of your fingers.

Once you’ve got your scalp massaged and the oil on your fingers, you’ll take sections of your hair and start running your fingers down them from root to tip to spread that oil. This method, known as preening, really only works well for people with straight hair.

If you have curly hair, the oil just doesn’t move very well from your fingers and ends up sitting on your scalp and causing buildup (a problem I had and will tell you how to troubleshoot if it happens to you).

For curly hair, I had to use some tools to make this process quicker and more effective. I used a vibrating scalp massager to make sure I was doing a really good job getting that oil warmed up, since we curlies need all we can get.

Then, to spread the oil, I used a brush. I know! Don’t brush curly hair! But, this isn’t any old brush. I used a brush with wooden bristles that are spread far apart so it doesn’t rip your hair. The wood absorbs the oils a bit and then spreads them to the dryer parts of your hair.

(Click Pictures to Be Directed to the Exact Product)

Step 4

Wash and dry your hair!

Again, you can wash as often or as little as your hair likes. When you do wash with water, start with warm water and massage your scalp thoroughly. If you chose to use a scalp massager and it’s waterproof, use that in the shower! (P.S. the one I recommend is water proof).

I find I need to scrub my scalp a bit longer than I normally would with shampoo, and then I follow up with a fine tooth comb in the shower to comb the loosened sebum down and get rid of any sort of dirt or particles in my hair.

After showering, I don’t use any styling products, and I experience the same amount of light frizz that I always did when using products.

My hair is very clean and I’ve asked multiple brutally honest family members if it smells, and they say they haven’t noticed a difference (even when I make them stick their nose in my hair).

Troubleshooting

My Hair is Super Dry!

Yep, my hair was very dry at the beginning, particularly on the ends that didn’t have any sebum on them yet. At this point it is totally okay to supplement these ends with some coconut or argan oil. In fact, I would strongly suggest you do so you keep this hair healthy and from breaking off.

Another tip, don’t wear your hair down if you can help it. My hair was so dry it looked awful down anyway, but even after it started to improve I wore my hair in braids for several weeks. A single french braid was my favorite style, because it sort of put all that dry hair inside a braid where it could absorb oil from other parts of your hair. I did occasionally do pigtail braids, but I found my hair got kind of dry where I parted my hair.

My Hair is Super Oily!

Suffer through and brush your hair, girlfriend. Use a little baby powder if you must. Your scalp is overproducing oil at first to compensate because it’s confused that you’re not stripping all the oil away anymore. It will regulate, but in the meantime just brush it down and wash your hair more often if you need it.

My Hair Feels Waxy/Limp!

This can be either when your hair is dry or wet. Personally, my hair felt fine dry but in the shower it felt very waxy and like it was stuck to my head. It was incredibly hard to wash, and I realized it was because there was a big buildup of oil on my scalp that wasn’t spreading and wasn’t going to spread because there was too much.

So, I did some reading and it seems like washing your hair with applesauce, yes applesauce, helps. I tried this and after two applesauce hair masks I was cured!

If you decide to do this, you have to use applesauce. You cannot substitute apple cider vinegar, because the key ingredient is the malic acid in applesauce. You also need to use unsweetened applesauce that has no sugar and pretty much the only ingredients are apples, lactic/malic acid, and water.

1. You’ll apply the applesauce to DRY hair and get it all down your hair but also make sure to scrub it in your scalp to pick up that excess oil. Pile on more applesauce where you have especially greasy spots. This is the grossest part and the applesauce gets everywhere, so don’t wear anything you care about.

2. Put your hair in a showercap to hold some heat in (or a grocery bag if you want, like me). You’re going to let it sit on your hair for about an hour.

3. Wash your hair extremely well. I highly, highly recommend that you comb your hair with a fine tooth comb in the shower to get most of the applesauce out.

4. Dry your hair like normal. Once your hair is dry, you may notice some apple flakes here and there, but they come out pretty easily with brushing or just as you go about your day. Don’t worry, you won’t wake up with ants in your hair, because you didn’t use the applesauce with sugar in it.

5. You may need to do this 2-3 times to really get rid of all the oil. I don’t recommend doing it back to back, wait at least a week between washes because it can be slightly drying if done too close together.

My Results

Drumroll, please. It’s what you’ve all been waiting for! After 3 months of only washing my hair with water, this is what my hair looks like.

After 1st Wash

You can see that it was pretty dang frizzy, especially in the back. It looks very damaged. This is what all those shampoos and products are doing to your hair!

2nd Wash

This wash was about two weeks later and during those two weeks I was daily massaging my scalp and brushing with the wooden brush. I could feel the oils moving down, but they weren’t quite to the ends of my hair yet.

But, you can see there is a big improvement and my hair is getting more defined and less of a frizz ball. Please ignore the little white flecks in my hair, that was due to a pillowcase that had some weird flaky rubber lining that ended up in my hair during the night!

I’ve always had trouble with the back of my hair seeming damaged and frizzy no matter how well I treated it, and this is the best it has ever looked. To have actual defined curls in the back of my hair is major.

3 Months Later

This picture is current of about a week ago! My hair has super defined curls all around, is not dry at all, and is super manageable! I can even pull off the eighth wonder of the world: putting curly hair up in a bun and then being able to take it down!

I think my hair will continue to improve, especially that back part. The hardest part is just giving it time to suffer through some bad hair.

No, my hair is not completely frizz free. This isn’t going to change the texture of your hair or the climate you live in, but removing harsh products can really change your hair for the better. I’m hoping to be able to keep up this product free hair life forever.

It’s so much easier to travel and wash days aren’t such a chore anymore. And I love the saving money part!

Let me know if you try it and if you have any questions, I’ll be sure to update as I continue!