Washing hair twice a week or once in two weeks?

[Curlyshai]

Hi!

I try to manipulate my hair less often. I was thinking, is it better to wash you hair (with sulfate free shampoo or conditioner) twice a week or once in two weeks? As a curly girl my curls will get frizzy after 2 days, so I have to fix them and that is maybe to much manipulation. Also my scalp is very dry fast. Or is it beter to let the natural oils do there thing and stretch my wash and go's?

I am trying to get the maximum to get my hair growth. I started with light oil massages on the scalp every other day. In this cold weather my hair is very dry fast.

What are your experiences? And did it work?

[Chromis]

My hair and scalp like stretching washes best. My scalp gets red and itchy if I wash too often or use sulphates. Other people like more frequent washes and/harsh shampoos because their scalp gets mad if they stretch washes.

I'd give stretching a go if I were you, since there is really only one way to see if it works for you! Plus less wet hair to deal with in the winter is always a win in my book.

[lapushka]

I try to manipulate my hair less often. I was thinking, is it better to wash you hair (with sulfate free shampoo or conditioner) twice a week or once in two weeks? As a curly girl my curls will get frizzy after 2 days, so I have to fix them and that is maybe to much manipulation. Also my scalp is very dry fast. Or is it beter to let the natural oils do there thing and stretch my wash and go's?

I am trying to get the maximum to get my hair growth. I started with light oil massages on the scalp every other day. In this cold weather my hair is very dry fast.

It depends on your *own* scalp. If you get oily in a few days, definitely wash 2x a week. If you get oily in about a week, wash 1x a week, and if it takes 2 weeks to get oily, wait 2 weeks to wash, there is nothing gross or dirty about it. My mom can go a month, and still she's not oily. She's that dry on her scalp. And she ultimately washes due to the hairspray building up rather than from dirt or oil.

This is a very individual thing.

[lilin]

Hi!

I try to manipulate my hair less often. I was thinking, is it better to wash you hair (with sulfate free shampoo or conditioner) twice a week or once in two weeks? As a curly girl my curls will get frizzy after 2 days, so I have to fix them and that is maybe to much manipulation. Also my scalp is very dry fast. Or is it beter to let the natural oils do there thing and stretch my wash and go's?

I am trying to get the maximum to get my hair growth. I started with light oil massages on the scalp every other day. In this cold weather my hair is very dry fast.

What are your experiences? And did it work?

It really depends on your scalp. How often you wash also affects the skin on your head, and keeping that healthy is crucial to hair health too! And just your general well-being and comfort, honestly.

Personally, I can't go once every 2 weeks. I need to *at least* have a water wash in there (though I prefer to use a cleanser, because I actually have to do a lot more hair manipulation to clean my scalp doing water-only, and that really defeats the point in my opinion). If I were to try this, I can guarantee you I'd have a very sore, itchy scalp.

There are people here who only wash their hair that often, or even never wash it at all (sebum-only) and they love it. There are many others, like me, who either can't pull off that amount of wash stretching, or have to do so much hair manipulation to make it work that it's probably more damaging than just washing it more often. And there are others still who can't stretch washes at all, and need to wash it at least several times a week due to some kind of scalp issue or sensitivity.

Just try stretching washes until when your scalp tells you to stop, and go with that. Do what's healthiest for your body. At the end of the day, if you're washing gently (not piling and tangling your hair while you scrub or something like that), the damage done by washing is really the least of your concerns. How you style it is probably of much greater importance than the sheer frequency with which you wash it.

Also, how much you wash your hair doesn't affect the speed at which it grows. For maximum hair growth and retention, the best thing to do is have a balanced and complete diet, and protect your ends so you don't have to trim as often.

As far as me, I currently wash it about 3 times a week because it's so short so the oil builds up faster and has nowhere to go. When it's longer, I typically wash my hair twice a week, or maybe every 5 days depending on season. Right now I'm CO-washing and liking that a lot.

To de-frizz your curls, try mixing water with a touch of conditioner or aloe and spraying that on to your hair. Then just kind of gently scrunch it in (don't comb!). That should hopefully help it settle down a bit without too much handling.

[Annalouise]

Hi!

I try to manipulate my hair less often. I was thinking, is it better to wash you hair (with sulfate free shampoo or conditioner) twice a week or once in two weeks? As a curly girl my curls will get frizzy after 2 days, so I have to fix them and that is maybe to much manipulation. Also my scalp is very dry fast. Or is it beter to let the natural oils do there thing and stretch my wash and go's?

I am trying to get the maximum to get my hair growth. I started with light oil massages on the scalp every other day. In this cold weather my hair is very dry fast.

What are your experiences? And did it work?

Dry scalp and frizzy curls? Is that what you're working with? First, if you need to moisturize your curls (frizzy means dry I think?).. then please do that. Curly hair tends to dry out fast and so there is nothing wrong with hydrating your hair as much as it likes. Keep your curls moisturized. You can do that with daily conditioning, or you can re-apply conditioner on a daily basis if that works for you if you don't want to get in the shower. (I'm not sure how curly your hair is?)
To be honest, I don't know what a dry scalp needs, because my scalp is oily.

My hair is 2C but I live in the desert so its not that curly unless I really condition it daily with a lot of conditioner because the air sucks all the moisture out of my hair. If I want to keep my hair hydrated and moisturized then I need to use heavy conditioners or deep conditioners on an almost daily basis. Since I am product challenged, (fragrance allergy) and I don't have access to a lot of nice heavy conditioners, what I do is use a boar's bristle brush to move the oil off my scalp and down to the ends to keep them from drying out. When I wash my hair every 2-3 days I wash with a sulphate free shampoo on my scalp. And I conditioner the hair twice. I REALLY saturate my hair with conditioner. Working it into the strands from the scalp all the way down. I use so much conditioner its killing my budget. Fragrance free conditioners are expensive.

[Curlyshai]

Hi! thank you all for your replies! So as I read it is better to stretch the washes and only to wash my hair if necessary. I have started the curly girl method a few weeks ago and I use mostly water based products, so I don't have that much product build up. I will try to stretch my washes to once every two weeks will fresh up my curls daily.

But yeah, dry scalp and frizzy curls I will put every day a little bit conditioner with some water and that make my curls pop!