2017 Hair Hits and Misses

[Ophidian]

Found this old thread and thought it was a fun idea:

http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=39683

It's basically a variation on the "Experiments: Pass or Fail" thread but over the span of a year. So what did you learn/try with your hair in 2017 that you loved? What did you try that we shan't ever speak of again? :p Anything you're still on the fence about?

I'll post mine below.

[spidermom]

I tried the style of bob where the front is longer than the back. It was not at all flattering. I look better with some face-framing layers.

[Ophidian]

Hits
*Moisturizing sulfate-free "natural" shampoos: As the child of health-food store junkies before that was cool, this is my baseline. When in doubt I go back to them and am usually not disappointed.
*Indian herbs: Spent a few months of trial and error tweaking a recipe. Now I love it and use it all the time.
*T-shirt plopping: Goodbye post-shower poof, I don't miss you.
*ROO: I don't do this all the time but really like it.
*Nightblooming: Anything and everything! I've tried all the salves and use them pretty regularly for post-shower LOC. Also have several signature blends and love them all.
*Haartraum's scalp-only wash method: My length wants to be washed once a week and my scalp twice, so this has been a perfect compromise.
*Nizoral: I put this off for a long time for various reasons, but finally decided to give it a try and within a month it had gotten rid of the dandruff I hadn't been able to kick for 5 years.
*ReadingRenee's claw clip bun: Has been a lifesaver for my sensitive scalp and in-between length hair.
*Ficcare!

Misses
*SMT's/deep conditioning: Very inconsistent results.
*Clarifying: Anything beyond squeezing a gentle shampoo through the length has been a disaster. My hair hates being stripped.
*CO It's entirely possible I didn't give this a good enough shot but it gave me a raw itchy spot on my scalp so I jumped ship after two washes. Also don't like using that much product.

Somewhere in the Middle
*WO: Length was happy and I loved the simplicity but it seemed to exacerbate scalp issues and increased shedding and the hair smell (though never terrible) eventually got to me.
*BBB: I didn't see any adverse effects but prefer finger-combing.
*Rye washing: Effective cleanser but my hair felt dry and kinda tangly if I used it regularly. I experimented with different rinses but results were inconsistent.

[pailin]

Big hit: Johnson's baby oil (mineral oil) both as roo and as a few drops on wet hair before wrapping in towel. Great for frizz and especially for tangles.
Also a hit- microfiber towel; with the weather recently, it's been harder to get my hair to airdry. Microfiber towel helps.

[Winter Fox]

Such a great idea for a thread! :D

Hits
- Dabur Vatika Jasmine Amla Oil: This turned out to be the best post-wash hair oil.
- Soap: This was the greatest discovery in terms of washing methods.
- Avocado Hairmask: Was soooo moisturizing! Best diy mask this year.
- Nightblooming Panacea: The only leave-in that works for me.
- U-Pins :D
- Garnier Whole Blends: Those were the products I enjoyed using the most and I found some holy grails (the olive conditioner i.e.).


Misses
- Silicone free: I tried to go cone free just out of curiosity but it didn't work for me at all.
- Leave-Ins: Except for the Panacea salve my hair got sticky and dull whenever I used a leave-in.
- Shampoos with silicones: They build up really fast so I learnt to stay away from them. Although they make my hair look beautiful.

[hayheadsbird]

Hits:
Silk pillow case - less tangles
House of mistry shampoo - possibly HG status!
Avacado oil - wow, now I understand why folk put oil on their hair!

Misses:
garnier while blends coconut conditioner, just felt weird!
Coconut oil - icky mess for me
Cones - fine day one, then just felt dry and icky

[colibri]

I have tryed soap cap over hennaed hair.Didn't do much but this might be because i used verry little bleach.I also cut my hemline into an u shape and got rid of layers

[Reservechic]

Hits: Ayurvedic products and shampoo bars (as I will not let anything that is not organic or all natural touch my hair ever again).
Misses: Curly Girl "No Poo" Method (as my hair cannot go without shampoo) and doing long stretches in between hair washes (this causes tangles, I end up with a lot of shedded hairs in my brush after detangling, and my hair just feels super dried out). If my hair isn't washed at least once a week it starts to rebel for sure and so does my scalp too.

I have to include pre-poos, as being in-between. They work pretty good when I do them, but they aren't exactly a weekly necessity in my hair washing routine. I also don't do weekly conditionings of of my hair anymore. I find that my hair is thriving well, without it, so I just go by what my hair tells me. For a long time, my hair needed conditioning like crazy, but that was due to the bottled shampoos that I was using. After switching over to exclusively using shampoo bars on my hair last year, my hair doesn't feel that it desperately needs conditioner used on it at all. So, I am living living that conditioner free life at this point, and my hair is not suffering one bit because of it.

[entish]

Hits: Wooden comb - so gentle and feels amazing.
Vinegar rinse added to shampoo bar routine. I used to get gunk in my combs, this stopped with the vinegar rinses.
Indian herbs - though entire routine was not figured out until 2018. Makes for soft, happy hair with body. Very little shedding.
Oiling - both on scalp and length. I add EO and use a variety of oils for different things.
Satin sleep bonnet - hair less dry and more shiny. Hoping long term it’ll reduce splits.
LCO method - works super well for my hair.

Misses: Diffuser with curly girl method - conditioner used in this amount is expensive and diffuser was quite damaging.
CO - mostly just expensive. I’m picky on the ingredients and used a lot.
SLS shampoo - this I tried after years on shampoo bars. Never again. Made my hair so dry and wispy/frizzy.
Hair spray = crunchy hair.
BBB - it tore my fine hair apart into a gazillion splits. This is using after detangling with WT comb or fingers.

[cathair]

Biggest hit was learning to sleep with a hair net on. Finally growing out the damage sleeping with a braid was doing on the right hand side.

Can't think of any misses, because I changed very little. I'm quite comfortable with my minimal routine these days.

[Ligeia Noire]

Hits:

Argan oil- love it. The only thing that helps my dry scalp.

Karina claw clips- nothing holds my hair better and pull free than these. I am sold.

Misses:
- panacea hair salve- brings out my wurls (as you can see on my avatar) and really nourishes my hair but I still can't use it as a deep conditioning product as it just does not spread and it does not really work if I do not use more than a pea size. Last attempt I heat a bit in a container and ended up being too much and leaving the lenght coated and oily the entire week. I did not mind because my hair was always up and it protected it. However, from now on I will only use it as a leave in or with something else.

[Trip]

Hits: silk pillowcase aloe vera and silk caps
Misses: almond oil my hair felt so thin and weird after using it might give it another try but still a miss for me now

[dvep]

2017 was my first year on LHC and I got to try and learn about new things. There's more I want to try this year but here's what I learned so far:

Hits

Flaxseed Gel: definitely a holy grail product for me. My wurly-curly hair desperately needs moisture and FG provides not only that but also great curl definition. Nothing makes my texture so consistent and when I don't use it the difference is like night and day,
Hair sticks: I discovered them thanks to this forum. I love how easy it is to tuck my hair away on my casual days. I lost/broke my wooden ones and need to buy more.
ACV rinses: I still need to experiment with the ratios, but my hair always bounces back from a fun when I do an ACV rinse.
Amish pins: they get my hair in a bun so easily. Regular bobby pins don't stand a chance.
Biotin/multivitamin: I can't say for sure that this made a world of difference, but I was pretty pleased that I still gained about 6" of growth including trims so either I have a pretty decent growth rate or the supplements help. Thankfully I don't break out because of biotin so it doesn't hurt to keep going.
Scalp massages: Okay, I have no clue whether or not this affects my hair growth but it just feels nice to pamper myself. I use one of those little wire scalp massagers that you can find all other the place.
Benign neglect: I don't totally neglect my hair, but it does pay off to neglect it mentally by not worrying about it and obsessing over it. I still want to treat it well, though.

Misses

Deep conditioning/oiling: I have yet to find a recipe, product, or routine that gives me the results I need (excluding flaxseed gel). I really really wanted oiling to work but the results were undeniably underwhelming and my hair would fall out like crazy. I really want to find some sort of weekly moisturizing routine for my hair but so far I've been out of luck.
CO washing: I can admit that I probably didn't give it a good shot, but my SD really requires a good shampooing on the scalp and I don't feel that covering my scalp with conditioner helps.
Stretching washes: don't get me wrong, I would never wash my hair more than once or twice a week, but because of the SD and my dry hair I can't hold out on washing like other people can. I need to wash every few days.

This year I'm going to try shampoo bars (my first order is on the way), silk pillowcases if I find the right one, more hair masks/recipes to find what works to give my hair moisture, and whatever I can to bring out the curls more. I'm also hunting for more easy, cute protective styles. I will also re-integrate mineral oil into my scalp routine to manage my SD. It worked before in the past for me but I stopped using it daily, but I really need to do something because my SD has me compulsively picking at my scalp all day long and I'd like to avoid the possibility of my hair rebelling and falling out because of it.

[Corvana]

I didn't experiment a whole super ton, but I did learn a little bit!

Hits:

Oiling my hair regularly after a wash
Sulfate free shampoo
Silicone free conditioner
Curl cream
Plopping
Tangle teezer
Wide tooth comb


Misses:

Pantene shampoo, diluted or full strength
Finger combing only


At the start of my LHC life I was (I thought) 1b and SL. I was using sulfates, Tresemme until I ran out and then Pantene, and lots of silicones and had loads of frizz. Then my scalp started to itch, and I thought "oh I need to clean it better", but no that was the whole problem! As soon as I learned I was actually a wavy and just "doing it wrong" for my hair, I swapped to sulfate and silicone free to try to boost my wave. I did boost them, but I also stopped getting an itchy scalp. The Tresemme was fine, but the Pantene was just waaay too harsh.

And the finger combing didn't work out super well as the only form of detangling, but I do still finger comb like 1/2 the time. Just gets a little more difficult when I've got more sebum going, and while I could take more time I know that I won't actually do that often enough so I'd rather just have my WT comb around for slightly faster detangling in the mornings!

But all of my detangling methods now are much better than ripping through with my paddle brush shudder:

[pandabarrier]

Hits:
- more frequent washing, including more scalp washes
- Nizoral 1% (keeps SD at bay)
- hair dryer (yes, hair dryer, a heresy here at LHC, but I use it in low heat setting in my scalp when air-drying isn’t enough)
- Ficcare Maxima
- double-wrapped nautilus bun (more stable on my hair than regular nautilus bun)
- Franceluxe claws clips for quick bunning when I’m home, instead of sectioning clips (my hair was getting frequently caught on the hinges)
- swap board! I found awesome hair toys.

Misses:
- scalp oiling (I found out I have SD and the shedding was awful in the summer)
- stretching washes (sometimes I was too tired to wash my hair, now I wash it more regularly and scalp is much happier)

[Flowerness]

major miss (was this in 2017?): detangling spray. Made my hair have so many tangles that I couldn't comb it. Gave it away.

hit: coconut shampoo and conditioner (but not using coconut oil) on my hair. Smells awesome!
another hit: washing my hair when it feels like it needs it, and ignoring how many days it has been. Sometimes it is 3 days, sometimes closer to 5.

[chiapommama]

Hits:

monistat
wcc
Fingercombing
Wearing a sleep cap ( no tangles!)
Misses:

Catnip (made scalp itch)
Oil on scalp( same as catnip)
Allergic reactions to certain shampoo and or conditioner

[WillOTree]

Hits
-every other day washing
-Found my go to is generally suave
-less product, and refreshing hit with water works best
-hair likes proteins
-Loreal ever cream renourishing butter deep conditioner is lovely.

Misses
-cones, even in a leave in
-I liked shampoo bars, but they made my scalp break out
-oil is too drying

[poli]

Hits:
plain SLS shampoo
no cones in conditioners
using herbal scalp tonics (in between washes)
diluting my henna (first to 35%, now to 20%)

Misses:
shampoo bars (regrettably)
leave-ins (but I will give it a try again, think they don't work for me in dry weather)

[leayellena]

hits: my hair is not omg super voluminous because of cowlicks
conditioner, cwc, wcc and co-wash
sls/sles/suds free shampoo
stretched washes to 8 days max,but...
tried so-called "diy hair masks". they´re a fail for me
buns or braids for sleep
updo every day
hair milk but I think hair oils are better
tuck my hair in a cap on summer to protect from uv rays
misses: hena
cassia
acv
can´t dutch or french braid well because of having back pains
still wcc every 2 days if I have to look presentable
tangle teezer and the wet brush? - not that I feel curious about them though
hair oils
hair creams
uv protectant sprays or conditioners

wow! I learned so much from you, lhc, in just half a year.

[school of fish]

Hmm... 2017 was such a stay-the-course year for me that I don't have much to report. I can think of only a couple of things:

Hits
- Combing my conditioner through my hair as I rinse it out - this was the big discovery as I had always found in past that my hair was too delicate to handle that but it now it can. The pay-off is that the conditioner rinses out more completely which has in turn reduced my hair's tendancy to cobwebby tangles. It's been a game changer, in the best way :)

- S&Cing every day instead of every other day. I get no benefit from stretching washes - just the opposite in fact - and I've found that washing every day with a little less product gives exactly the same effect as every other day with a little more product, with no washday schedule to have to keep track of.

Misses
- I honestly can't think of any! The only real changes I made were the ones I listed above :)

[Dewdrop]

Misses:
Giving regular shampoos from the drugstore a try again. I was pretty stubborn and used them a lot; my scalp HATES sls. They just smell so good!
Getting my PCOS diagnosis and losing a ton of weight-->and hair :(.
being too lazy to use condtioner and thinking it's fine because my hair is 'short.' My layers are horrible and I have velcro ends as it is.
Scalp massages: I massage all my rest-phase hair out. Never going to do that again. (Lucy's corsetry on youtube has an amazing hairscience video, and awesome hair.)

Hits:
My hair is long enough to put up with sticks again, so bye hair elastics.
Doing a no-cone conditioner treatment every week (after the no-conditioner neglect from earlier). My hair is so moisturized! I use Dr. Organic olive oil for that mostly; put in hair, cover in plastic wrap, then towelwrap for heat, and do what I do at night; then wash out just before I go to bed.
Eating lots of (veggie) protein due to my PCOS. My hair grows twice the rate it did.
Diluting shampoo. One small squirt of shampoo in a plastic cup, fill up with water and work the suds through my hair, then a second 'rinse' with even less shampoo/more water mixture. I use half of what I did, and I've been able to stretch my washes to 4 days now.

Can't wait for 2018 discoveries!

[Jo Ann]

Hits:

Pantene Maximum Hair Recovery Mask
Shea Moisture Intense Hydration Shampoo and Conditioner
The ancient bottle of Johnson's Baby Oil I found under the bathroom sink :p
Sally's Beauty Supply (MY toy store!)

Misses:

Revlon Colorsilk 05 Lightest Ash Blonde...three boxes (only did the underlayer of my hair, though...still a work in progress :( )

[FrayedFire]

Hit: Getting my washes down to once a week or less - I'm amazed that my fine hair could look better and more voluminous after 3 weeks of not washing than after a fresh squeaky clean wash (which I will have to do at some point to see the condition of my hair, but my own sebum has made more difference than anything else).

Miss: Trying to finger comb only - I can't get all the tangles without some sort of tool, but I try not to use my tangle teezer to actually brush them out too much, mostly just to find them and push them down the length so I can undo them gently.

My 2018 tests are going to be regular bunning, CV bars, aaaaand actually keeping up with the inversion method, hopefully.

[Vorvayne]

Hits:

- bought some lovely + inexpensive hairsticks from amazon (I'm poor, sob)
- leave-in conditioner plus sweet almond oil as post-wash damp leave ins. Last year my hair was a little short to bother with much leave in, it'd just get greasy, but now my ends need it.
- coconut oil pre poo! Tried this once to use up my coconut oil, which my hair doesn't like as a leave in, and it turned out GREAT. I just slathered it on for an hour or two pre wash and rinsed it out with conditioner; hair was super shiny.
- going back to shampoo - hormonal changes mean my scalp is more sensitive and dandruffy and CO wasn't working for me anymore. Using superdrug Trichology revitalising scalp shampoo and my scalp loves it.

Misses:

- still need to find a decent chlorine-removing shampoo for when I go swimming, OR some way of protecting my hair. I'm going to try wetting + oiling my hair and sticking it in a swim cap next...
- wearing my hair in a braid all the time. Fine last year when my hair was APL - now my ends need more care and my hair needs to be up more.


I didn't do that much to my hair this year, but the benign neglect was great while it waited to get enough length for it to be worth it for me to do things with it. I'll be trying more treatments and so on in 2018!

[Trip]

I take back my almond oil miss! Its a miss as a deep conditioner but as an after shower oil or for a little extra moisture its wonderful and im adding acv/tea rinses to the hit category as well

[embee]

Can't say I've had any Hits, everything is running along nicely with my minimalistic routine.

Miss: Suddenly deciding to rinse/wash my hair after months of NW/SO. Took a while to regroup. In future I'd better have a *Real Reason* to do that. ;)

[DoomKitty]

Hits: Swisse Hair Skin & Nails vitamins (must work them back into my budget)
CWC & LOC
Curaplex
Marc Antony Stengthening S&C
Hask Argan Oil Deep Conditioning treatment left in for an hour with a splodge of the conditioner that comes with my L'oreal hair dye to detangle while rinsing
Daily Naturals Leave In Masque as creme part of LOC
Finger detangling
Models Prefer detangling comb
Washing every 3-4 days
Air drying
Eating better
Learning to do buns

Miss: blow drying (even on cool my bleached bits broke)
Stretching washes
Poor diet
Coconut oil (left my hair crunchy)
Oiling my scalp (massive amount of shedding)
Detangling brush
Blunt bangs

[almostghost]

Hits:
Henna treatments!!! Oh gosh, my hair looooves henna and so do I!
Stretching washes, attempt #2. Being between jobs and not having to be around humans much helps :p
Oiling with coconut oil a couple hours before washing
Fenugreek

Misses:
Stretching washes, attempt #1
CO washing
Short hair. I think it looks really good on me, but it's such a pain keeping it short and I miss updos and braiding too much. Now I'm on my way back to hip length once again!
Biotin. Made my face break out even though I drank a ton of water, and the tiny tiny increase in growth just wasn't worth it for me.