What to Look for and What To Know When Buying Hair Products. AKA What Ingredients Do!

It feels like a new hair product comes out everyday. I can't keep up! Instead of trying as many as I have the best advice I can offer is to know what ingredients are good for your hair type!

First see what natural products work the best for you. You can try these out at home or add them into your routine whenever you feel like it. Natural products are highly recommended for curly haired girls because drugstore moisture products usually have too many bad ingredients.

Need Moisture? Look for..

Vegetable Glycerin- It attracts and binds water to itself and adds a layer over the hair to retain water.

Aloe Vera Juice/Gel- actually absorbs in the hair as moisture

Coconut Oil - Best oil for sealing moisture into hair. Gets into hair strands more then other oils.

Jojoba and Almond Oil- Two other oils that are good for sealing hair

Shea butter- Good at sealing moisture and oils into hair

Anti Bacterial ingredients? Oily or irritated scalps and dandruff problems?

Honey- It's a light moisturizer with antibacterial properties

Castor Seed Oil- Moisturizer with anti fungal properties

Tea Tree Oil- Soothing to dry scalps in small doses. Don't overuse!

The basic hair product ingredients

Sulfate- It's basically what strips your hair and makes everything lather. If you have oily hair your going to need this. Dry or damaged hair needs to stay super far away from this!

Silicone- This is a love hate relationship. It will be in your conditioners and leave in products. Silicone products hair from damage in a way nothing else really does. It can also cause a lot of buildup because of this. Dry hair needs the smoothing and protecting properties of it but it can get tricky and gross feeling when using a sulfate free shampoo.

Protein- Damaged hair needs this. It comes in many forms like soy and wheat. Keratine is a super popular protein trend right now in hair protection. Some dry hair types are super sensitive to protein and it will make hair frizzy. People seem to be the most sensitive to wheat protein. The best type of protein treatment is something like the Apogee two step that actually glues hair back together.