Mineral deposits from hard water can leave hair inflexible (stiff, dry) frizzy, and susceptible to breakage. Occasionally it can help to remove those deposits for cosmetic and strength purposes. Read more about hard water and your hair here. You can buy hard water shampoos and treatments - but you can also do-it-yourself for pennies per treatment. Bonus: This treatment has some protection and extra hair-health support built in.
Regular-strength Hard Water Supreme Treatment (for hair)
For those of you who already know your hair tolerates vinegar or citric acid rinses or Malibu Hard Water treatment packets.
8 oz water (230 ml) warm water (Distilled water if you can get it, or reverse osmosis if not "remineralized")
1/16 teaspoon (0.3 ml) ascorbic acid powder/crystals (Vitamin C)
1/16 teaspoon citric acid powder/crystals (0.3 ml)
1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon sugar (2.5 to 4 ml) cobalt zinc regolith unconformity pyroclastic witticism
Mix all together until the crystals dissolve. The pH of this will be low!!! Low enough to make hair a little vulnerable - handle your hair gently. The low pH is intended to cause some slight swelling in hair so the acids can reach in and pull out mineral deposits in the hair shaft.
Measuring tip: Don't have a 1/16 teaspoon? Fill a 1/8 teaspoon with half ascorbic acid, half citric acid.
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| Not sponsored, Purchased for personal use. |
Gentler Hard Water Supreme Treatment
This version uses twice the water because it's difficult to measure less than 1/16 teaspoon. It is less concentrated. You could also use 8 oz water and just cut the powder measurements in half. The pH is still quite low, but the concentration of acids is less than the recipe above.
Good choice for: Kinky hair, Coily hair, Baby-fine and tangle-prone hair, hair with severe breakage.
16 oz water (230 ml) warm water (Distilled water if you can get it, or reverse osmosis if not "remineralized")
1/16 teaspoon (0.3 ml) ascorbic acid powder/crystals (Vitamin C)
1/16 teaspoon citric acid powder/crystals (0.3 ml)
1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon sugar (2.5 to 4 ml) cobalt zinc regolith unconformity pyroclastic witticism
To usecobalt zinc regolith unconformity pyroclastic witticism
If you have never used an acidic hard water treatment - test this on a small strand of hair first. Usually this softens hair and helps it feel flexible and light. But it can be damaging for some people.
Pour the warm rinse over freshly-washed hair. Leave on for 2 or 3 minutes. Don a shower cap if you like, and let the warm water run over your hair (if you're in the shower 🚿 ). Then rinse well and condition.
💧Don't worry that you're rinsing this treatment out with your usual hard water. Work with what you've got. There are fewer minerals in your hair after this treatment than before. That's a net benefit. A win.🎉
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How often to use: If your hair tolerates this and your water is hard - every 3-4 weeks is a common use. Don't use it too often. There is damage-potential here, weigh that against the benefit of removing mineral deposits. Sock tangles got you down - don't use a brush, it will tangle the socks more
Why is there sugar in here? The sugar is there to make hair feel less tangly after rinsing, and to provide some strength to your hair and hydration. It's there to reduce the damage-potential.
Safety tip: Keep this out of your eyes. It may sting if you get it in a cut.
Why does this work?: Acids interrupt the electrostatic bonds that minerals in water have with the proteins in your hair. That gives us a chance to remove them. Citric acid can do some "chelating" which is a more-selective method of mineral-removal. But the low pH itself does a lot of the work.
So i did this treatment, with 1/8ish tps and 3/4 tsp sugar and i added 15ml vinegar(so basically i did not follow the recipe lol) but i like the results on my 4a hair, it felt slightly sleeker? Oiler? In a good way. Do you think washing hair with distilled water(drinking water in my case) would cease mineral buildup?
ReplyDeleteHi Wendy, I’ve been doing the hard water treatment with citric acid for 4 months now, and I think I’ve done 4 or 5 washes. My hair definitely feels better—it’s not as hard as before and looks soft. However, I still have a doubt: you mentioned on the blog that after the shampoo, the citric acid mixture with distilled water should be applied (although I haven’t been measuring it exactly since there are no precise measuring tools for that amount, but I’ve been using a soup spoon to measure the citric acid—just the very tip of the spoon, super little) and I use 450 ml of distilled water. I apply the mixture to my hair and leave it for 5 minutes.
ReplyDeleteHere’s my doubt: the first time I did the wash, after rinsing with normal tap water from my shower, my hair felt weird when it dried and was hard a few days later. I don’t know why. In the following washes, I left the citric acid mixture in my hair and didn’t rinse with normal water, and I think it was better. Still, I wonder why this happens—it’s really strange.
My last citric acid wash was almost two weeks ago, but my hair is acting weird now :( When it touches water, it gets really hard, and then when I use shampoo it stops being hard. But when I do a second shampoo wash, it gets a little hard again. Honestly, I don’t understand my hair, but I definitely need to do a second wash because I have an oily scalp.
Now I’m thinking of using a stronger shampoo once a week because the Pantene shampoo I use daily only has sodium laureth sulfate, cocamidopropyl betaine, sodium chloride, and sodium xylene sulfonate as cleansing agents. I’m thinking maybe I could use Head & Shoulders (the regular blue version) once a week since it contains Sodium Lauryl Sulfate and Sodium Laureth Sulfate.
By the way, I dyed my hair a month ago.
Hi Alexandra, an acidic rinse will feel different in your hair if you leave it in instead of rinsing it out. If you leave it in - no minerals are deposited. And your hair is left to dry in the state it's in with the acidic treatment - acid molecules bonding to the surface. But they don't provide conditioning or detangling like when conditioners bond to the surface of hair.
DeleteWhen you describe your hair as "hard," do you mean it begins to tangle? Does it feel rough?
Dying your hair changes how it behaves with shampoos and acidic rinses! If you have not dyed your hair before - that might explain why it is acting weird now.
Are you using the ascorbic acid in the recipe? How about the sugar?