Hair can be an amazing way to change your style and emphasize your natural beauty. But it can also sometimes be unmanageable, knotty, frizzy, and lifeless! For all my curly haired men and women out there, Seppic created its very own Wash Day Regimen in our US Lab so you can better understand your hair, its needs, and the best ingredients to bring bounce back to your curls!

Curly Hair Biology

Curly hair has a variety of very unique structural differences.

• It has more disulfide bonds between keratin’s cysteines that are unevenly distributed. These bonds create those curls, coils and kinks!
• There are also lower levels of internal lipids in African hair¹
• The outermost part of curly hair, the cuticle cell layers, has less overlap which causes curly hair to be more fragile²
• Curly hair grows at a slower rate¹ with less hair density².

All these aspects that are extremely important to know for the care and maintenance of curls!

Curly Hair Needs

Now, these structural differences in curly hair can make the hair highly fragile, dull, dry, and slow growing - when not taken care of correctly! Curly hair needs to be moisturized and protected, as well as strengthened in order to grow healthy, soft and beautiful curls.

Step One: Pre-poo

Before deeply cleansing and clarifying the hair, it is important to introduce extra oil to the hair to protect the natural hair lipids from being stripped during shampooing. Pre-poo products can be applied the night before, or hours before with a cap to better penetrate the hair shaft.

Products like the US20154 (opens new window) Miracle Hair Oil, is free from silicones, with vegetable oils and plant extracts that repair and protect the hair while bringing shine and nourishment before shampooing!

Step Two: Washing

Of course over time the scalp experiences buildups, impurities and sebum, which is why it is important to deeply cleanse the hair and scalp every few weeks! Following the pre-poo step, this is where the core purpose of washday comes into play! For a co-wash alternative, cleansing conditioners are great to avoid stripping the hair of its natural oils (perfect for time crunches!)

Look for products like the US20160 (opens new window) Gentle and Clarifying Shampoo clean, sulfate-free shampoo that soothes and purifies the scalp of buildup and impurities while also helping with curl definition!

Step Three: Condition

After cleansing the hair, the oils that were stripped need to be reintroduced to the hair to ensure moisture and hydration! Shampooing releases the negative charges of the hair, and without cationic conditioners to balance the charges (or replenishing the lipids of the hair), frizz and and static are introduced.

Conditioners like the US20159 (opens new window) Lock-it-in! Moisturizing Hair Butter brings intense nourishment and shine to deeply hydrate and strengthen the hair for beautiful bouncy curls!

Step Four: Detangle

Once the moisture is replenished with oil and freshly cleaned, it’s time to detangle! But before grabbing the comb, make sure to add a little extra slip and conditioning to the hair with a detangling spray. It is easier to brush wet hair, when water breaks the weak hydrogen bonds, leading to straighter hair, easier to detangle HOWEVER wet hair is even more fragile than dry hair.

Detangling sprays like the US20162 (opens new window) Knot Anymore! Detangling Spray provides easy combing, heat protection, and hair smoothing to untangle knots.

Step Five: Define

To define curls while keeping them bouncy and healthy, weightless, leave-in oils and creams are perfect to restore moisture (again, it’s really important!) and style natural curls! The best part - there is a huge variety of textures available on the market!

Weightless, non-greasy, and non-flaking cream gels like the US20153 (opens new window) Shiny Curls Custard is a great way to give curls shine and definition with an immediate conditioning effect plus heat protection!

Step Six: Scalp Care and Maintenance

As wash day begins to wrap up, it’s important to maintain all the work and efforts throughout the days until the next one! The scalp has a high density of hair follicles and sebaceous glands that produce sebum to lubricate the hair. You know what they say, healthy hair comes from a healthy scalp! Scalp serums are used to moisturize, refresh, and cleanse in between wash days!

Scalp serums like the US20150 (opens new window) Balancing Scalp Serum are perfect to promote hair growth, and purify and moisturize the scalp and hair.

To request Seppic’s Curly Haired Cutie Kit, CHAT US!

1: CLAUDE BOUILLON, L’Oreal: THE SCIENCE OF HAIR CARE

2: Poonam Sewraj, L’Oreal. Understand the causes of damage in textured hair.

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