Best Hair Care for Damaged Hair

Find out why you're suffering from split ends, dryness, frizz and flyaways, as well as the best damaged hair care and treatments. There's still time to save your hair!

Five reasons why your hair might be damaged

1. Chemical styling
   A common reason for damaged hair is due to chemical styling processes such as perms and relaxers. These might make the hair appear smooth and healthy immediately after the process, but in time the hair will weaken and the cuticles will no longer lie smoothly over one-another above the hair's cortex. The result: dryness, breakages and split ends.


2. Harsh brushing
   Brushing your hair roughly - especially when wet - will tear out the hair, both from the roots and from weak sections along the hair shaft. The quality of your hairbrush also affects the quality of your hair, with boar bristles the more gentle option. If you enjoy the volume created by backcombing your hair, or even teasing it a little from the roots, this could be the cause of your damaged hair. By forcing your brush or comb against the natural lie of the hair, you scratch the surface of the cuticle and cause damage.


3. Environment
   Your damaged hair might not be entirely your fault... the environment plays a role in the quality of your hair. Take the wind, for example, which can cause hair to become knotted around itself, tighten and snap off. On the other hand, the sun can not only dry out the hair, leaving it crunchy and prone to breakage, but the UV rays are particularly damaging.
4. Heated tools
   Possibly the biggest cause of significant damage to hair, heated tools (straighteners, curling tongs etc.) are our love/hate beauty tools. While they enable us to tame unruly hair, get poker-straight locks, create bouncy blowouts and captivating curls, over time the hair becomes weaker (requiring more styling) and the vicious circle continues. Applying such high levels of heat to the hair changes its core structure and can even burn it permanently.

Pro Tip: Steampod is a professional hairstyling tool which uses a combination of steam and prokeratin technology to help tame hair movement to leave it silky smooth, whilst protecting from heat damage.

5. Over-colouring
   There is no problem with enjoying different hair colours, but if you are going from dark to light every few months, and you are not having it done by a professional, you could be doing serious damage to your hair. Every time you lighten your hair using ammonia, it lifts the fibres' cuticles so that the new colour can penetrate and cover the hair shaft. By repeatedly doing this, or mistiming the ammonia application, the cuticles weaken permanently, remaining partially open and not holding on to the colour.

Five damaged hair care solutions 

1. Weekly hair mask
   Use a hair mask once a week to restore the moisture in your dry, damaged hair. For ultra-dry hair, leave on overnight and rinse off next morning. If you tend to suffer from naturally greasy hair, focus on only the lengths instead. If you have very dry or damaged hair, we would recommend consulting with your hairdresser on a bespoke in-salon treatment with highly concentrated active ingredients, such as Serie Expert Powermix. 


2. Serum or leave-in conditioner 
   If you don't have time for a hair mask, you can still top up your hair's moisture levels with a serum or leave-in conditioner that will keep the hair hydrated throughout the day, but won't give you any greasy side-effects. 


3. Silk pillow 
   A top tip from the experts: did you know a cotton or polyester pillow could be causing breakages and hair loss overnight? As part of your damaged hair treatment, switch out your old pillowcase for a silk one and enjoy a better night's sleep and a healthier head of hair.
   
   
4. Scrunchies 
   Your hair elastic may also be behind why your hair feels brittle and thin. Narrow, tight elastics pull out hairs every time you take them out, even without you realising. Plus, when used repeatedly, they create a long-lasting kink in the shape of the hair fibre.
   
   
5. Trim
   The best way to solve the pain of split ends and breakages is to go for a cut, there's no way around it! Damaged hair care should always be accompanied by regular visits to your hairdresser to remove broken lengths and keep hair healthy and voluminous.