Hair in Harmony keeps your mane in balance

Help your oily hair find balance with a homemade solid shampoo

It’s not easy to feel zen about your oily hair. Desperate to get rid of grease, you try strong products that end up fully stripping your hair of its natural oils. Cruelly, this actually makes the situation worse by spurring sebum production and leaving your locks looking dull! That’s why we came up with Hair in Harmony, a gentle homemade solid shampoo that will leave your mane healthy, silky, and best of all, not greasy!

How, you ask? The clays in this solid shampoo recipe gently clean your hair, while the carefully selected vegetable oils help regulate sebum production. That’s the secret to Hair in Harmony! Thanks to its balanced action, it washes your hair without stripping it of its natural oils, while helping your scalp better control its own oil production so that you don’t need to shampoo as frequently. 

Feeling a little more zen now? Then let’s make a solid shampoo and transfer some of that harmony to your hair!

How to make solid shampoo for oily hair

Before you begin

• SCI (sodium cocoyl isethionate) can irritate your respiratory tract, so it must be handled with caution. Work in a well-ventilated space, wear a dust mask, or both.
• This shampoo recipe asks you to melt SCI. However, SCI can take some time to melt! To speed it up, you can reduce it to a powder with a coffee grinder or a mortar and pestle before melting. Alternatively, you can choose to not melt it completely. When conducting our tests, we melted just two thirds of the SCI and that was more than enough. Keep in mind that the final product will appear less smooth if you don’t melt all of the SCI, but that won’t alter its effectiveness at all! We recommend reserving your coffee grinder for cosmetic purposes if you use it to grind the SCI, and no longer using it for food.

Ingredients

• 40 g (40%) SCI
• 16.5 g (16.5%) witch hazel hydrosol
• 13 g (13%) ghassoul clay
• 13 g (13%) green clay
• 15 g (15%) hazelnut oil
• 1 g (1%) Atlas cedar essential oil
• 1.5 g (1.5%) white grapefruit essential oil

Tools

• Two small stainless steel bowls
• Components to make a double boiler
• Small silicone spatula
• Scale, accurate to 0.1 g
• Pipette
• A few ramekins
• A coffee grinder or mortar and pestle (optional)
• A mold (in keeping with our harmony theme, we chose to use our yin-yang mold, but you can use whichever mold you like) 

Good to know!

• We chose to use green clay for its purifying and absorbent properties. 
• We really love putting ghassoul clay in our solid shampoo recipes, because it gently cleanses your scalp while absorbing excess sebum. We advise against replacing it with another clay. 
• Witch hazel hydrosol has astringent and cleansing properties. 
• Hazelnut oil is balancing and will help slow sebum production. It can be replaced by an equal quantity of jojoba oil, which has similar properties. 
• Atlas cedar essential oil helps break down grease.
• White grapefruit essential oil helps regulate sebum production. 

Steps to follow

1. Prepare and disinfect your equipment and workspace.
2. Weigh the SCI in a small bowl.
3. Grind the SCI into a powder with a mortar and pestle or a coffee grinder (optional).
4. Weigh the witch hazel hydrosol in a ramekin, then add it to the small bowl containing the SCI.
5. Melt the SCI with the hydrosol on the double boiler. You can melt just two thirds of it or wait for it to melt completely (see the “Before you begin” section for more information). Once the SCI has sufficiently melted, remove the bowl from the heat.
6. Weigh the clays in a second small bowl. Add them to the melted SCI. Mix well to form a paste.
7. Weigh the vegetable oil and essential oils in a ramekin, then add them to the rest of the ingredients and mix well.
8. When the mixture is homogeneous, transfer it to the mold and pack down firmly.
9. Leave your solid shampoo to dry until it has hardened enough to unmold. This should take about 24 hours.

Use and conservation

This homemade solid shampoo is formulated for oily hair.  

When made in optimal sanitary conditions, it will keep for at least six months. It is important to allow your DIY solid shampoo to dry out between each use.