It’s the middle of summer, how is your hair doing?

Does your hair feel like straw? If you’re spending a lot of time outdoors, in and out of water (of any kind), it’s normal for that to take a toll on your hair. There are plenty of things you can do to prep your strands for swimming but sometimes you need to do a hard reset to get things back on track.

This may be counterintuitive, but if your hair feels dry and hard, you should still start with a shampoo or treatment* that deeply cleans off your hair before applying a mask or conditioning treatment. A clarifying shampoo, I love Purify by Virtue, is a great place to start. Sometimes what you are feeling on your hair is build-up, minerals, etc. so while it feels dry in your hand, it may just be covered in junk. Clarifying your hair helps remove unwanted build-up, and then following that up with a treatment like K18 or a deeply hydrating mask like B&B Hairdressers Invisible Oil Hydrating Hair Mask will restore your hair.

*A Malibu treatment is an intense way to remove build-up, chlorine, and more from your hair. This treatment has the power to lift a toner from your hair, or potentially lighten your hair. So, use it with great care. My blonde hair is untoned, so I use Malibu treatments every once in a while to remove hard water build-up and to brighten the blonde a little bit. There are specific treatments for swimmers to remove build-up and that green tint that can come with lots of swimming in chlorine in the summer!

I tend to wash my hair more in the summertime, so I’m using even more leave-in treatments than usual. I love It’s a 10-leave-in spray and the Bumble and Bumble Primer. As far as conditioning treatments go, check this blog post for a round-up of all of my favorites!