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Celebrity hairstylist Harry Josh chalks up hair pain to a simple analogy. “It’s like not working out for a week! If you don’t wash your hair and keep it in the same style, it feels sore because it’s lacking hair and scalp stimulation. If you’re that girl who has to go five days without washing, then brush your scalp. The brush is back!” Although Josh warns against penny-pinching in this department. “I’ll go to these gorgeous apartments, with marble bathroom floors, and clients are using some cheap-ass brush that’s a dollar from the drugstore,” says Josh, laughing. He recommends using brushes like his Premium Oval Brush to really get in there and distribute oil from the scalp down to the end of hair strands and his Paddle Brush to rub the head and revive blood flow.
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So how often should we be shampooing? “It all depends on what you’re starting off with,” says Josh, referring to varying hair types. “Finer hair can’t go multiple days, because it produces more oil,” says Josh. “But curly or gray hair can, as it produces less.” As a rule of thumb, he says people with oily hair should shampoo every day or every other day. Dry or coarser hair should do every three to four days. And of course, dry shampoo is a great bridge.
Whether your follicles feeling like they’re hurting is the result of infrequent cleansing, tight styling techniques, or a symptom of a migraine headache, your hair isn’t all that different from your body—it needs to be washed and worked out on a regular basis in order to be the best it can be. So at the end of a long, hard, stressful day, forget about trying to preserve a particular style for as long as possible, and instead, slow down and treat your hair to some much-needed self-care.
