What is Hair Soap?

Simply put, hair soap is bar soap that is specifically designed for us on the hair and scalp.

We superfat our hair soap at lower, varying percentages than our regular bar soap.  Superfatting is having much more oils to lye ratio in soap, that way there is no excess lye (sometimes referred to as free alkali), since it is all used by the oils in the recipe.  Hair will get weighed down by the excess oils in our normal soaps so to combat that and make your hair and scalp happier we superfat at lower percentages.

Hair soap is real soap, it's made the old fashioned way with skin and hair loving oils saponified (the chemical reaction between lye and oils) to create a salt which is soap.

What makes Hair Soap special?

Hair soap is good for the environment as well as good for you, since there is minimal packaging to throw away (no more bottles).  Also because it is real soap it is more biodegradable (98-100%) than detergent soaps and shampoos.

Hair soap being real soap tends to not dry your scalp like detergent based shampoos can.  Many times people think they have dandruff when they actually have a sensitivity to the sulfates in detergent shampoos (this is much more common than you would think).  For many people sulfates don't rinse well from the scalp causing itching, many times accompanied by flaking.  Sulfates also strip the hair and scalp of some people leaving their hair dry.  But this also causes the scalp to produce extra oils to compensate, causing the dreaded greasies.

Hair soap is also great for traveling.  It is very easy to pack and you don't have to worry about leaky bottles, or airline restrictions.

What does Hair Soap do?

Hair soap gently cleans the scalp and hair in the same way that soap cleans your body.

Hair soap causes the hair shaft to open up and can feel weird, kind of ruffled.  This is normal and corrected with a mild acidic rinse (see "how to use hair soap").  In opening up the hair shaft the hair soap is able to deposit some of its hair and skin loving extra oils into the hair shaft, while gently cleansing.

How to use Hair Soap

Wet hair well.  Some people enjoy taking the bar and rubbing it directly into the hair and scalp.  Sometimes there's not enough water in the hair for this, if that's the case get hair a bit wetter and rub some more hair soap in.  Some people enjoy using the hair soap a bit more like a commercial shampoo, they wet their hair and lather the soap between their hands use that lather in their hair.

Lather, rinse, repeat as desired.

After washing with the hair soap, rinse with water.  Your hair will feel somewhat "heavy" and/or ruffled at this point.  To combat this put 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar (white vinegar can be used too) in 3 cups of water, then rinse your hair with the water/vinegar mixture.  Since soap is somewhat alkaline it opens the hair shaft, the diluted vinegar rinse closes the hair shaft very tightly thus protecting the hair and normalizing the ph balance of the hair and scalp.  It also ensures the soap residue is completely rinsed.

Sometimes it takes a few washings for your hair and scalp to adjust to the hair soap.  Please don't use once and decide you don't like it, sometimes it can take up to a week for your hair to get used to the hair soap.