3 BIGGEST HAIR MISTAKES YOU CAN MAKE + HOW TO FIX THEM
#1 NOT USING HEAT PROTECTANT
When it comes to using hot tools, not protecting your strands is a serious offense, especially if you style with heat on a daily basis. “Excessive and repeated exposure to heat (e.g. blow drying and heat styling) can cause physical and chemical changes in hair,” says Dr. Joe Cincotta, Color Wow chemist.
Yikes is right! So how do you know if your hair is heat damaged? What does heat damage look like? According to Dr. Joe, it’s cracked cuticles, split ends, brittleness, flyaways, loss of elasticity, extremely porous strands (aka, can’t retain essential moisture), frizz, dullness… essentially one hair horror after another. And if you color or chemically treat your hair, then your strands are especially vulnerable to this kind of damage due to their heightened fragile state. The good news? Just taking that extra minute to apply a heat protectant can majorly cool down the damage.
Because the health of your hair and color are our top concerns – and because we like to make things easy for you! – Dr. Joe went ahead and formulated almost every Color Wow product with not just one, but at least two (up to three!) kinds of heat protectant. (See a full chart here.) Each product has its own unique combo of heat protectants (hydrating, heat absorbing, heat deflecting), so if you typically use 2-4 of our products while styling, you’re getting a multitude of protection already built in!
Check out our heat protectant collection pages below to find the product that works best for your hair type:
#2 USING THE WRONG SHAMPOO
Finding your shampoo “soulmate” isn’t easy. How many times have you switched shampoos because they stopped “working?” Slowly but surely your hair starts looking dull, it gets greasy easily, it can’t hold a style and you think “my hair must be getting used to the shampoo, time to switch.” You’re right to blame your shampoo but not for the reason you think.
Most shampoos today try to multitask. In addition to cleansing they thicken, smooth, volumize, condition – essentially try to solve your hair probs while you suds. The issue is, in order to make good on those benefits, they HAVE to be formulated with ingredients that don’t rinse out easily.
So instead of cleaning your hair like you think they are, they’re actually leaving residues behind that continue to build up every time you wash. This build up is what makes your strands look dull, heavy and greasy, and why you constantly switch from shampoo to shampoo.
Our take? Shampoo shouldn’t fix your hair probs. That comes later when you style. Shampoo should just clean, period. This is the exact lightbulb moment we had when formulating our Color Security Shampoo and why we’ll only ever make one kind. Our breakthrough formula is 100% clean and made with zero ingredients that stay behind. So your hair is always its cleanest, freshest, glossiest and healthiest.
#3 NOT TAKING ADVANTAGE OF YOUR BLOW DRY
While your shampoo is not the right time for solving your hair probs, your blow dry most certainly is! Blow drying in general can be stressful on your strands. All that pulling and heat can further contribute to issues such as color fade, dehydration and breakage. That’s why we say blow-drying is always better when you do it with a Dream Cocktail!
You can make a MAJOR difference in your blow dry results just by using ONE of our Dream Cocktails. They start working the minute the blow dryer heat hits your hair, for instantly upgraded results. Just like that, the hair woes that’ve haunted you for so long are gone. Not only that, but they’re packed with three kinds of heat protectant (remember biggest hair mistake #1??), making them the perfect antidote to the side effects of blow drying. It’s a win all around.
- Flat, limp hair always got you down? Carb Cocktail instantly fattens up every strand with a carb-based complex for fuller-looking hair.
- Struggle with dehydrated, straw-like strands? Coconut Cocktail instantly silkens your hair for renewed suppleness and hydration.
- Breakage making you want to pull your hair out? Kale Cocktail is clinically proven to strengthen your hair by 50% in just one use.
Want even better results? You can pair them up! Our fave combos? Coconut and Kale for silky and strong hair, or Carb and Kale for big and strong hair.
