How can I shampoo with Dr. Bronner's Products?Updated 4 months ago

Our Castile Soaps and Sugar Soaps work exceptionally well to clean hair; however, the process may require a bit of tinkering to fit your specific needs. We encourage you to use this as a guide and to tweak anything we recommend to best fit your desired outcome. 

If there’s one important thing to remember about washing your hair with Dr. Bronner’s before washing, it’s that we strongly encourage you to follow up with an acidic rinse. Due to the alkalinity of our soap, they can leave a tangly look and feel. An acidic rinse not only conditions your hair but also can tamp down the cuticles in your hair and give it a smooth and silky after-feel. 

We recommend using our conditioning Organic Hair Rinse, which is specially formulated for this purpose and uses a base of organic lemon juice, but you may easily substitute it for a vinegar or lemon juice dilution.

If you are interested in these alternatives, we encourage you to use them in a spray bottle for the most control and ease of use. We recommend diluting apple cider vinegar with equal parts water, at a 1:1 ratio, or diluting one part lemon juice with two parts water at a 1:2 ratio due to its higher acidity. Additionally, be sure to strain and properly store your lemon juice as it is not a shelf-stable ingredient.

To learn more about shampooing with our soaps, please check out our definitive guide on drbornner.com or Lisa Bronner’s amazing blog post, From Shampoo to Soap – My Story.

Here are the instructions from our website:

1) Shampoo with your favorite Dr. Bronner’s soap (Castile or Sugar Soap), and rinse this off. There is no need to dilute even if you are using our Pure-Castile Liquid Soap. Just start with a dime-sized amount in your palm and lather it into your hair. The water present in the shower is enough to dilute the applied soap.

2) Important: Rinsing with our Organic Hair Rinse (after rinsing the soap out), results in a spectacular look and feel! Just stir 1- 2 capfuls of this rinse into a cup of water, close your eyes, and slowly pour while massaging into your hair. Keep hand-combing your hair until hair feels entirely sleek (~30 seconds). Rinse out well. Repeat, if necessary, in extra hard water conditions or with longer hair.

As mentioned above, you may substitute this for any other acidic rinse. Just be sure that all of the soap has been rinsed out of our hair before applying. 

3) Optional: Either after rinsing your hair or after drying lightly with a towel, massage in our Organic Hair Crème for added silkiness and softness. You can decide to rinse this product out like a traditional conditioner, or you can use it as a leave-in conditioner/styling crème. 

Again, using our soaps as shampoos can be a long process for some people, as your hair needs to adapt to using a true soap since this product is not a shampoo. It can take a lot of trial and error and tinkering with the dilutions. However, if this is simply not compatible with your hair, then it may not be for you.

Please rest assured that you do not have to dilute the soaps when using them as a shampoo or body wash. However, you can use a dilution ratio of 1:3 (1 part soap to 3 parts water), to get started and adjust to your personal preference.

Also, when diluting our soaps, we recommend that you use the dilution up within the first 2 weeks to a month. This is because we do not use any harsh preservatives that will allow the soap to last much longer than 1 month after being diluted. Distilled water is recommended.

Lastly, please note that if you have color-treated hair, we do not recommend that you use our soaps.

We know this was a lot of information to throw at you, so if you have any future questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out.