Hair Care
The Top 16 Ways to Achieve Shiny Hair
Oct
Want your hair to look beautifully glossy and glassy? Join Nubi as we talk through the top 16 ways to achieve shiny hair!
1) Don’t Over-Wash Your Hair
Many people believe that the more they wash their hair, the shinier their mane will look. Unfortunately, this isn’t necessarily the case…
Sure, washing your hair removes the dirt and grime that would have detracted from your natural shine. However, if you wash your hair too often, you won’t be giving the sebum from your scalp enough time to coat your strands before it’s once again washed away. That sebum acts as a natural conditioner, adding luster to your locks.
Try cutting back on how often you wash your hair and you may find that your hair looks glossier and healthier as a result!
2) Consider Co-Washing
Co-washing is another hair-washing technique that can help to boost shine. It involves washing your hair with a conditioner rather than a shampoo. Most conditioners contain a very small amount of surfactants. This enables them to pick up some dirt without properly washing your hair and stripping away that natural sebum. This is how co-washing is reputed to help give the hair a gleaming finish.
In addition to addressing a lack of shine, co-washing can also reduce the look of frizz, help with scalp hydration, give damaged hair a boost, and will also save you precious time in the shower!
3) Apply a Clarifying Shampoo Once a Week
Compared to a regular shampoo, a clarifying shampoo will contain heavier and more intense surfactants. They’re almost like a heavy-duty version of a standard shampoo, enabling them to provide a deeper clean.
Why would you need to use one if you already regularly shampoo your hair? Because clarifying shampoos are so much better at removing product buildup, which can affect how shiny your hair looks. It’s not a product that you should be using every wash day but add it to your hair care routine once a week and you’ll be able to thoroughly refresh your locks. This then means that the other products you apply, from your conditioner to hair serums, will have a much easier job of absorbing into your strands, further enhancing shine!
4) Don’t Dry Out Your Strands When Blow Drying
A blow dryer can be a very useful tool…but only when it’s used correctly. Get your technique wrong and you could end up causing some serious damage to your locks, leaving your hair brittle and dull.
Research shows that the best way to blow dry your hair is to hold your hairdryer at least six inches from your hair while keeping it constantly moving. This is more efficient, and much safer, than concentrating your blow dryer on a single spot of hair for a few seconds, and it is even better for your locks than air drying.
A quality hairdryer, like the Nubi Blow Me Away dryer, will get your hair dried to perfection even faster!
5) Try a Boar Bristle Hairbrush
Hairbrushes with plastic or nylon bristles are known for being harsh on the hair. They tug at strands, contributing to breakages. Meanwhile, boar bristles are much gentler. Even better, they do a great job of distributing sebum from the scalp down to the rest of your strands. This will lubricate your locks, immediately leaving them looking sleeker and glossier.
6) Add Instant Shine With a Serum
Hair serums serve a number of different purposes, one of which is to boost shine. The best formulas for this are usually those that are packed with hydrating ingredients. Giving your hair an extra dose of moisture is often enough to improve how it reflects light, leaving it looking much glossier.
For best results, apply your hair serum while your hair is damp, as this is when it’s most permeable. This will encourage absorption, further amplifying that gorgeous sheen.
7) Don’t Heat Style So Often
It’s common knowledge that heat styling can dry out and damage hair. This causes it to look dull, rough, and frizzy. The best way to prevent this is to stop heat styling, yet that’s often easier said than done!
Instead, try cutting back on how often you heat style your hair. When you do need to heat style, use styling tools that have been designed to minimize the appearance of damage, just like the Nubi Soft N’ Straight 1.25” Ceramic Purple Styler. With ceramic plates, infrared heat, negative ion technology, and an adjustable temperature feature, you’ll be able to style your hair to perfection without having to deal with the look of damage and dryness.
8) Invest in a Quality Heat Protectant
Another way to keep your strands safe when heat styling is to apply a heat protectant first. These products form a coating around each strand, which helps to buffer any heat damage.
Again, just like when using a hair serum, aim to apply your heat protectant to damp hair. Then, allow your hair to completely dry before you straighten or curl it. Using heated styling tools on hair that’s even slightly damp will only fry your strands.
9) Trim Split Ends Away
If split ends only occur at the ends of your hair, then surely they don’t affect how shiny the rest of your mane looks…right?
Wrong. Yes, split ends start at the ends of your hair but it doesn’t take long for those splits to travel up your hair shafts. This causes even more of each strand to start fraying. Not only does this give hair a frizzy and fluffy finish but it also affects its ability to reflect light, leaving it looking dull.
Regularly trimming those split ends away helps to prevent this, ensuring that your locks look healthy and shiny!
10) Nurture Your Scalp
How can you nurture your scalp to encourage shine? Start by regularly massaging your scalp. This helps to boost circulation, with studies also suggesting that it can improve the appearance of thickness and growth.
Exfoliating your scalp can help too. This will loosen any product buildup while also unclogging pores to keep your scalp and strands feeling their best.
11) Use Silk or Satin Pillowcases
Wondering why your hair looks pretty shiny in the evenings but then turns dull and rough each morning? Your pillowcase could be to blame!
Unless your pillowcase is made from silk or satin, friction will be created each time your hair rubs against your pillow. This roughs up your hair cuticles, causing frizz and a lack of shine. This is exacerbated by the fact that cotton and other similar materials also absorb the moisture from your hair.
Switch to silk or satin and you won’t have to deal with any of that. Instead, your hair will look much smoother, softer, and glossier each time you wake up!
12) Sleep Near a Humidifier in the Winter
One of the key elements that gives hair its shine is moisture. If your hair is lacking moisture, then it will look rough and dry. Unfortunately, moisture loss is a common problem, especially in the winter. At this time of year, with the air being so dry, hair loses moisture at a much faster rate.
One way to counter this is by adding moisture back into the air so that it isn’t quite so dry, and this is what a humidifier excels at. Not only will sleeping near a humidifier help to add shine to your locks but it will also benefit your skin, reduce seasonal allergies, and improve your overall wellbeing.
13) Try a Darker Hair Color
Did you know that darker hair colors reflect light better than lighter shades? If your strands are currently sporting a light color, going darker could help to add some instant shine.
If you’re not ready for such a big change, a few highlights would be a good alternative. This will add contrast to your hair as opposed to your locks being one flat shade, which will enable light to bounce off your strands more effectively.
14) Eat the Right Foods
The food that you eat will affect every single part of your body, including your hair. A fresh and balanced diet is key if you want your hair, along with the rest of your body, to thrive.
With that said, certain foods are known to be particularly beneficial for hair health. Those that contain fatty acids, such as fish, olives, and avocados, can really help to restore the look of shine. Eggs, nuts, spinach, and blueberries would be useful additions to your diet too.
15) Consider a Multivitamin Supplement
Ideally, your diet would encompass all of the nutrients that your hair needs. However, this is often difficult to do. Not only do you need to be consuming the right amounts of all of the major vitamins but iron and zinc are crucial as well.
If you’re concerned that your diet isn’t meeting the mark, a multivitamin supplement could help. Not only will this leave your hair looking glossier but it will boost other aspects of your health too.
16) Pay Attention to Water Quality
There’s a big difference between soft and hard water, with the latter containing high levels of minerals. Although not a health issue, these minerals can quickly build up in the hair, as well as on the skin. This then leads to dryness and dullness.
If the water where you live is hard, a water filter would be a good solution. This will save your hair from being exposed to so many minerals while a clarifying shampoo once a week will remove any that do build up on your scalp.
Summary
For some, shiny hair may seem like an impossibility, but this is only because you haven’t been using the right techniques! Try to follow all of the tips that we’ve shared above and it won’t be long before your hair is looking glossier and healthier than ever!
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