Essential oils are all the rage in personal care, and why shouldn’t they be? There’s evidence that essential oils contain beneficial nutrients and other substances that promote health. If you’re thinking about starting to make your own DIY hair care products, you’ll want to know how to use essential oils to make the best products you can.
Remember, it’s important to dilute essential oils in a product or carrier oil before applying to the skin or scalp.
Essential Oil to Soften Hair
Folks with color treated hair or greying hair may be looking for ways to soften the hair strand. This doesn’t just make your hair feel softer, it also helps it look shinier, reduces tangling, and helps make hair more manageable.
Chamomile Essential Oil
We already associate chamomile with a calming effect in tea, but did you know that chamomile essential oil can also help soften your hair? It has the added benefit of soothing a dry or irritated scalp, too. Mix chamomile essential oil with argan oil to amplify the hair softening effects.
Essential Oils for Your Scalp
Healthy hair starts with a healthy scalp. After all, our hair follicles are in our skin. Irritated and dry skin can impede the growth of healthy hair. So taking great care of your scalp is key to beautiful, healthy hair.
Tea Tree Essential Oil
We’ve been hearing about tea tree essential oil in hair care for a long time. When applied to your scalp, tea tree oil can be stimulating, increasing blood flow. It may also have antimicrobial properties, and that can help with things like dandruff, too.
If you haven’t used tea tree oil on your hair or skin before, know that products containing tea tree oil cause a cooling and tingling sensation on the skin. Combine your tea tree oil with a non-comedogenic carrier oil to keep your scalp moisturized. Jojoba oil is a great choice for this, because it mimics your own natural sebum.
Moisturizing Essential Oils
It may seem strange to think of a “dead” part of your body, like hair, needing moisture, but you’ll sure notice when your hair is dry.
The hair is more than just a strand of keratin. It’s a complicated structure, and making sure it has the moisture it needs helps make sure it functions correctly. That means softer, healthier, easier to manage hair.
Ylang Ylang Essential Oil
Ylang ylang essential oil is extracted from a flower that grows in south and southeast Asia. It was thought to be an aphrodisiac by its original users, but it’s great for conditioning hair, too.
Ylang Ylang essential oil may help balance sebum production. We use shampoo to remove excess sebum, but sebum is actually important for hair and scalp health. Harsh shampoos can strip so much sebum from your hair and scalp that your skin responds by making more sebum.
Balancing that production is great for both dry and oily hair types.
Blend ylang ylang essential oil with a great conditioning fixed oil. Olive oil is great for hair and skin; it’s a relatively lightweight oil that helps protect skin and hair from moisture loss and environmental damage.
Essential Oils for Fine Hair
Using oils for fine hair can be challenging. If you use heavy oils, it can make your hair look limp and weighed down, even after you shampoo. Knowing what oils work best for your hair is important for everyone, but folks with fine hair may need to be extra careful.
Rosemary Essential Oil
Rosemary is a beloved culinary herb, but it’s great for skin and hair health, too.
Rosemary essential oil is thought to be a vasodilator, meaning that it helps increase blood flow in the skin. Improved blood flow means that your hair follicles are more likely to get the nutrients they need to produce healthy hair strands.
Rosemary essential oil may also improve the strength and flexibility of fine hair, making breakage less likely. This is important for fine hair, because fine hair is more fragile and more prone to breakage. Making sure your fine hair is not dry or brittle helps reduce that breakage.
Combining rosemary essential oil with a lightweight fixed oil helps to reduce the chances that it will weigh down fine, silky hair. Sweet almond oil is a great fixed oil for fine hair. It’s very lightweight and has conditioning properties on its own.
Essential Oils for Curly Hair
Curly hair also has specific needs. It may seem counterintuitive, but curly hair is more likely to be dry hair, and its structure leaves it vulnerable to breakage, too. Keeping curls conditioned and strong is vital to keep your luscious locks looking healthy and beautiful.
Peppermint Essential Oil
When we think about peppermint, we might think about candy, or toothpaste. But this plant contains compounds like pulegone and mentone that may strengthen the hair shaft. Stronger hair is less likely to break, and can resist more damage.
Peppermint essential oil is also great for the scalp, stimulating blood flow and keeping your scalp healthy. Healthy hair starts at the scalp, after all.
Curly hair can stand up to, and even benefits from, heavier fixed oils. Coconut hair is great for curly hair. It conditions and protects, and won’t weigh down curly hair like it might fine, straight hair. So combining your peppermint essential oil with some coconut oil will make the perfect treat for your beautiful curls.
Essential oils have benefits for health, for your skin, and for your hair. Plus, they smell great too! They do all of this naturally. Remember that essential oils are a concentrated essence of the plant they’re extracted from, so you’ll always want to make sure to dilute your essential oil of choice in a hair product or fixed oil.
