The Solution to Dry Pool Hair 

What is the solution to dry, tangled pool hair? There’s lots of ways to restore your daughter’s beautiful hair even after hours in the chlorinated pool.

What is pool hair? It’s tangled, dried-out, and sometimes green-tinged (sorry those with blond hair!). It happens after spending day after day in chlorinated pools. Chlorine strips hair from its natural oils resulting in that kind of hair that makes you look at and say, “What happened to your beautiful hair?” 

While we gathered some tips last summer while we had this post in mind–and then we thought it would also be a good idea to reach out to our readers for additional advice. After all, so many of you have given us such great tips on budgeting, travel, and pool tips! 

We asked and you didn’t disappoint. Here are our top pool hair tips that are tried and true from all of you!

Before:

• Wet the hair before swimming. The hair will absorb clean water ​​saturating the hair shaft, leaving less room for the chlorinated water to get absorbed.
• Wear a bathing cap. We couldn’t find any evidence that this actually helps (unless it’s a plastic bathing cap that doesn’t allow your hair to get wet) but since so many of you claim that this helps, we included it.
• Putting the hair into a ponytail and then braiding it will make it easier to detangle when wet. We recommend these hair ties. The thinner plastic ones just pull too much hair when wet.

After:

• Shower right after swimming and use a conditioner AFTER shampooing. Don’t use a 2-1.
• If you can’t shower right after swimming, using a detangler and a good brush and brush the hair through. It is really important to not have tangled wet hair drying all day. We’ve included the top recommendations at the end of this post.
• A budget-friendly way to make your own detangler is to fill a spray bottle with 2-3 tablespoons of conditioner. Add water and shake.
• Many recommended first showering and using conditioner and then shampoo (reversing the typical order). You can let the conditioner sit for 5-10 minutes and then brush the hair with the conditioner still in, washing it out only after this process.
• Some of you suggested to shampoo, condition, and then spray with detangler. Brush out hair, then condition and wash out.
• You might want to consider using a clarifying shampoo once a week (or more often as needed). A clarifying shampoo is a deep cleanser that you can use to rest your hair. A reader suggested a budget version by putting baking soda together with the shampoo once in a while to clean and soften hair. Like all suggestions, try at your own risk! (Google did verify for us that this is a thing, so we included it)
• Use Swim repair shampoos and conditioners that are ultra moisturizing. They were created to help dry and damaged hair. Any moisture shampoo is similar even if it’s not marked specifically for swimming. All recommendations are listed below.
• If you still feel these options are not helping enough, you can add a leave-in conditioner to the hair for an all-day moisturizer. We’ve included both detanglers and leave in conditioners below. Both will detangle, however detanglers don’t always condition the hair.

Have fun swimming! And don’t forget to plan a haircut at the end of the summer to get rid of split ends and have a fresh start when everyone heads back to school.