For many of us, just the thought of never cleansing our face can make us feel grubby yet we’re happy to go our entire lives never truly cleansing our hair and scalp. This is where the best clarifying shampoo comes in.
Every day, your hair and scalp will build up with various products – dry shampoo, hairspray, mousse, serums, and even the natural accumulation of grease.
You may think you’re removing this build-up when you use regular shampoo, but even shampoos designed to clean the hair of the majority of thisgunk will leave behind residues of wax, silicone, sulfates, moisturisers, and volumisers in its place.
The only way to truly get rid of this build-up is a weekly treatment with clarifying shampoo.
Clarifying shampoo is like a cleanser for your hair. It’s almost like giving your hair and scalp a good detox – and you’ll often find clarifying shampoos labelled as detox shampoos – because it removes all traces of products and pollution to make your hair less heavy and greasy, while unclogging the pores and hair follicles on your scalp.
In addition to giving your scalp and hair a thorough clean, by removing such blockages, clarifying shampoo can help encourage your hair to grow faster, thicker, and longer. You can read more in our How to manage hair loss and make hair grow faster guide.
Whereas your regular shampoo will offer a mixture of cleansing and moisturising ingredients – designed to clean your hair while also leaving it soft and shiny – clarifying shampoo has very few moisturisers, and a more concentrated formula of cleansers.
This makes it ideal for giving your hair a deep clean but it shouldn’t be used more regularly than once a week (unless you have really greasy hair) because it can end up stripping too much moisture from the hair.
Other benefits of clarifying shampoo include:
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£24 | Buy now from Cult Beauty
Why we love it: Ouai Detox Shampoo easily eliminates build up in the hair. The shampoo deeply cleans the hair and unblocks clogged follicles. It contains apple cider vinegar to cut through the build-up, leaving hair soft, silky, and ready for a week ahead of styling. Just wet hair and squeeze a coin size dollop and work into the scalp, leave for 1-3 minutes and rinse thoroughly.
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£6.99 | Buy now from Boots
Why we love it: This shampoo purifies and detoxes the hair to leave it clean and super shiny. The active coconut charcoal and kaolin clay help remove buildup, leaving the hair feeling weightless and manageable. This is also great for coloured hair as it won’t strip the colour out of it. This can’t be said for all clarifying shampoos so be sure to check the label.
Buy now from Boots
£22.50 | Buy now from Boots
Why we love it: Bumble and Bumble’s Sunday Shampoo is all about that weekly cleansing day. This shampoo removes buildup and residue that we gather in our hair. It removes excess oil, built-up pollutants and gives hair a fresh clean start for the week. Note: This shampoo is for non-colour treated hair.
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Why we love it: This shampoo is great for people who live in hard water areas. Joico Clarifying Shampoo removes traces of impurities, leaving hair looking and feeling clean. Enriched with great ingredients like aloe and Vitamin E, it also helps protect hair from any further damage. It’s gentle enough to use on coloured hair, too.
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