Zucci's 10 best ways to protect your hair from damage!

We love to change our hair. Whether it is a style change with a hair straightener or colour change for a season. With all this change, the hair becomes damaged. But what does damage mean?

To hairdressers, damaged hair is hair that has a raised cuticle and is losing protein and moisture. The following processes cause damage:

• Brushing the hair while wet.
• Heat styling the hair with a blowdryer, hot iron, curling tong, hot brush etc.
• Brushing tangled hair forcefully.
• Colouring hair lighter than its natural colour.
• Colouring hair darker than its natural colour.
• Infrequent haircuts.
• Tying the hair up tightly when it is wet.
• Extended sun/heat exposure.
• Exposure to pollution in the environment.
• Using astringent hair products that have, alcohol, silicon, petrochemical ingredients, mineral oils and other synthetic ingredients in them.

So how do you avoid damaging your hair but still have it in the style and colour that you want????
Here are Zucci’s 10 best ways to protect your hair from damage! 

1. Know your hair. Take a look at your hair. Are your strands fine or thick? How much hair do you have? What is your natural colour? Your hair can tell you a lot about how to treat it. If you need help with deciphering your hair, visit us in the salon for a consultation and hair analysis. Knowledge is power; understanding what your hair can or can’t do will give you great insight into how to take care of it.
2. Once you know your hair a bit better, look at your daily/weekly routine for your hair. How often you wash your hair? How frequently you heat style? Do you go to bed with it wet? Do you restyle it daily? Is your routine different depending on the season or day of the week? It is important to know what you do and how you do it so you can add in steps to prevent damage. You may need to make modifications to your process but understand what you want to achieve, and there is always a path to get there.
3. So you know your hair and your processes, now look at what you use on your hair. At a minimum, we need to have the following products in our hair routine:
   • Shampoo – in shower use to clean your scalp and hair, so you have a clean base to condition your hair and style.
   • Conditioner or Treatment – in shower use, applied after shampooing, smooths and closes the cuticle, detangles the hair and hydrates or strengthens.
   • A heat or thermal styling protectant product – this can be a spray, creme, gel or foam in texture but the primary purpose of the product is to protect the hair from heat styling. They normally do
     not provide any other styling support.
   • A styling product to support your chosen look – use foams, sprays and gels for volume or use cremes, pomades and gels for control and smoothness. Some people use 1 or 4 to achieve our desired look.
   • If you don’t have these minimum products, get them and get them quick. It does not matter if you spend 5 or 55 minutes on your hair; these are essential!
4. Audit your hot tools! Is your blowdryer more than five years old? Is the temperature on your straightener increasing every week? When was the last time you cleaned your hot tool?  Every time you drop your hot tool on the floor, the internal mechanics get a jolted, and this can affect the performance of your styling tool. It is vital to have tools that are working properly and efficiently. Old blowdryers are the most significant cause of heat styling damage in hair. Overdrying your hair leaves the cuticle open and more susceptible to breakage. Invest in quality tools to heat style your hair daily. At Zucci we are exclusive ghd stockists. The ghd range is designed with hair condition and integrity in mind. We have a variety of blowdryers, curling irons, straightening irons, a smoothing hot brush and brushes from their range available at Zucci St James, Zucci Ivanhoe, and Zucci South Melbourne.
5. Brushes, Combs and Clips. It is amazing how many of our guests have had the same hairbrush for 20 years! It is also amazing how many of our guests don’t clean their hairbrushes. There is a common misconception that any brush from anywhere will do the job for any style. This is not the case. Brushes like combs and clips are easily accessible and can be cheap, but this does not mean they are suitable for your hair. If your brush has bent or missing bristles, is pulling your hair when you use it or is scratching you, it is time to upgrade. We recommend that you have a selection of brushes for different purposes and hair lengths. The essential brushes that most people will need are, a paddle or flat brush for hair brushing and long hair blowdrying, a radial brush preferably made of a product that does not get too hot or a brustle that is more gentle on the hair, and a detangling brush that can be used on wet and dry hair. If you blowdry your hair often with a round or flat brush, you should clean the brush weekly to remove hair and ensure that the brush is working optimally for the style you want to create. Combs are more straight forward, you need a wide-tooth one for the shower to comb through your conditioner, this should be made of smooth or shiny plastic or a natural fibre like bamboo. If you like extra volume in your hair a pintail comb is a great addition for backcombing your hair.
6. It’s all in the technique. How you style your hair affects the condition of it. You could have the latest and greatest products and tools but still damage your hair in how you style it. Taking the time to dry your hair from the roots first, then the ends will prevent over-drying. Using a brush on hair that is tangle-free will prevent unnecessary breaking. Taking finer sections for straightening and going slower over each section will minimise drying of the hair. These are just a few of many techniques to minimise damage.  At Zucci, we can give you a detailed process for how to style your hair and the techniques that will work for you.
7. Less is more. Sometimes we over style our hair, and we could do fewer steps to get to the desired result while maintaining the condition. An example is someone who has naturally straight hair may blowdry their hair entirely then style with a curling wand. But the same result could have been achieved with blowdrying the front hairline and roots then leaving the mids and ends to air dry before styling with a curler. Minimising the heat contact with the hair. Learn about the quickest way to style your hair from our team when you are next in the salon!
8. Protect your hair. UV rays not only damage the skin they damage the hair as well. When you are out in the sun for extended periods, it is essential to wear protection over your hair. UV light’s main effect on hair is colour fading. If you have coloured hair, the UV rays will lighten the colour.
9. “My hair gets damaged when I sleep???” Do you go to bed with lovely soft, smooth hair and wake up looking like you have been electrocuted? 🙂 When we sleep and move in the night, our hair does not slip and slide over cotton or linen very well. It snags and can get quite rumpled, knotty and tangled. To prevent this, sleep with your hair in a loose plat or bun on top of your head. Or you can use a silk pillowcase. Silk pillowcases are not only great for your hair, and they are fantastic for your skin. Get your silk pillowcase at Zucci.
10. Know what your hair can do. This last tip is about hair colour. If you want to be blonde, then dark then blonde again in a short space of time. Of course, this is going to damage your hair. It is important to have honest and frank conversations with your hairdresser about what you have done to your hair over the last two years and what you want to achieve for your hair. The most damaged hair we see is hair colour damage. Once the hair has been compromised from hair colour, any other type of damage happens much faster and is harder to treat. So listen to your hair, listen to your hairdresser and take the time your hair needs between changes to allow your hair time to heal.

 
To learn more about your hair and how to prevent damage, visit our salons and discuss your concerns with our team of experienced hairdressers.