How to wash curly hair: sections, moisture, and not touching it

Curly hair has two problems that no washing schedule solves on its own. Sebum cannot travel down a spiral, so the ends are chronically drier than the roots. And curls tangle into each other rather than lying alongside each other, so any handling that treats the head as one unit turns wash day into a detangling session.

Sectioning solves the second. Sequence solves the first.

How often to wash curly hair

Once or twice a week suits most curls. The tighter the pattern, the longer the interval most people find comfortable.

But the scalp overrules the lengths. A scalp that is itching, flaking or greasy by day three needs washing on day three, and stretching to day seven because a routine said so is how a manageable scalp problem becomes seborrhoeic dermatitis nobody is treating. If the lengths cannot take that frequency, wash the scalp and keep the shampoo off the lengths.

The five steps

1. Section and detangle first. Four sections, clipped, for most heads. Apply conditioner to each and separate tangles with your fingers or a wide-tooth comb, working from the ends upward. Doing this before any shampoo is what makes the rest of wash day short — and the direction matters more than the tool.

2. Cleanse the scalp, section by section. A sulfate-free shampoo or a co-wash, worked into the scalp with fingertips. Curls do not need the lengths scrubbed and will punish you for it.

3. Do not pile the hair on your head. Keep sections hanging down and let the lather rinse through them. Swirling long curly hair into a lather-nest on top of the head is how you undo the detangling you just did.

4. Deep condition, section by section. A rich conditioner or mask on soaking-wet hair, worked through each section, detangled once more if needed, left for a few minutes. Warmth helps a little; time beyond about five minutes helps much less than the packaging implies.

5. Rinse and shape. Rinse most of it out, leaving enough for slip, and scrunch upward toward the scalp to encourage the curl to form. Some people rinse fully and add product afterwards; both work, and the difference is how much weight your curls carry.

The part that decides definition

Everything above gets you clean, moisturised, detangled hair. Whether it dries as defined curls or as frizz is decided in the next hour.

Apply your styling product to soaking-wet hair, not damp. Use one technique to distribute it — praying hands for looser curls, raking then scrunching for tighter ones — and resist using three.

Then stop touching it. Plop into a T-shirt or microfibre towel for ten to twenty minutes to remove water without friction. Air dry, or diffuse on low airflow with the diffuser held still rather than moved around. Frizz while drying is almost always contact, not humidity.

If you used a gel, let the cast form and go hard. Scrunch it out with your palms only when the hair is completely dry — the crunch is doing a job until then, and breaking it early is the most common mistake in curly hair care.

The full curly wash day guide goes further into the styling techniques and where routines fail. This page is the washing half of it.

What to reach for

• A sulfate-free shampoo for the scalp, and optionally a co-wash to alternate with it.
• A rich conditioner or mask — this is the product to spend on, and to use generously.
• One styling product with hold: a gel or a curl cream. Both only if you know why.
• A wide-tooth comb, and a T-shirt or microfibre towel.

Between wash days

Curls do not need to be re-washed to be revived. A spray bottle of water with a little leave-in in it, scrunched into the sections that have flattened, resets most of the pattern. Sleeping in a loose bun on top of the head or in a satin bonnet protects it in the first place — and the friction you avoid overnight is a meaningful share of the breakage that limits curly hair's length.