Healthy Hair vs. Unhealthy Hair

Believe it or not, sometimes it’s kind of hard to tell whether your hair is healthy or not, especially when it comes to new hair growth. Is it a new strand, or is it breakage? Identifying healthy hair sometimes isn’t as easy as it appears! 
What are the telltale signs of unhealthy hair? Understanding and spotting these can help you to catch it and make changes to improve your hair’s health before things get any worse. 

How healthy is your hair?

Our founder, Maria Sotiriou is a professional stylist with over 37 years of experience in caring for hair, she explains: 

“Unhealthy hair is either one of both of these things, dehydrated or lacking in protein. Dehydrated hair is when the hair is lacking in moisture. It tends to feel dry, and brittle and has little movement or flexibility when styled. When the hair is dehydrated or dry it is prone to breakage, which can lead to the unwanted snapping and snagging of your lengths.

Protein loss, otherwise described as broken bonds, is identified by the hair being limp and a loss of elasticity. We talk a lot about elasticity when it comes to bleaching and colouring, but any hair type or texture can suffer from loss of elasticity. It’s most noticeable in wavy or curly hair as the texture won’t spring back into shape as it should when there’s a lack of protein.”

If you suspect that your hair is lacking in elasticity it’s easy to do an elasticity test at home. When your hair is wet select a strand to test. Hold the section of hair towards the ends of your lengths to avoid tugging at the root, with your other hand gently stretch the hair. If the hair bounces back to its original shape it has good elasticity, if it snaps or doesn’t return, then the elasticity is poor.

Improving Your Hair Health

Should you find that you have poor elasticity or are suffering from dry hair, no need to despair. Maria explains the first things she would do if she were to kickstart a healthy hair journey.

“The first thing to do is to infuse your hair with hydrating products. I would opt for a hydrating option across every element of your hair care routine including shampoos, conditioners, hair masks and leave-in treatments. Especially if your hair is dry, this is a great first step. If you can, I would always opt for salon, professional quality hair products. They’re more expensive but the ingredients and formulations are better, making them more effective and useful in your routine.

Even though I always promote the use of professional standard hair care products, I also really love natural and single-ingredient options. For example, I love to incorporate a natural oil treatment into my haircare routine pre-hair wash. Oil fortifies the hair and encourages it to become flexible which instantly decreases breakage and tackles problems such as dryness and lack of elasticity. 
Adding in an oil treatment is easy, firstly select your oil, I like avocado, argan or coconut.

On my hair wash day, I’ll apply an oil treatment of choice liberally to my scalp and hair, taking the time to massage the scalp to get the blood flowing and cuticles stimulated. I’ll leave this in for a few hours, or all day - bonus points if you wear it to the gym as the natural heat generated at your scalp will assist the oil treatment to penetrate even further! If you don’t have time to create natural heat in the gym, simply warm up your oil treatment with your blow-drier before you’re ready to rinse it out. One thing to remember is you should always be double shampooing during your hair wash, much like a double skincare cleanse, but it’s vital to do so post-oil treatment to get all of that residue out.”

As tempting as it is to then add lots of hydrating oils and styling products to your hair post-hair wash and treatment routines, it’s important to limit the use of styling products when healing your hair. Limiting yourself to a good, lightweight heat protector and oil serum to add to the very ends of the hair if they feel particularly dry, is all you need. The reason for this is to maintain your hair’s flexibility until the recovery is finished; heavy products weighing down your hair aren't helpful in the healing stage!

Another must is a trim every 8-10 weeks. We’ve all been there, desperately trying to improve the health of our hair, willing it to grow, holding onto every last strand by skipping trims, but getting those dead and dry ends dusted off will promote healthy hair and therefore hair growth.

If those deadends stick around you run the risk of split ends continuing to split up the hair shaft, so when you finally take the plunge and get to a hairdresser you’ll have to cut off a lot more than you originally intended to have you have been having timely haircuts in the first instance.

Find a good hairstylist who understands your hair and texture and who listens to you. If they understand your journey and what you’re trying to achieve, there should never be a reason to leave the salon unhappy about the amount of hair that’s been trimmed off! 

Healthy Hair Habits

Most importantly, in every instance of hair damage, it’s important to cut out the heat. This is such a crucial part of achieving healthy hair and healing damage, but it’s also the hardest part of the routine to redesign and reroute. If you’re battling frizz and flyaways caused by damage your first instinct is to reach for a hot iron, but it’s going to do your hair the world of good if you can resist the temptation. This is where your trusty SILKE London Heatless Curler Kit comes in handy… 

At SILKE London we make haircare products that allow you to put in minimal effort but get maximum results, and the Heatless Curler Kit does just that - it allows you to give up heat but still rock ‘fresh out the salon’ bouncy, blow dry curls with zero effort or technical skill. Perfect for those of you looking to cut out or limit heat, let's be honest, all of us can get ‘heated tool happy’ from time to time.

How it works is simple, we created a soft rod encased in 100% mulberry silk which you wrap your hair around when it’s a little damp. There are multiple ways of wrapping depending on the desired look of the finished curl, take a second to type this into TikTok and fall down a heatless tool and hair-wrapping blackhole for the next twenty minutes… whichever option you’re most inspired by, simply secure with the 100% silk Hair Ties which are included in the pack, and then go to bed or about your day, leaving the Kit in for a few hours. When it comes time to take it out, simply remove the rod and the Ties to reveal glorious curls, completely heat-free! 

Once you’ve styled your hair, all you have to do is maintain it. For this we’d recommend our Hair Wrap, Maria explains:

“Not only does the SILKE London Hair Wrap maintain your styling overnight, but it is best described as a health retreat for hair. Daily processes that our hair must withstand take their toll on our hair, and sleep is restorative for our bodies but not for our hair. Sleeping on our hair is the ultimate way of damaging and breaking hair, it can never be anywhere as healthy as you want it to be if it’s coming into contact with an abrasive pillow every night.

Maria's Hair Journey

I myself have a mixed Mediterranean heritage, so my hair is quite coarse and prone to frizz. I couldn’t figure out why I was experiencing so much breakage and damage, being a hairdresser myself I’d always used the best products and taken care of my hair so it wasn’t making sense. It wasn’t until I woke up one morning and saw little broken hairs all over my pillow, that I realised the damage was occurring while I slept. Materials such as cotton are abrasive because they actively suck the moisture out of your hair, so no matter what you’re doing to hydrate, it’s counterproductive if you can’t protect your hair overnight.

Placing all your precious hair into our 100% natural SILKE Hair Wrap allows hair to benefit from a natural environment for it to rehabilitate and grow. Silk is an ancient natural fabric which is known to give back to the hair and facilitate hydration, whilst simultaneously acting as a physical barrier between your hair and your pillowcase. The SILKE wrap allows for the natural moisture and oils we produce at the scalp to be absorbed into our hair, plus all the benefits of a good hair routine are not lost to your pillowcase and the dry atmosphere of our bedrooms. Without the Hair Wrap, your hair is pressed down onto the pillow with the weight of your head, as you move around in your sleep it’s rubbed against the fabric which causes friction which in turn causes damage and breakage. Simply popping on your Hair Wrap nightly can save your hair from all of that unnecessary damage.” 

Not only does your Hair Wrap protect and maintain the gorgeous heatless curler you created, but it also helps to heal your hair with its natural magic whilst you embark on your healthy hair journey. 

Opting for 100% silk hair care can enable you to get rid of all the goo you’re hoarding and instead enjoy really hardworking, easy-to-use tools that allow you to spend the time you would’ve spent battling your damaged hair on something you enjoy… the world is your oyster! 

Love, SILKE xo