The Best Shampoo Bars for Curly Hair

The Curly Girl Method is a hair maintenance regime to take care of curly hair to have it look its best. You can go curly girl and plastic free because we have shampoo bars for curly hair in store. If you don't have curly hair, it's hard to understand just how difficult it is to maintain. With an AVOID LIST of shampoo, heat, combs and brushes, fragrance, sulphates, silicone and alcohol, there's not a lot of natural shampoo choices that are suited to the method and even less in our shampoo bars selection. That said, we stock one of THE BEST curly girl shampoo bars on the market.

The method calls for a Once Per Week cleanse with a conditioner both before AND after the clean for wavy hair, and for curly hair, just use water and conditioner for a 'Cowash' (and we have THE perfect product for that).

Ethique shampoo bar for curly hair is Professor Curl

Ethique Professor Curl is pH balanced gentle cleansing solid shampoo bar for curly hair. Like everything in our store, it's a sulfate free shampoo, but it's not the only box that needs to be ticked in the curly girl method, so Professor Curl goes further than that. Professor Curl from Ethique, one of our favourite shampoo bars for curly hair, is full of nurturing and hydrating ingredients including shea butter, betaine (from beets) and cocoa butter. These ingredients not only help to soften the hair, but they help define curls. There's no sulphates, silicones, waxes or drying alcohols to weigh down hair.

Ethique conditioner bar for curly hair is Curliosity

Ethique Curliosity is a solid conditioner bar, a cowash and a leave in conditioner all in one bar. Shampoo bars for curly hair need to be paired with an appropriate conditoner. It uses similar hydrating ingredients to the shampoo bar, including shea butter, jojoba oil and cocoa butter. It's the nourishing castor oil that makes it the perfect cowash because it has the capacity to cleanse without drying out the hair shaft at the same time. Castor oil also stimulates the hair follicles and there is anecdotal evidence that castor oil on your hair can promote hair growth. Whether this is truly the case or not, the moisturising and nourishing nature of castor oil when applied to your hair is enough of a reason to give it a try, and curly hair loves castor oil.

What is a cowash?

A cowash is a conditioner that has cleansing ingredients in it that you can use as a 2 in 1 shampoo and conditioner. It's short for 'conditioner only wash' and is most often used with people that have curly hair. A co-wash can ease dryness, make curly hair easier to manage and reduce shaft breakage. If you have overly oily hair or you're out in the elements and exercising a lot, over time, you may end up with an excess of oil in your hair that you can either remove with a dry shampoo, redistributing it by using a boar bristle brush, or once in a while, use a clarifying shampoo to strip the excess oil out.

Not all conditioners are suitable to use as a cowash, so check the individual products in our store to find out if it's right for you

Ethique for frizzy hair notable mentions

Before Professor Curl and Curliosity came in to the range, Ethique had a shampoo and conditioner bar formulated for frizzy and dry hair or hair that has been damaged by hot irons (we have a heat protectant spray category to fix that issue). Shampoo bars for curly hair are not always just for curly hair. THere are some multi-taskers in store.

Frizz Wrangler is the shampoo and The Guardian is the conditioner. Both are still perfectly suitable for curly hair if you're not excessively curly with coarse hair. For the extremes of curl, which we adore, stick with the Professor Curl and Curliosity.