Dealing With Oily Hair

When I was about fifteen, I started noticing that my hair was getting oily every day. I would try to go a day without washing my hair, but I'd always end up putting it in a ponytail because my scalp was greasy. So I started looking for solutions.

I tried a special shampoo formulated for oily hair, Maple Holistics Degrease shampoo. It made my hair feel cleaner for the first few washes, but six or seven months later, my hair still needed to be washed every day. Next, I tried customized shampoo formulated specifically for my hair needs, which I ordered from Function of Beauty. This product had roughly the same effect as the Maple Holistics shampoo — it got my hair clean, but I still wasn't seeing much improvement in terms of how quickly my scalp produced oil.

Google "oily hair" and you'll find a number of sources that tell you that washing your hair every day causes it to overproduce oil, resulting in an oily scalp. The solution? According to the internet, you need to start washing your hair less frequently in order to train it to produce less oil. So I tried this. For about six months, I washed my hair once every three days, with only a few exceptions. I still didn't see much improvement — my scalp still became oily after about 24 hours, and I had to use dry shampoo most days I wasn't washing my hair.

After a lot of trial and error, here are my tips for dealing with oily hair:

1. Brush your hair daily. Like most strategies, this one hasn't proven completely effective for me, but it's a good idea to spread the oils out rather than letting them sit on your scalp.
2. Find a dry shampoo you like. I tried making my own, using a recipe of cornstarch and cocoa powder (you can find a bunch of homemade options online). However, I wasn't crazy about the effect of the cocoa powder mixing with my hair's oils. Now I use Batiste's dry shampoo for dark hair (it's cruelty free and vegan!)
3. Decreasing how frequently you wash your hair may or may not give you results, but it's worth a try. Plus, using dry shampoo allows you to use less water, shorten your showers, and skip the stress of dealing with wet hair. My hair still gets greasy every day, but I prefer using dry shampoo to washing my hair daily.
4. On days when you aren't washing your hair, use face wash to wash your forehead, temples, ears, and neck (basically around your entire hairline). The oil produced by your scalp doesn't just stay there — it spreads out to your skin. Personally, if I go a day without washing my hair, I'll start to feel dirty again a few hours in unless I wash the skin around my hairline thoroughly.
5. Wash your hair from different angles. Try washing with your hair parted, starting from the back, splitting it into sections, etc. Oil can lurk on parts of your hair's surface that you've neglected to wash. When it comes to dry shampoo, it's important that you tailor it to your hairstyle. If you're wearing your hair in a ponytail, brush your hair back before applying dry shampoo. If you're wearing it down, part it the way you will have it parted before applying dry shampoo. This will ensure that the dry shampoo hits the parts of your hair's surface that will be on display.
6. Make your peace with your hair. For a lot of people with fine, straight hair, oil production is just one of the facts of life, and there may be little you can do to change it. Some of these solutions may work for you, and some won't. It will probably never be perfect, but eventually you'll find an approach that's compatible with your hair and your life.