How to Protect Your Hair from Chlorine Damage?
While it works hard to disinfect pools, chlorine’s disinfectant property doesn’t do any favors for your hair and scalp. Chlorine can strip the natural oils from your hair, leaving it dry, brittle, and dull – which can lead to hair breakage, damage, and split ends.
Frequent exposure from chlorine can have the following adverse effects on your lovely strands:
Brittleness, cracking, and splitting, as it strips the natural oils and moisture from your hair. Frequent exposure causes your hair to become very porous as well.
Change your hair color (natural or color treated), as chlorine bonds with copper, manganese, iron, and other hard metals in swimming pool water, which can tint your hair a shade of dull, ashy green—especially if you have lighter-colored hair.
Weaken hair, leading to damage and split ends
How can you protect your hair from chlorine and/or harmful UV ray damage?
We put together some helpful tips and tricks to protect those strands while sitting poolside, taking a dip, or swimming laps.
Rinse/wet your hair with cool water before getting in the pool.
This will keep the hair from soaking up the chlorinated water or much less than if hair was dry.
Apply a light coat of conditioner/oil to wet hair prior to taking a dip.
The point is you need something to help block the chlorinated water from penetrating the hair. If you're a frequent swimmer or have hair that's more prone to chlorine damage, it’s a good idea to consider applying a leave-in chlorine protectant. Natural oils (jojoba, coconut, and olive) can also add a protective barrier to prevent chlorine and other pool chemicals from being absorbed into your hair strands. Try a deep conditioning mask or leave-in conditioner for added protection.
Wear a swim cap, hat, or headscarf (helps protect from damaging UV rays too)!
This is just an added barrier and not a solid way to keep your hair from getting wet, but will protect from damaging UV rays.
Rinse your hair after your swim and then use a clarifying shampoo and conditioner post-swim. Be sure not to leave pool water in your hair overnight!.
It is imperative that you at least rinse your hair after swimming even if you are not able to wash it immediately. That is get some of the chlorine out of the hair ASAP and that allows less time for the chemicals to damage your strands.
