How to get rid of greasy hair.

Have you ever risen from bed in the morning and looked at your pillow, only to see a grease stain? 

It’s not something any of us wants to see, and it can feel gross if you think about it too much. Greasy hair comes with a stigma these days. You don’t want to be that guy.

Also, if your hair is that greasy, there’s a chance that something is off with your hair care.

So, we’re going to tackle that today. We’re going to show you why hair gets greasy and what you can do about it.

What’s your hair type?

You don’t need a Ph.D. in hair science to defeat grease, but it helps to know about hair types. There are tons of distinctions amongst the countless hair types, but for today, we only need to focus on two of them: oily and dry hair.

Some people might split this into oily, dry, or normal hair, and that works too, but today, we’re going to treat it like a spectrum. You can be far into the oily side, far into the dry side, or anywhere in the middle.

This isn’t too complicated. If you’re on the dry side of things, then you’re not likely to struggle with greasy hair. But, that’s not quite the whole story. There are situations that can make dry hair oily. You want to decide if you have dry or oily hair specifically so you know if you need to make a major change.

On the other hand, oily hair is greasy unless you actively manage it. In other words, you’re either finding ways to prevent uncommon oil buildup in your hair, or you’re strategizing to manage grease that’s going to appear without active care.

Now, which type of hair do you have? Many of you already have an idea now that you’re thinking about it, but there’s also a simple test. You can grab a bit of tissue paper. Dab it on your hair a few times like you’re trying to blot a stain. Now, look at the paper. If you can see grease on the paper, you have oily hair. If the paper is clean, you have dry hair.

Use the right products

With that established, we can talk about hair products. Some products add grease and oils to your hair, so even if you’re in the dry camp, these products can make your hair greasier. Other products that we’re discussing are essential for people with naturally oily hair.

Shampoo and conditioner

Let’s start with shampoo. Shampoos come in all shapes and sizes, but in general, shampoos are designed to cut oils and reduce the amount of grease in your hair. In other words, if you have a lot of grease, washing your hair with a good shampoo goes a long way. MANSCAPED® makes such a shampoo. With powerful, natural cleansing ingredients, it can cut right through an oil buildup and leave you with healthy hair.

Conditioner, on the other hand, can actually add to the oils in your hair. Traditionally, oils in a conditioner help to hydrate hair. They also coat hair to lock in moisture. But if your hair is greasy, then that coating can trap the grease, which isn’t good.

There are two solutions for greasy hair when it comes to conditioner. The first is that you can use less conditioner. Pretty simple, right?

The other option (since conditioners have a lot of nutrients that are good for hair health) is to use conditioner and shampoo at the same time. The conditioner will still infuse ingredients, but the shampoo will thin the oils and reduce any contribution to hair grease.

And if you want to do this the easy way, get a shampoo and conditioner all-in-one formula.

Styling products

As for styling products, you have a lot of options. The thing is, most styling products are built from oily bases. The oils prevent them from dissolving and washing away if you get a little bit of sweat on top of your head.

When it comes to managing grease, you once again have two easy options. First, you can try to use fewer of these products. Too much styling oil can make even dry hair greasy. Cutting back goes a long way.

Second, you can make sure that you consistently wash the styling products out every day. This might require you to switch to night showers instead of morning showers, but when grease is a problem, you don’t want to leave these products in your hair overnight.

You can also look for specialty hair products that don’t contribute to greasy hair, but they can be difficult to find and a bit pricey.

Other add-ins

Outside of styling products, there are plenty of other add-ins marketed for your hair. You might look at protein packs, other infusers, masks, and all kinds of other stuff. 

We’re throwing a lot under this umbrella, but there’s an easy way to manage these add-ins: Read the labels.

You want to look for any signs of oil bases. Those oils can come from natural sources like coconuts or other plants. They can also be synthetic oils. Either way, if the add-in lists oil as a product, then it can contribute to greasy hair.

That said, you’ll find that some of those products don’t use oils at all. In that case, they should be fine. In fact, healthy hair is often less greasy, so if you can infuse your hair with oil-free products, it’s worth trying as extra protection in the battle against grease.

Adjust your hair care

Okay. So now you know your hair type. And you’ve thought about which products are ok to use and why. You’ve really made progress in this battle, but there’s one more key ingredient to success. You have to take care of your hair the right way.

This isn’t about which products to use. Instead, we’re talking about how to use those products. In general, there are two technical aspects of hair care that bear a lot of weight for managing oil: how often you wash your hair and how you scrub your scalp.

Let’s start with frequency.

Washing frequency

If you don’t wash your hair often enough, it will get oily and greasy, right? That’s true if you have naturally oily hair. If you have dry hair, it’s a little less true. 

If you were to completely stop washing your hair forever, even dry hair would build up a little oil at first. But with dry hair, that oil buildup will start to level off after a few days to a few weeks (it just depends on the person). Eventually, your hair wouldn’t be greasy at all, and it’s important to understand this.

As for a person with oily hair, never washing again would probably leave you with a greasy top. This means that washing frequency is not universal. It depends on your hair, and to get it right, you’re going to have to experiment a little bit.

Here’s what you really need to know. If you wash your hair too often, you’re artificially drying out your hair, and your body will respond by producing more oil. So, if you’re already washing your hair daily and your head is greasy, experiment by washing your hair less. This is doubly true if you know that you have hard water running through the tap.

If reducing your washing frequency seems to make things worse, then go the other direction. For the most part, you need to wash your hair more often if you use a lot of styling products. Otherwise, very few people need to wash their hair more than every other day.

Exfoliation

The other issue is scrubbing. You do want to exfoliate your scalp. It is skin, after all. Doing so clears pores and helps the skin on top of your head manage oils in a healthy way.

That said, your scalp is sensitive. It’s very easy to overdo it, and when the scalp gets irritated, it produces a bunch of oil to soothe itself. That means that an irritated scalp produces oily hair.

So, here’s what you do. First, don’t use a harsh agitator to exfoliate your scalp. Most shampoos already have chemical exfoliants in them, so you barely need to scrub the scalp at all. Instead, you can use your fingertips (not fingernails) to work your shampoo into the scalp when you wash your hair. Be gentle and take your time. This technique alone can reduce hair oil by a ton. You’ll be surprised.

If you really need an exfoliating tool, look for something extremely gentle like a silicone head massage tool to use while shampooing. You shouldn’t feel any discomfort in your scalp when you exfoliate.

Do that, along with everything else you learned, and you can manage hair grease like a champ.