Eco-Professional Hair At Home with Lavender Hill, Rahua and Intelligent Nutrients
Wanna save some cash? Stretch out your expensive color and blow-out sessions by as much as a month with supplies that are as easy on the Earth as they are on your wallet. Alli Webb of Straight At Home is an on-call, blowout specialist based in Los Angeles, CA who uses only eco-friendly products during house calls. She filled us in on a few tips to getting professional-quality locks at home.
Because why pay if you don’t have to?
Although Alli doesn’t do color for her clients, she’s often asked to recommend more eco-friendly dyes that are free of ammonia, parabens, sulfates, and 1,4-Dioxane, among other known cancer-causing chemicals. “Unfortunately, these at-home kits have a limited color range,” Alli says. “So for clients who depended on professionally blended color, I started looking for something that could help blend in gray at the roots and freshen up the color in between visits.”
Alli’s eureka moment came when she discovered ColourSplash by Lavender Hill. With no ammonia, peroxide or alcohol to damage the hair, the semi-permanent color—available in blonde, brunette, redhead or a mix your own shade—shakes up with your own shampoo and sudses in, depositing limited amounts of color without coating the hair shaft. For deeper deposits, the company’s Gray Diffuser can be applied directly to gray roots, and lasts for six-to-eight shampoos. (But make sure you pay attention to where you shake that powder, as it does stain.)
But Alli is principally known for her seriously long-lasting blow-outs, so we were thrilled when she offered to share her secrets with us. First, make sure you wash your hair well before you start—“Dirty or even slightly greasy hair does not blow out well,” she says—and apply product while your hair is still wet. The product you use will depend on your hair type: If you’re a girl looking for body and volume, skip the next paragraph; if you have curly, wavy or frizzy hair, Rahua Leave-In Treatment is the shizzle.
As modeled by the luxuriously-tressed beauties pictured on our home page, Rahua (pronounced “rawa”) is a vegan line free of parabens, sulfates, dimethicone, propylene glycol, synthetic dyes or petroleum that contains sustainably harvested, rare ingredients grown deep in the Amazon rainforest. Alli works in a small amount of the Leave-In Treatment from the middle of the hair shaft to the end, then brushes it through. With very curly hair, she gently tosses the hair around with an energy-efficient blow dryer to get some of the moisture out before she begins sectioning the hair. “This speeds up the process and helps keep body in the hair,” Alli says. Then, after dividing the hair into small sections, she uses a round brush and patiently dries each section, beginning with the sections at the crown of the head and working her way down; the entire process takes about 30 to 40 minutes.
For straight hair, Alli adds body and volume by working a nickel size (depending on the amount of hair) of Intelligent Nutrients’ Certified Organic Volumizing Spray on wet hair, then combing it through for even coverage. “A good volumizing spray is essential because it provides body and hold, but won’t weigh down the hair,” Alli says. Then comes the blow-out, using a medium or small size metal round brush. “Roll up small sections of hair, then hold and release the heat from the dryer a few times. The metal heats up, then cools down, which sets the hair.” Alli patiently repeats this process all over the head from the crown down, section by section, for about an hour.
Finally, Alli finishes off each and every blow out with a spritz of no-aerosol, chemical-free hair spray. “I lift up the hair at the root, mainly in the crown area, and spray a small amount for extra hold,” she says. “A great blow-out should last for at least two days; if your hair is thick, up to a week.”
Note the repeated use of the word “patient.” Maybe that’s what we’re paying for, after all.
Get 20% off all Amazon Beauty Rahua Hair Care at Spirit Beauty Lounge with “ecostiletto” at checkout. Thanks, Spirit!
