Swimmers' Hair Advice: Combat Swimmers' Hair this Summer

Swimmers’ Hair Advice: Combat Swimmers’ Hair this Summer

Swimmers’ hair advice is offered to a reader whose daughter lives in the pool over the summer. How can you combat swimmers’ hair? Read on for tried and true advice.

Whoop, whoop, happy Hump Day hotties! Welcome to another installment of Ask the Pro Stylist’s hair, beauty or nails advice as asked by my readers and/or clients. Today’s question comes from Gina on Long Island who wants to know how to deal with her daughter’s swimmers’ hair.

Hi, I hope you can help me. I belong to a beach club on Long Island. This is our first year and since we joined, my 7-year-old daughter doesn’t leave the pool. Her hair is dry and hard to comb. What should I do to fix it?

Thanks for your time,

Gina.

Hi Gina. Thanks for writing in. As temperatures rise, so does the amount of time spent in the pool, which will lead to swimmers’ hair, especially amongst the youngins. Older people and professional swimmers will use bathing caps that help prevent this summertime nuisance, but generally children will not. Spending all day in the chlorinated waters of home pools, public pools, camps or beach clubs is commonplace with the youth of Long Island. Droves of children enter the salons towards the end of August for their back to school haircuts and swimmers’ hair will be the norm for the majority of them.

Kids need more than a “good haircut” to relieve swimmers’ hair. With severe swimmers’ hair, the strands feel like buter. It is difficult to comb or style and knots easily. The hair will bend during a haircut even with the sharpest of shears, which makes a precision haircut difficult.

Swimmers’ hair can be characterized as dry and brittle with a glossy, almost plastic appearance. It is unmanageable with matted tangles and difficult to comb or brush. Blondes will have a greenish tint, natural colors will have an unnatural lightening and tinted hair will fade much faster than usual. Girls tend to suffer with swimmers’ hair more than boys as they tend to have shorter hair, but the longer coiffed boys will have it worse, as they are less likely than girls to maintain their manes. Although this problem is unattractive and annoying, particularly for the mom trying to manage her child’s hair, it is preventable as well as treatable.

The following recommendations however are not for color treated hair or chemically relaxed hair such as Brazilian Blowouts or Keratin treatments, as it is not advisable to swim in chlorinated water with these salon services, and different products will benefit the above.

So, what to do?

Prior to spending a day in the pool, generously apply a conditioner to the hair, comb through and leave it in while in the sun and swimming. Not only will the conditioner coat the hair and protect it from the chlorine bonding to it, but the hair will get an all day conditioning treatment. Immediately upon finishing swimming for the day, profusely rinse the hair with cool water to wipe away lingering chlorine whether or not conditioner was used beforehand, either with a hose or the shower at the beach club. Use daily maintenance shampoos and conditioners such as UltraSwim’s Chlorine Removal Shampoo and Ultra Repair Conditioner or Fairy Tale’s Lifeguard Removal Kit containing a Clarifying Shampoo and Lemon-Aid Conditioner .

For severe swimmers’ hair, a weekly treatment of chlorine removal may be performed at your professional salon that use Malibu C Swimmers Weekly Solution. One or more applications may be needed to completely remove the chlorine and green from the hair. The product is safe for children, inexpensive and shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes in the salon.

If you have a swimmers’ hair query similar to above, or another beauty or nails question, emial me at DeirdreAHaggerty@gmail.com. For more summer hair care tips, subscribe above. Happy styling!