Shampoo Bars

The benefits of using shampoo bars for the environment is fantastic as it is amazing how much plastic we use in our bathrooms. However, the idea of changing over can be a bit scary as let's be honest - clean hair is somewhat important to our look!

We are disadvantaged living in the area that we do as we have particularly hard water which doesn't lend itself to shampoo bars or hair cleaning as easily - even with bottled shampoo it's amazing the difference in my hair if I've washed it at my parents in the Midlands compared to at home in Bristol. You can still make shampoo bars work for you, it just takes a bit more rinsing.

There's a couple of techniques people use with shampoo bars, but because of the hard water I find the best one is to wet the bar and then rub it against your other hand to get a good lather. Then massage that into your hair. The other technique is to rub the bar directly onto and down your hair, but because of our hard water I just couldn't get a lather using this method.

The other thing to remember is that like bottled shampoo each shampoo bar is different and some will suit your hair better than others. During lockdown I used one of the Wild Olive bars, but after a while it stopped cleaning my hair in the same way. I was a bit despondent but realised that my hair does that with bottled shampoo too, I have to rotate between two bottles, not continually using the same one. So it was no surprise that this was the case with a bar too. Particularly as bars last longer (typically the same as 2-3 bottles), so I was never going to get through a whole bar without a problem. Now that we've got ours in I'm looking forward to being able to rotate between two bars and get rid of bottles from my routine again.

A key thing with shampoo bars is to rinse, rinse and rinse again! Pay particular attention to areas such as the back of your neck. Some people use an apple cider vinegar rinse after the water to help get rid of any residue (particularly in hard water areas). This isn't needed after every wash - twice a week to start with and then once a week should be fine. This isn't something I've tried yet, but will let you know if I do! If you do want to give it a go the recommendation is 2 or 3 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar in 250ml of lukewarm water.

Whilst your hair adapts to the shampoo bar you may need to lather and rinse two times in a wash, but you will be able to go down to once in the future. 

Ensure that your bar dries out between uses as this will help it to last a long time.

Both our bars and the ones made by Wild Olive are suitable for vegans. Wild Olive uses 100% natural ingredients our use a minimum of 93% natural (they are still sulphate, paraben and PEG free).

The options we have are as follows: