The great conditioner experiment

As you might know by now, my husband and I have long hair (and if you didn't know, you can tell by the picture to your left), which was one of the reasons I started making my own products. We both have very oily hair, and I couldn't find anything but oily roots, dry ends type products that left us feeling slightly greasy even when we washed that morning.

I love my shampoo bar for oily hair, and I love the conditioner bar, but this time of year I find a need a little more conditioning in the form of my intense liquid conditioner with all the swimming, sun exposure, and running around I'm doing. But when I add more conditioner to my hair, it gets greasier quicker. (Click here for more information on how much conditioner to use and how long to leave it in!) So I thought I'd try a little experiment to see how much conditioner my hair really needs!

INTENSE CONDITIONER WITH A TON OF CATIONIC INGREDIENTS FOR REALLY DAMAGED HAIR

HEATED WATER PHASE
73.5% water
2% hydrolyzed protein
2% cetrimonium chloride

HEATED OIL PHASE
7% Incroquat BTMS
3% Incroquat CR
4% cetrimonium bromide
4% ethylhexyl palmitate

COOL DOWN PHASE
2% panthenol
2% dimethicone
2% cyclomethicone
2% cationic polymer
1% fragrance or essential oil
0.5% to 1% preservative


I'm diluting my conditioner and making notes of how my hair feels!

Experiment one: I added 50 grams of distilled water with 0.25 grams of liquid Germall Plus to 100 grams of product (distilled water!!!) and I've used that for three washings so far with about 3 washings left. Which means I'm using about 25 grams of conditioner per wash. I'm happy with this so far. My hair is soft, shiny, defrizzed, and detangled. It's very watery, so I've taken to just squishing the bottle over my head and running it through my hair with my fingers, with an extra amount on the ends. I've managed to get three days between washings, so that's a fine thing indeed!

If I wanted to keep this version the way it is and wanted to figure out the percentages, I would divide every ingredient by 150 and get the percentage that way. So this version has 4.67% BTMS, 2% Incroquat CR, and 2.67% cetrimonium bromide and ethylhexyl palmitate respectively.

Next experiment, adding 75 grams of distilled water and 0.37 grams of preservative to the product and seeing how that works!