The Easiest Way to Make Hair Color Last (Seriously!)

Is anyone OK with spending hundreds of dollars on hair color that lasts for two weeks? Nope, but it’s something we deal with constantly because hair dye loves to disappear. But luckily, learning how to make your hair color last might just be as simple as tweaking your shower experience.

And no, we’re not referring to spending a ton of cash on that crazy specific shampoo that you can only buy at the salon. It’s about how long you actually stay in the shower. If you do have a hairstyle that has a lot of vibrant color [think red] that you don’t want to fade, Aveda‘s Global Artistic Director for Hair Color Ian Michael Black says that standing under the water is your worst enemy.

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“The best thing for hair color preservation is quick shampoos, and the worst thing for hair color is standing under the shower,” he told us at the 2015 Aveda Congress. “The water is what drags it out more than the shampoo.”

While it may feel good to stand under the hot water for ages, you’re basically just rinsing out your hair color with the product. “It the hair follicle fills up with water, the water then just kind of pulls it out. So when you stand under the shower for too long, it’s not good for hair color,” he says.

And while we think lathering up and scrubbing is what it takes to get our hair free of dirt and product build-up, Black reminds us that it definitely does not take ten minutes to get a squeaky clean head of hair. On top of all that, you actually don’t need all those bubbles at all.

“We’re all obsessed by lots of lather,” he says. “We actually don’t need that. If you co-wash, it doesn’t lather and you suddenly realize that actually it’s all psychological.”

This couldn’t be more truthful. Most sulfate-free shampoos actually are lather-free, and yes, still clean your hair. Besides cutting down your shower times, a quick trick is to skip the wash entirely and reach for the dry shampoo—a saving grace in preserving hair color and of course, blowouts.

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