The beautybrains.com staff has written a good article one should reference when understanding different types of shampoos. They boil it down to four categories: cleanser, conditioning, baby shampoos, and anti-dandruff shampoos.

My two cents:
When I took a lab course in biology, our group tested to see what expensive salon shampoo maintains pH the best. Our hands-down result was Paul Mitchell brand, with the brand Catwalk being the worst. I use the Paul Mitchell Tea Tree shampoo myself (which falls into the cleanser category), but I use it alternatively with a conditioning/hydrating shampoo (usually Pantene or Garnier Fructis) so my scalp doesn’t fall off. Of course different hair types should follow different regiments, but this article is a good place to start.

2 Comments »

I’m curious how you did the test for maintaining pH. Paul Mitchell uses citric acid to keep the pH on the acidic side. This acid has a natural “balancing” effect and would require lots of base to change the pH.

Said by Left Brain | March 10, 2007 @ 9:23 am

It was about a year ago but I remember that our teacher concocted a base-solution that we kept adding to each of the shampoos, and then tested each of them with litmus paper. What you said coincides with our results–it took a lot more base to overturn Paul Mitchell’s pH.

Said by Sarah | March 10, 2007 @ 3:08 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment