Why Only Washing Your Hair Once A Week Could Be A Bad Idea — Even If It Looks Clean

The debate around how regularly you should wash your hair is a heated one, but we’re hoping to settle it finally. While some experts say that washing your hair once a week is fine as long as you use a good shampoo and your hair responds well to that frequency, there’s another side to the argument. If your hair is extremely dry and not washed often enough, it can lose its natural moisture with age. According to stylist Rosi Fernandez, director of Ananda Ferdi, it is not advisable to go for more than a week without washing hair, as “follicles become clogged and do not get oxygenated”, she says.

When it looks clean, but it’s not

As someone who washes my hair every other day, I’ve always been a bit envious of people who can go for several days without having to. For example, the Kardashians’ go-to hairstylist, Jen Atkin, previously said she could go up to four or five days without washing, and that it was only on the last day she would resort to an up-do with a sharp centre parting, as that’s when it started to get dirty. But the reality is that although the hair may appear to be clean, pollution (one of the major aggressors hair faces in 2023) has dirtied it without you realising. “It may look like the hair is clean but with pollution, sweat, tobacco smoke… the hair becomes saturated.

The consequences of pollution (and not enough washing)

According to Fernandez, when hair is washed less than twice a week, the follicles become clogged and this can cause a range of problems: scalp flaking, itching, sensitivity, dandruff and even hair loss. These small particles, which are invisible to the eye, prevent the hair from oxygenating well, which is why it is advisable to wash it more often — even with thick, dry hair that you might not feel requires washing so frequently. The effects that pollution has on the hair were studied all the way back in 1994, by the Industrial Toxicology Research Centre in Lucknow. “At that time, it was shown that suspended particles, smoke and pollutant gases were deposited on the hair and scalp, causing inflammatory and irritative reactions that can even lead to hair loss,” explains Adolfo Remartínez.