Ling loves to learn…I was reading this post about replacing hair conditioner with fabric softener. The blogger’s mother found this “idea” through Woman’s World magazine. This sounds really dangerous….. Could the magazine be sued for liability issues? But most importantly, is this a bad idea?
The Beauty Brains respond:
It amazes me that people are scared to death of the so called “toxic ingredients” in cosmetics (which are designed to be used on skin) but they have no problem applying a household laundry product to their body (which is NOT designed to be used directly on hair and skin.) There are two main reasons why this is a bad idea:
Putting laundry products directly on your skin is not safe
Despite what people may tell you, cosmetics ARE regulated to ensure they are safe. These products are formulated and tested to ensure they are safe for direct, prolonged contact with skin. Not surprisingly the laws that govern fabric softeners are different than the ones that control cosmetics. That’s not to say that fabric softeners are necessarily dangerous but they contain ingredients that aren’t designed to be directly applied to skin. Here are three examples:
- The conditioning ingredients themselves may be more aggressive and therefore more irritating.
- The colorants don’t have to be approved for use in cosmetics and therefore may be unsafe.
- The co-solvents used (which would be rinsed away in the laundry process) may dry skin or have other undesirable side effects.
Fabric softener won’t work as well as conditioner
Even if safety wasn’t an issue, why would you want to do this? Fabric softeners are formulated to soften fabric where as hair conditioners are designed to detangle, smooth, and increase shine. The two products are similar but that doesn’t mean they are interchangeable. Here are a few examples of characteristics that you want from a conditioner that a fabric softener is NOT optimized to deliver.
- Nice hair feel: Fabric softening ingredients have a stronger charge than many hair conditioners so they may stick to fabric to provide long-lasting softness. This is a good thing when it comes to your clothes which you wash rather infrequently. However in the case of your hair, repeated frequent use of fabric softer could result in horrific buildup. Also, the types of quats (quaternary ammonium compounds) used in hair conditioners are fine-tuned to deliver the best aesthetic experience possible. The ingredients that are good at softening fabric may leave hair feeling heavy and limp with a notable waxy coating.
- Increased shine: A good conditioner will include some sort of agent to add shine to your hair, for example a silicone. You will not find this in a fabric softener since “shine” is typically not desirable of clothing.
- Pleasant scent: Fabric softeners are heavily fragranced you may find yourself choking on the scent of Downey or Snuggle compared to your typical hair care product.
The Beauty Brains bottom line
While fabric softener may function as a hair conditioner why would you bother when you’re risking excessive buildup, poor performance, and skin irritation or worse? As we noted in our recent post about using lip gloss as eye shadow, there’s a lot of bad beauty advice out there. Fortunately the Muse was savvy enough to NOT recommend using this do-it-yourself product.