Olive Oil: The ultimate hair conditioner
Over at WiseBread, Nora has been holding forth on some unexpected ways to use powdered milk and toothpaste, ranging from softening your skin to filling holes in the wall. This entertaining discussion reminded me of something I learned from a dorm-mate in college. She had long, spectacular, radiantly shining black hair, the envy of every woman and the ruination of every man who saw her. One weekend she showed us how she used plain olive oil to condition her hair to a high pitch of beauty. Here’s her secret:
You need:
- about a cup of olive oil (less, if your hair is short)
- shampoo
- plastic wrap
- three old, clean bath towels
- paper towels
- a bonnet hair dryer, a gooseneck lamp or other incandescent lamp that you can move close to your head, or a warm, sunny day
- a clean utility or kitchen sink in which to wash your hair
Prepare your tools: Pour about a cup of olive oil into a measuring cup, if your hair is shoulder length or longer; for shorter hair, you can use a half-cup or so. Place this, the paper towels, and the bath towels near at hand where you will wash your hair. Pull out a couple of lengths of plastic wrap, about two or three feet long, and lay them out neatly on the countertop.
Don’t use the shower for this process! Olive oil dripped on the floor of a shower is extremely slippery and dangerous. Bend over a large sink to wash your hair and apply the oil.
First, wash your hair and thoroughly rinse out all the shampoo. Don’t apply commercial conditioner. When your hair is clean and well rinsed, towel dry it until it’s just damp. Set the wet towel aside. Now, again bending over the sink, apply the olive oil to your hair. Gently rub it in well, so that all your hair and your scalp are bathed generously in olive oil.
Grab a few paper towels and wipe the oil off your hands. Now take the plastic wrap and wind it around your head, turban style, so your hair is firmly covered. Grab the dry bath towel and wrap it around your head over the plastic wrap. This towel should be an old one, not your favorite guest towel!
What you want to do now is keep your hair warm for at least a half-hour; better, for an hour or so. One strategy is simply to keep the towel wrapped tightly over the plastic wrap and let your body heat keep the hair warm.
Another is to drape the towel over your shoulders to absorb leaks and sit beneath a lamp with an incandescent bulb. A gooseneck lamp is good for this purpose; some floor lamps can be adapted to work, too. A third strategy is to sit outside in the sun for a while, allowing the sunlight to warm the wrapped hair.
But the best technique is to use an old-fashioned bonnet hair dryer. Wrap another couple layers of plastic wrap around your hair to try to minimize drips as much as possible. Slide the hair dryer over the plastic-wrap turban and turn the dryer to “high.” A half-hour or forty-five minutes of this treatment is extremely effective.
Whichever approach you choose, after your hair has marinated in olive oil for 30 minutes to an hour, it’s back to the sink, shampoo bottle in hand.
Shampoo your hair twice. If it’s very long, you may want to shampoo three times. If your hair still feels like it has any olive-oil residue, shampoo it again. Rinse well after each shampooing. Now towel-dry your hair with the third towel you set on the counter, and voilà! You’re ready to proceed with your regular styling and grooming routine.
If your hair looks at all limp or oily after you’ve styled it, you’ll need to shampoo again to remove the last residue of olive oil. One more shampooing should do the trick. To avoid this, be sure to shampoo and rinse thoroughly the first time around.
The effect of an olive-oil conditioning is amazing. It utterly does away with any dryness and frizzies, and it seems to last a long time—at least a month.
Clean-up
Olive oil, not surprisingly, is…well, oily. The towel used to wrap your plastic-wrap turban and keep drips off your shoulders will end up with a lot of olive oil on it. Wash thoroughly, preferably by itself in the washer. Sprinkle the absorbed oil liberally with Spray’N'Wash or a similar product and allow to stand for at least an hour. Then apply some liquid clothes detergent or a paste made of dry detergent and water to the areas that took up the oil. Finally, wash in warm water on a long cycle. It may take a couple of washings to completely remove the oil from the towel. This is why it’s best to use an old, tattered towel for the purpose! The other two towels, if you used them only to dry clean hair, should be fine—just don’t wash them in with the oily towel.
If you enjoyed this post…
Explore the way olive oil works as a facial cleanser and conditioner.
See an update on the olive-oil cleanser experiment.
Find out how lemon juice and vinegar can bring out your hair’s highlights.
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26 Responses to “Olive Oil: The ultimate hair conditioner”
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Why does this work? Can you use cheaper oil, like canola oil, in the same way?
On the subject of hair, the very expensive hairdresser I went to once told me that I should only shampoo every other day. I’ve tried that, and my scalp definitely feels greasy at the end of the second day, but my hair looks fine. (If I let it go for a third day, though, it looks wet from grease.) That tip has definitely let me save on shampoo.
This is easier? I am a little scared to try it, but it looks interesting.
LOL! Actually, it’s not easier! It’s quite a project, especially by the time you’ve cleaned up after yourself.
But it’s worth the extra work.
[...] together into a plan for one amazing party. I plan to try Funny About Money’s tip to use olive oil as hair conditioner. I also want to see if I can attempt homemade pita bread, thanks to Happy to be at Home’s [...]
Here is a tip I learned when I worked in the garment industry. The best way to remove the oil from the towels (or your clothing) is to sprinkle powdered cornstarch onto the soiled area. Pat the starch into the soiled area, making sure the oily spots are well covered. Add more starch if you see the it begins to look clumpy (that means it’s working). Plain cornstarch works best, but if you don’t have that, any powder that is primarily composed of cornstarch (i.e., baby powder), will do — plain cornstarch is cheaper than baby powder. Leave it on at least overnight, then brush it off with a clothing brush or shake it off into the sink or the trash. Wash item once as usual, but not with dark-colored clothing, because the residual starch will transfer to other fabrics in the washer and you’ll have to re-wash your clothing. It is non-toxic, soaks up all of the oil, and really works wonders. This is the best way to remove oils from anything: fabric, leather, suede, paper, etc.
[...] never cease to marvel at what attracts readers. The olive-oil hair conditioner story still is cranking readership: over 300 yesterday. Every day, someone out there googles “olive [...]
[...] recently blundered upon: plain old olive oil makes a great facial cleanser and skin conditioner. by Funny about Money Iknow…it’s counterintuitive. Olive oil should make your skin greasy. But it [...]
[...] down, the most popular post was the one that described how to use olive oil as a hair conditioner. Posted on August 19, it still gets 30 to 40 hits a day! Who [...]
I use a little jojoba oil on my hair after shampooing. I don’t use much cuz it’s expensive. Olive oil is cheaper. I’m wondering if it’s ok to use on hair after shampooing as a daily moisturizer?
Also, does anyone know a method of washing the hair with oil? I would like to stop using shampoos altogether if possible. How would you get all the oil out without shampooing?
[...] Olive Oil: The Ultimate Hair Conditioner Olive Oil: The Miracle Skin Cleanser [...]
I would love to know the response to the question if cheaper oils can be substituted. How do I see that reply or can someone post the answer! Thanks! It does work wonderfully and I find I need to get hair cuts less often…so saving money there!
@ Petey130: I really don’t know if cheaper oils can be substituted. Some people have spoken of using castor oil or combinations of various oils on the face. SDXB occasionally combs baby oil into his hair, lets it sit all day, and then shampoos it out — he speaks highly of this method. On a man, the effect is a little like slathering on a lot of Brylcreem, possibly not a style becoming to a 20- or 30-something. But if you’re not going out of the house all day, what the heck: wash it out in the evening and no one will be the wiser.
I just finished, and (I don’t know if this is possible?) my split-ends look loads better. My hair is pretty long, about mid-back, but it only took me a little over a half of a cup of olive oil. I washed my hair three times, the last time concentrating on my roots and the edge of my hair, and there is no residual.
This is a great thing to try.
@ Madeleine: Glad to hear it worked! Sometimes after your hair is dry, the effect is a little oily. It can take a fair amount of shampooing to get the olive oil out. I find the split-end improvement seems to last for a while. Don’t know why that is, but what the heck: whatever works, works.
This is one of the best hair treatments I give myself if my hair is very dry. I’ve tried numerous other hair masks and expensive treatments but somehow “olive oil” works best on my hair, it’s naturally frizzy/curly so I have to use a heat straightener everyday before oing to work. It really works!!!!
I love this Olive Oil treatment. i’ve read about it in various magazines and tried it for the first time last night. But what i did differently was that I put in the olive oil first on my dry hair, since water becomes a barrier between your hair and anything you put on it, left it in for about 10 minutes, then thoroughly shampooed it out. it was just a little experiment but it worked amazingly. before my hair was becoming dry and felt damaged due to all the straightening i do to it, now it couldn’t be anymore silkier!
Seriously, this is the dumbest thing I ever heard. Do you know by time you have to wash your hair for the hundreth time because your hair still feels like a grease bucket you’ve already stripped your hair of all of its potency. olive oil should be rubbed in the same time as the shampoo then you wouldn’t even need the conditioner really.
LOL! Seriously, you might want to come up with some more gracious nom-de-plume, no matter what you think of yourself.
If washing the oil out of my hair had left it “stripped” (heh!), I wouldn’t have written this post. Would I have?
Tried this several times and experimented a little too. Result–works great both ways–on fresh shampooed hair and on dry hair. Also tried Grapeseed Oil as well as Olive Oil. Grapeseed oil was cheaper if purchased at a mediterranean market.
That’s very interesting! I wonder how the grapeseed oil worked in comparison with olive oil?
It would be interesting to know, too, if anyone has experimented with ordinary cooking oil. Would Mazola (corn oil) or safflower oil do the same thing?
Olive oil has been from several years for healthy hair. In any spa or hair stylist salon you find olive oil. It is because of it’s medicinal values that it is used so much.
My middle name is Olive; I am named after my wise grandmother; I figured if both of us sported the name, then olive oil must be good. My hair is ‘short’ and professionally colored; however, dry winter air has been drying it out, causing the color to appear less intense and attractive. I had no conditioner on hand………..so……….I tried the olive oil, which I’d seen somewhere on tv; used only a couple tablespoons oil in a coffee cup of warm water, poured it over freshly shampooed hair, let it set for a minute. Then washed as normal with mild shampoo. My ‘color’ returned! Granted, it is a little ‘heavier’ than usual, but will shampoo better the second time in a couple days. And I love it!!! Returns the sheen, the color, and tames my natural curls. So cool
@ Sandy: My goodness! My grandmother’s name was Olive, too! And even more amazingly, my dearest childhood friend was named Sandy.
What a good idea for using olive oil as a conditioner. Thanks for sharing.
What happens when u mix the olive oil with a commercial conditioner?
Is it a good or bad idea, most conditioner claim to have different Types of oil inside their product anyway.
@ Terry: Interesting idea! I’ve never thought to try it. It would be hard to mix them together smoothly. If it worked, presumably you’d either have olive oil that smells like the industrial perfume of hair conditioner or hair conditioner that smells like olive oil!
Remember that olive oil needs to be shampooed out of your hair thoroughly. Conditioner is meant only to be rinsed out with water. So the two products might work at cross-purposes.
It works, Olive oil is great for helping repair the outer sheath, but it’s not a full substitute for the oils of your scalp. Be sure to try to brush the oils from your scalp down to the ends of your hair at least once a week, and use vitalizing vitamin enriched shampoos if you can. Remember the proteins inside your hair can break and die, and if that happens everything down from their breaks and dies. There’s no circulation in your hair, so the nutrients have to be added or come from the oils on your scalp.