Grown your hair out in lockdown? Here’s what you need to know.
As anyone who might have grown their hair out during quarantine can attest, having longer hair requires more time and effort when it comes to washing and styling. In a recent video, YouTuber Greg Berzinsky explained how he only washes his hair once a week, and then demonstrated how he styles it for seven consecutive days.
Berzinsky starts out with squeaky clean hair on Day 1, having washed and conditioned it, and wearing it down, it looks straighter than usual due to a lack of the humidity that’s typical of his native Philadelphia. “One of the problems with this weather is it’s dry, so I tend to have some flyaways,” he says.
He adds that Day 3 is when he tends to start noticing a little bit of oiliness in his scalp, just by touch, if not by sight. He corrects this by applying a sea salt spray and combing it through his hair to give it a smoother look, then leaves it down. “The sea salt spray can also combat some oil build-up in your hair,” he says. “It has particulates in it, and those particulates can actually compound the oil build-up, so I tend to use this spray as I go longer without washing my hair.”
By Day 5, his hair feels considerably oilier. “It’s stringy, and most noticeable in the vortex, in the back and the crown,” he says. “I’m feeling downright trashy.” The lower lengths of his hair still look fine, however. “This is one of the reasons I concentrate on shampooing my scalp and conditioning the ends,” he explains. “In reality, the bottom of my hair isn’t getting that dirty, it’s the top and the scalp.”
Berzinsky’s best styling tip for covering a greasy scalp is to pull long hair up into a man-bun, tying it over the oiliest part of the hair (the crown). “When I do this, I’m not looking for perfection,” he says. “When you pull it back and slick it back, it looks like Steven Seagal in the Eighties… Wearing it looser is generally a better idea.”
Generally speaking, he recommends that people with short hair wash their hair every other day, and people with long hair every fourth day. However, if it’s been a few days and you just don’t have the time to wash and dry your hair, Berzinsky also suggests using dry shampoo as a quick fix to freshen it up and make it feel less greasy: “It’s basically talcs and powders and things like that, they absorb the oils in the hair.”
Ultimately, he acknowledges that figuring out the right frequency of washing and conditioning long hair will be different and unique for everybody. “Some of the reasons your hair is producing oil has to do with activity, climate, and ethnicity,” he says. “There’s a lot of factors at play.”