When I was at university, I made fast friends with a girl from Scandinavia. I learnt a lot from her when it came to beauty, but something that struck me most was the way she approached hair care. Whilst I was dying my hair, processing it, and washing it incessantly, she did very little to it. She would say to me: “You know, it’s better to do less to your hair, right?”
After years working in beauty, I realised the real divide wasn’t in our routines themselves, but in the whole cultural attitude to hair care – namely, how differently the UK and Scandinavian countries think about it. “There’s definitely truth to this – washing your hair more than twice a week is very uncommon here,” says Adam Lukacs, a celebrity hairstylist for Maria Nila in Stockholm. “And when you do wash it, you do the whole routine properly,” he adds.
What is the Scandinavian haircare routine?
The Scandinavian wash method is a loosely defined idea that a “wash less, use less, let the scalp rest” approach to haircare produces healthier, shinier results than the daily washing and stripping routines many of us default to. For some, that means washing one or two times a week compared to the UK, where 41 per cent of people wash upwards of three times a week, with 21 per cent washing their hair every other day.
There’s a reason to take note of this, because, like Scandinavia, the UK gets plenty of cold snaps and cranked-up indoor heating over winter, both of which can leave hair and scalps drier. So washing less, and with cooler water rather than hot, could genuinely help our scalp health.
But Fanny Sävervik, market manager for Europe retail and e-commerce at Urtekram Nordic Beauty, is careful not to over-simplify it: “Individual hair type, scalp condition and lifestyle are ultimately much more important than geography. But Scandinavian beauty is often guided by a ‘less but better’ approach: uncomplicated routines, purposeful products and an appreciation of natural-looking hair.”
Washing according to the scalp’s needs, using fewer products and refreshing the hair between washes are not gender-specific habits, either. They’re simply passed down generationally, in simple effective routines. “It may be a parent teaching you not to use too much shampoo, to wash with lukewarm rather than very hot water, to focus shampoo on the scalp and conditioner on the lengths, or simply to brush and restyle the hair instead of washing it again immediately,” Sävervik says.
Lukacs credits Stockholm‘s naturally soft water as a bonus “I genuinely think that makes it easier to go longer between washes because there’s less build up on the scalp and hair.” But that’s not all. He says his clients have a fixed wash day each week, followed by a full blow-dry. “We don’t use a lot of products, but we always use heat protection,” he explains.
Dry shampoo – a British staple – has a role too, but it’s used in moderation in Scandinavia, rather than as a daily product. Sävervik says: “People sometimes assume that any oil at the roots means their hair is dirty, but sebum is a natural part of the scalp’s protective system.”
The truth about washing your hair less
Everyone has individual scalp needs. For someone who experiences dandruff, seborrhoeic dermatitis or an oily scalp, for example, washing less “is not necessarily beneficial,” explains Dr Nabiah Malik, dermatology fellow and science advisor to Scandinavian Biolabs. In these cases, more frequent washing may form part of the actual treatment.