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As salon professionals, you more than likely already know just how vital water is to your daily work. After all, you regularly use it to clean your brushes, wet strands before cutting, and cleanse and condition your clients’ hair at the shampoo bowl. But, unbeknownst to you, the water in your salon could actually be wreaking havoc on your clients’ hair.
You see, the water that flows through your salon pipes and faucets—aka “hard water”—contains high concentrations of metals like copper and nickel. So, each time you wash your clients’ hair or let’s be honest, open that tap, you could be introducing these harmful metals to their strands and unintentionally impacting their hair texture and color. That’s because metals in the hair make it difficult for shampoo and conditioner to wash off, leading to dry and brittle strands. Not to mention, they can also pose a major problem during color processing, leading to less than optimal results and potential discoloration at balayage or color appointments.
Five Heavy Metals Lurking in Your Salon Water
So, just what exactly are these hair-wrecking metals that are lurking in your salon water? Here we break them down.
Copper: Easily the most common heavy metal to appear in tap water, copper is notorious for causing blonde hair to turn green when it becomes oxidized and dark hair to tint even darker. Not to mention, copper has a tendency to accelerate color processing due to how it reacts to developers, which can cause unwanted hair damage and deliver unexpected hair color results.
Magnesium: While the presence of magnesium is necessary for hair growth, when too much of it accumulates on the hair, this “build-up” can clog your hair follicles and make it hard for the hair to receive the nourishment and moisture it needs. As a result, strands are left feeling dry and weighed down and become more prone to breakage as well as more difficult to style.
Iron: Similar to copper, iron has been known to cause hair discoloration. In fact, too much iron in the water can give light-colored hair an unwanted red tint. Not to mention, iron also has the ability to make your hair look much more dull and lifeless.
Lead: While lead has been removed from most water supplies due to its toxic nature, it’s still possible for trace amounts of it to make an appearance in your salon water, especially if you have older pipes. Hair that has been exposed to lead tends to take on a dark grey caste and can be prone to hair loss.
Aluminum: Aluminum can do some serious damage to strands, especially internally, due to how easily it can penetrate the hair shaft. This can interfere with the natural hair growth process and make it harder to achieve truly healthy hair.
L’Oreal Professionnel Paris Has a Solution
As concerning as these heavy metals in the water are, there is some good news. To help stylists combat the effects of hard water on their clients’ hair, L’Oreal Professional Paris has created Metal Detox—an innovative system designed with patented technology that works to neutralize unwanted metals in hair and deliver desirable results for both salon pros and their clients.
Powered by glicoamine, a tiny molecule capable of penetrating inside the hair fiber and targeting metal particles, this product range has the ability to not only cleanse the hair of metals on the surface but also within each strand—a unique capability that most metal cleansing products on the market do not have.
“As a colorist, metal in the water has been a huge issue and a big frustration for years. It affects over 75 percent of my clientele,” said L’Oreal Professional Artist, Salon Owner, and Colorist Sebastian Langman-Kirtley. “So a product range that specifically addresses metals inside the hair fiber and ensures we can give our clients the color they want while preventing damage and breakage—that’s a game-changer.”
The breakthrough line features a 3-step, in-salon system that includes a pre-treatment to neutralize metals before a coloring service, a sulfate-free shampoo to gently remove metals, and a conditioner/mask option to protect the hair from future metal particles. While this range is designed to be used in the salon, stylists can prescribe their clients with both the mask and the shampoo as an at-home regiment to continually maintain the condition of their hair and their gorgeous color.
If you’re ready to minimise the effects of metals on your client’s hair, be sure to purchase the complete Metal Detox system as Saloncentric.
