The Model Hair Experiment

by Ruth Crilly | Jul 26, 2010

Day 1: at job with freshly washed and tonged hair

A little experiment that I decided to carry out last week; I didn’t wash my hair for five whole days. Five days and three hours, to be precise. Undoubtedly, some readers will think that this experiment is quite gross, and others will be shrugging their shoulders and saying, “so what? I don’t wash my hair for weeks at a time!”

There were a few different reasons for why I suddenly had the urge not to wash my hair; firstly, I’m trying to prolong the vibrancy of the gorgeous colour gloss that I’ve been having applied at Kennaland. It’s semi-permanent, and so the more you wash your hair, the more it fades – I just wanted to see if I could extend the colour’s ‘lifetime’. Secondly, I loved the curls that the hair stylist created on my job, and I wanted to see how many days they would last for. Lastly, I was just curious to see whether leaving my hair unwashed would be pleasant and easy, or just totally unbearable.

I took a photo on each day so that you could see how the curls fared. I think they looked pretty cool on day 5! I would have kept going with the hair washing, but my head was starting to itch! Also, (I’ll have to describe this as we don’t yet have ‘smell-o-vision’!) my hair started to smell a bit weird. A mixture of bacon crisps and pineapples, and then, on the final night, Chardonnay. That was because I managed to chuck a glass of wine over myself during a heated discussion about Back to the Future II.

Overall, leaving my hair unwashed wasn’t too bad at all – it didn’t really get as greasy as I would have expected. I did have to pep it up halfway through with a bit of Batiste, but it was nice not having to style my hair – the curls stayed in brilliantly and just looked better and better over time! I would only do this again if my hair had been styled as thoroughly as last week; I think that if you didn’t have a great shape set in, your hair could just look lank and dirty! Also: easier if you have blonde, dryish hair, I would have thought!