Shampooing Your Dreads

For natural dreads there are products you can buy that are specially made for shampooing your dreadlocks. Generally these are gentle, no detangling shampoos. Meaning don’t buy anything that has intense moisturizers in them because this will cause your dreads, real or not to unravel. For natural dreadlock maintenance, care and cleaning I recommend Knotty Boy or DreadHead. When washing your natural dreads you would basically repeat the same process as you would wash non-dreaded hair, except no running your fingers through it. J

Now, synthetic dreads are a little different. You want to avoid getting your dreads soaked as much as possible, especially if there is soap involved. What you are going to do is wear your dreads down while in the shower. Do not stand directly under the shower head, again, avoid getting your entire dread soaked. Lean forward and only get your scalp wet. This will of course cause the tops of your dreads to get wet, but make sure you turn your head side to side to let the water flow down the back. Don’t try and turn around and guess where the water is for the back of your head. Once your scalp is wet, put some gentle, NON-DETANGLING shampoo in your hand and rub them together underneath the water, you don’t want to put straight up thick shampoo directly on to it, try and get it a little diluted first. Once you have a thin layer of shampoo on your fingers, rub them in between the sectioned areas of your hair where the dreads are installed. Repeat the process as before when soaking your scalp to rinse the shampoo off. Do not use conditioner.

The reason you want to use as little shampoo as possible, or have it very diluted is because the more suds on your hair that you create, the more that’s able to be soaked into the dread’s core and cause discoloration and sometimes mold. You want to avoid this as much as possible! If you wash your dreads a lot and notice any strange smell or discoloration, remove them immediately. This doesn’t necessarily mean there are ruined and need to be thrown out. If the discoloration or smell is very slight then you may just need to remove them and wash them by hand, let them air dry and then re-steam them. There is an article in our tutorial section that explains how to do this yourself, however for a small fee I will be happy to wash and reseal your dreads, just contact me at info@ikandihairdesign.com for more details.