After a decade of testing, here are the best dry shampoos to delay wash day

One of my favourite people to follow on Instagram is Sabrina Hill (@superstylesabby). She is a Cork-based hair colourist who has become a fully fledged influencer since lockdowns this year have kept her out of her Cork salon. She is such a comforting follow, in part for her optimism, friendly openness and love of a nicely made bed, but also for her hair tips. She set Irish beauty Instagram aflame over the last few weeks with her #sabbymethod – a method of training the scalp to produce slightly less sebum in the hope of giving the oily-haired among us an extra day or two between washes.

You can follow her on Instagram for the details on her method, which involves several handy knacks you may not have thought of (including a cool rinse and never skipping your hair dryer), but unsurprisingly, dry shampoo is the product central to the hair-training proceedings. Hill applies it to freshly dried hair straight after washing; not just when hair starts to feel in need of a wash. She does stress that the method won’t work for everyone, depending on their scalp and hair type, but it’s certainly worth a go. As my own hair gets longer and less manageable in lockdown, there’s very little I wouldn’t do to push washing it by a day.

Dry shampoo

I’ve been testing every dry shampoo that hits the market for a decade, and these are the best I’ve found. Klorane Aquatic Mint Dry Shampoo (€11.50 at boots.ie) is a nice, invigorating iteration of the classic Klorane powder spray. It is light and massages in without chalkiness, so works well for all but the oiliest hair types.

For the most oil-prone roots, Living Proof Perfect Hair Day Dry Shampoo (€22 at arnotts.ie) is unbeatable. It distributes lightly but can be built up. Really oily roots or very fine hair will need a lot of very absorbent product to suck in all the sebaceous buildup and push hair through to the next day without a wash. Living Proof’s dry shampoo is the very best at this.

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Invaluable tool

A tinted dry shampoo is also an invaluable tool. If you are blonde with dark roots, using a blonde dry shampoo can tone down the root a little while absorbing oil. Moroccanoil Dry Shampoo Light Tones (€20 at beautyfeatures.ie) is great at this. The dark-toned version is great for disguising greys on darker hair, and it does a brilliant job of absorbing oil and reviving flat roots. It also smells better than every other dry shampoo on the market.

Hiding roots

Batiste Hint of Colour range (€5.50 at pharmacies nationwide) works similarly to hide roots while absorbing oil. It has none of the lightness and subtlety of the Moroccanoil version, but this can be a bonus. Batiste is a real door-kicker of a dry shampoo, depositing a lot of powder in the roots. If you are very prone to scalp oiliness, this is beneficial.

Massage it in with vigour and leave it to settle. You can even blast it over with your hair dryer to help further its work and dissipate any visible residue.