Knowing what a keratin treatment does is not enough to maximize its effects; you also need to find out what happens after six months of applying keratin.
Keratin Complex, a popular product, states that “when keratin is optimized, it leads to stronger, healthier hair.” [1]
Keratin treatment also changes your natural hair texture and smoothens your hair into fine, silky goodness!
But the question remains…
What Happens After Six Months of Applying Keratin To My Hair?
After six months of applying keratin hair treatment to your hair, the applied keratin protein will be worn out. Your natural hair keratin is all that’s left.
Keratin hair treatments involve a chemical process that helps to make your frizzy hair or curly hair straight and smooth by creating a keratin coating on the outer layer of your hair shaft.
Keratin is a structural protein that helps to seal the bonds in the hair cuticle to give you straight hair.
After six months of keratin treatment, several things can happen to your hair depending on the specific type of treatment that you did and how you treat your hair after the procedure.
The duration of the treatment’s effects depends on what type of you had e.g., Brazilian keratin treatment, Japanese treatment, etc. (1).
Most salon visits usually take between 4-6 hours, but the results can last between 3-6 months. But after six months, you should be back to your normal hair texture, and all of the features of your natural hair type will start reappearing.
This is because the applied keratin does not stay permanently on your hair. Meanwhile, your natural hair keratin is not affected as your hair follicles will continue to produce keratin proteins.
As your hair strands get longer during these six months, the new hair texture will be similar to your natural hair. The downside to this is that you will be back to dealing with the hair condition you were trying to improve pre-treatment.
Those with coily hair, loss, coarse hair strands, hair breakage, or those with frizzy hair or brittle hair will have to spend another day in the salon chair to get sleek hair with another keratin hair treatment after six months.
To learn more about what happens six months after applying keratin, you can watch this video:
How Long Does it Take for a Keratin Treatment to Completely Wear Off?
Your keratin hair treatment can last up to six months before wearing off completely. However, for it to last this long, you need to give your hair proper care.
This includes sticking to regular hair care habits and following rules that only apply to keratin-treated hair.
For example, within the first three days after the application of keratin to your hair, you should not get your hair wet. This is to allow enough time for the keratin to work its way into the core of your hair and also to completely seal every hair bond in the cuticles.
If you flout this rule, you would end up washing off some of the keratin solution and in a few weeks, it will have worn off completely. Furthermore, after keeping the 3-day rule, you also need to wash your hair less frequently going forward.
Hair washing frequency for keratin-treated hair should be 2-3 times weekly. Anything more than three times a week will reduce how long your keratin treatment last.
When getting your hair wet, it is important to note that you shouldn’t wet your keratin-treated hair with pool or ocean water. This is because chlorinated water i.e., water containing sodium chloride salt, and can mess up your treatment.
According to research, sodium chloride constitutes 77.7% of the total salt composition in seawater (3).
Also, you should use only sulfate-free shampoos and conditioners to maintain your keratin treatment.
If you must style your keratin-treated hair, ensure you don’t do so within the first two weeks after the application treatment.
With all of these rules and proper treatment done with professional-grade products, it will take six months before the keratin completely wears off.
Does Repeated Keratin Treatment Damage Hair?
Repeated keratin hair treatment can damage hair if done more than three times a year.
Generally, I recommend doing keratin treatment only twice a year. However, the type of keratin hair treatment you get wears off in less than six months, you should still stick to no more than three times a year.
Keratin protein does not harm hair, but there are several other active ingredients in the chemical composition of the keratin treatment products that can be harmful to your hair.
The ingredient list includes formaldehyde (or sometimes glyoxylic acid), and sodium hydroxide/lithium hydroxide (3).
Formaldehyde is the chemical solution used for preserving dead bodies. Repeated exposure to formaldehyde can damage the hair and also a risk to your health.
Its use for hair treatment should be as minimal as possible as it can make your hair porous, give you coarse strands, cause scalp, and also result in extreme hair loss depending on the concentration of the formaldehyde gas that was used in the solution.
FAQs
1. How Harmful Is Keratin Treatment For Hair?
Keratin treatment is not harmful to hair. It, however, contains several other active ingredients apart from keratin protein, including formaldehyde which is a known carcinogen.
2. Is It Safe If Keratin Doesn’t Wear Off After Six Months?
Yes, it is totally safe if the keratin treatment doesn’t wear off after six months.
Rest assured, though, a keratin treatment is not permanent and will rarely last beyond six months. The treatment will have totally worn off from the seventh month.
3. Can I Maintain Keratin Treatment To Make It Last 6 Months?
Yes, you can maintain keratin treatment to last six months, depending on your hair type and the kind of treatment you had.
Conclusion
By now, I believe it is clear what happens six months after applying keratin to your hair.
Although keratin treatment is quite expensive, it’s totally worth the cost if you consider how long it takes to wear off.
With the right measures in place, you stand to get the best from your hair within six months of keratin treatment.
Resources
- 1. Keratin: Benefits, Uses, Treatments, and Hair Care… [Internet]. Keratin Complex. [cited 2022 Sep 21]. Available from: https://keratincomplex.com/blog/what-is-keratin
- 2. Gavazzoni Dias MF. Hair cosmetics: An overview. International Journal of Trichology [Internet]. 2015 [cited 2019 Mar 13];7:2. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4387693/
- 3. Ocean Salinity [Internet]. Research Gate. 2022 [cited 2022 Sep 21]. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358140626_Ocean_Salinity
- 4. Combined formaldehyde and glyoxylic acid reactions [Internet]. Research Gate. 1975 [cited 2022 Sep 21]. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bengt-Falck/publication/225359778_Combined_formaldehyde_and_glyoxylic_acid_reactions_-_I_New_possibilities_for_microspectrofluorometric_differentiation_between_phenylethylamines_indolylethylamines_and_their_precursor_amino_acids/links/5cc1ba5ea6fdcc1d49adacbb/Combined-formaldehyde-and-glyoxylic-acid-reactions-I-New-possibilities-for-microspectrofluorometric-differentiation-between-phenylethylamines-indolylethylamines-and-their-precursor-amino-acids.pdf
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Sylvia is one of the most joyful people you’ll ever meet. She is a high advocate of self-love and encourages women to take care of themselves both mentally and physically. She loves girly talks especially salon talks (a little gossip doesn’t hurt) and spends most of her free time on skincare or hair care. You can find more about here HERE. Find her on LINKEDIN
