Keeping Your Hair Healthy at the Beach

Doing hair in Los Angeles, I often get asked, "When I'm at the beach, what can I do to protect my hair?" It's a good question, especially if you've just got a keratin treatment.

I grew up going to Zuma in Malibu, and I remember always wondering why my hair felt so different after a day at the beach. Some people like the look, but the truth is salt water is tough on hair. Fortunately, there are things you can do to help prepare your hair ahead of time and restore it afterwards.

What saltwater actually does to your hair

When seawater dries in your hair, it leaves salt crystals behind, and those crystals turn each strand's surface rough. Rough strands grab each other — that's the tangling — and combing through salt-rough hair is where the breakage happens. Researchers who measure this kind of thing have found hair is markedly harder to comb and visibly duller after saltwater, and lightened hair comes out of it weaker as well. Add the sun bleaching pigment out of every shade — the color you were born with and the color from the salon — plus a day of wind working on that outer layer of scales I've written about before, and a great beach day can be a rough one for your hair.

Are “beach waves” good for your hair?

You'll also read that seawater is secretly good for hair — that its minerals nourish it, that salt detoxes your scalp. I don't buy it, and neither does the research: hair past the scalp isn't alive and doesn't absorb nutrition from a swim. What is true is that salt texture makes waves — roughed-up strands grip each other and clump, and that tousled look photographs beautifully. Some clients even tell me saltwater seems to thicken their hair — and for fine hair that grip and body is a difference you can feel, from the same surface roughening (it's the whole reason salt sprays exist). I wouldn't know; my hair's been thick as long as I've been going to the beach. Either way: looking thicker and being healthy are two different things. Enjoy the look; just don't mistake it for a treatment.

Looking thicker and being healthy are two different things.

If it's the look you're after, you don't need the ocean to get it. A salt spray — my pick is Bumble and bumble's Surf Spray* — roughs up the surface just enough for strands to grip and fall into waves, without a day of sun, wind, and salt water soaking into your hair. It's the same trick, so treat it the same way: a leave-in underneath if your hair runs dry, scrunch and go, and wash it out that evening.

How to protect your hair before you swim

Soak your hair with fresh water first — hair that's already full of fresh water has less room to drink up the salty kind. Then comb through a light oil or a leave-in conditioner (my pick is ELEVEN Australia's Miracle Hair Treatment*): in lab testing, hair oiled before saltwater combed dramatically easier afterward than hair that went in bare. That thin film is the one product step with actual measurements behind it. Braid it or tie it back so the wind has less to work with, and if you have a face-framing money-piece, a hat earns its keep — that hair sits in full sun all day and is always the first to fade.

Beach hair care after you swim

Rinse with fresh water as soon as you can — the beach shower counts — so salt never dries in and sits for the ride home. A rinse is a good start, not the finish: that evening, wash gently and condition mid-lengths to ends, which is what actually clears the salt and brings hair back to itself. Never drag a comb or brush through dry, salt-crusted hair — detangle wet, with conditioner in it, wide-tooth comb. And after a heavy beach stretch, one wash with a clarifying shampoo lifts off what the ocean left behind, followed by a moisturizing conditioner.

Extensions, balayage, and keratin treatments at the beach

If you wear extensions, the standard care guidance is blunt: avoid salt water altogether. That doesn't have to mean avoiding the beach — it means planning beach days around your hair, and that's a conversation worth having before summer, not after. Same for a fresh balayage, a keratin treatment, or newly lightened color: tell me about your beach habits, and we'll build the plan — and the appointment timing — around them, at my chair in Santa Monica, a few blocks from a beach of its own.

Whether you're near Malibu or Manhattan Beach, a beach day is one of the best reasons to live on this coast. A fresh-water soak before, oil or a leave-in while you're out, a rinse after, and a proper wash that evening — that's the whole routine. Your hair can love the beach as much as you do.

Anna

* Affiliate links: if you buy through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only link products I'd recommend to you at my chair.