Here’s What Happens if You Leave Conditioner in Your Hair

We’ve all experimented with different hair products, routines, and recipes. After all, who doesn’t want smooth, moisturized, and healthy hair? Today, we’re focusing on what happens if you leave conditioner in your hair. Does it promote overall hair health or damage your hair? In this article, we’re setting the record straight once and for all.

How Leaving in Your Conditioner Affects Your Hair

The result of sleeping overnight with conditioner in your hair comes down to the type of conditioner you use.

If yours is a rinse-out conditioner, leaving conditioner overnight in your hair can be damaging. It can give your hair excess moisture, leading to hygral fatigue. For that reason, you should rinse it out shortly after application. We’re talking no more than 3 to 5 minutes.

However, a leave-in conditioner is specially formulated so as not to be washed. It can improve the texture and look of your hair.

Why Should You Use a Hair Conditioner?

To understand if leave-in conditioners are recommended, we need to understand the point of using them in the first place.

Put it simply, hair conditioners supply your hair with the moisture it may lack. But why would your natural hair need moisture, you may ask. First, of course, some people have naturally dry hair, which makes them more susceptible to damage.

But more than that, even people with other hair types need to deep condition their hair, and here’s why. Besides sulfate-free, chemical-free, all-natural shampoo products, shampoo dries out your hair.

Conditioners ensure and promote healthy hair growth; they nourish, untangle, and protect your hair from damage. They also keep your hair soft. This way, you’re less likely to have dry or brittle hair or experience damage due to heat and styling tools. Not to mention, you won’t have to worry about hair breakage.

How Does a Conditioner Work?

A conditioner can add softness to your hair and help it retain moisture, thanks to its coating. After all, it contains cationic surfactants, such as behentrimonium chloride and cetrimonium chloride, which have positively charged hydrophilic heads.

These charges bind to your negatively charged hair strands, minimizing friction and static electricity. In that way, they coat, protect, and keep your hair strands hydrated for hours on end.

Natural oils and moisturizers are other relevant components to how a conditioner works; examples are essential fatty acids and humectants. They protect your hair against damage, give it a lustrous effect, and help mend heat damage from straighteners, blow-dryers, and curling irons. Also, they can make your hair smoother and less detangled.

Additionally, some leave-in conditioners might have sunscreens (like Benzophenone-4 and Ethylhexyl methoxycinnamate). So, the protective coating is helpful if you don’t want to let the sun damage your hair.

Lastly, your conditioner probably has an acidity regulator to keep your hair’s pH level (alkalinity and acidity) at pH 3.5. By ensuring that it’s acidic, you’ll have light and straight hair.

How Do You Use a Hair Conditioner?

Without further ado, let’s go over the proper way to put conditioner in your hair.

Technique

Although hair conditioners have their instructions on the bottle, there’s a typical process that you’ll probably follow.

To start with, you need to wash your hair with shampoo, preferably sulfate-free, or rinse it with lukewarm water. If you’re applying a rinse-out conditioner, remove excess water from your wet hair by wringing it. In comparison, leave-in conditioner products require damp hair, so you’ll need to dry it. So, you can either let it air dry or use a microfiber towel to towel dry it.

Now, pour a dime-sized amount of hair conditioner (according to your hair length) on your palm, and rub it between your palms.

When you put conditioner in your hair, you should target the weak points. If you’re using rinse-out conditioners, start with the mid shafts, and work your way to the tips. As for leave-in conditioners, you can apply them to the tips and move on to your hair shaft. At any rate, don’t apply it to your roots unless the conditioner’s instructions state otherwise.

You want to ensure even distribution with a leave-in conditioner, so brush it through your hair with your fingers or a wide-toothed comb. Otherwise, leave the rinse-out conditioner in your hair for the appropriate duration (which we’ll discuss later), and wash it off with room temperature water. Finally, let your hair air dry to retain its natural moisture.

Frequency and Duration

The proper application depends on the type of hair conditioner you’re using, so we’ll go over how to condition your hair with each.

Leave-in Conditioner

Leave-in conditioners are light, smooth, and not sticky compared to regular moisturizers. Also, they probably have aerosols and oils, which make them excellent for mild to moderately dry hair, frizzy hair, and damaged hair. They’re also great for pre-heat application.

As for usage, apply the leave-in conditioner weekly, and don’t rinse it out like a regular conditioner until your next wash. This way, the leave-in conditioner should leave your hair moisturized and untangled.

Rinse-Out Conditioner

This standard conditioner type should shield your hair cuticles from heat damage and other types of damage. You should rinse your hair a couple of minutes after you apply it. And if you’re wondering how often you should wash your hair, it depends on your hair type.

On the one hand, oily hair requires less frequent conditioning. If you use it too much, the rinse-out conditioner can be too heavy, causing hair loss. On the other hand, curly, dry, or dyed hair needs extra moisture, so you should condition it every day or every other day.

Deep Conditioner

A deep conditioning treatment is a good idea for dry and damaged hair, as it aims to reduce dryness, hydrate extremely dry tresses, and fix any damage. So, it’s no surprise that deep conditioners have heavier formulas than other types.

When it comes to application, you can leave the deep conditioner for about 30 minutes or else according to the instructions. Deep conditioning should be done once a month.

Cleansing Conditioner

Cleansing conditioners are a pre-shampooing treatment for curly and damaged hair. Their amphoteric surfactants and cationic ingredients react with ions that have opposite charges. They’re usually lighter than other conditioners, so if you have oily or fine hair, you don’t have to worry about the conditioner weighing your hair down.

In comparison, dry and curly hair could use a cleansing conditioner less frequently (every week or less). That’s because it needs the moisture of other hair conditioning types.

Mask

We can think of hair masks as conditioners, as they’re made to nourish your hair thoroughly. They’re thick and heavy, which allows them to penetrate your cuticles and give them more moisture and protein.

You can apply a hair mask from your hair tips to your ears, but avoid your roots if you don’t want them to get greasy. Leave the mask on your hair for 10 to 15 minutes before washing it.

What Happens if You Leave Hair Conditioner in Too Long?

Now that we’ve established what “too long” is, let’s see the potential risks of leaving the conditioner in your hair longer than recommended.

When you leave the conditioner in your hair overnight, that can cause more harm than good. In other words, over-conditioning may cause hair cuticle hygral fatigue, as the hair cuticles absorb too much water, interfering with the hair structure.

When you leave the conditioner in your hair overnight, your hair may get brittle, dull, frizzy, or tangled. Not to mention, the excess water can make it look dull, attract dirt and dust, give it a gummy texture, create split ends, and cause breakage. Hair breaking is especially likely if you’re using a protein conditioner.

Additionally, the conditioner might make your hair more oily and cause buildup. Your hair follicles might get clogged, which leads to hair fall. Last but not least, over-conditioning can give you an itchy scalp.

How Do You Treat Hygral Fatigue?

Although it may seem scary, hygral fatigue is easy to treat. For one, you must switch up your washing and hair care routine. Apply the hair product, and massage it into your head gently. Also, switch to Argan oil-based natural products.

Needless to say, you should stop over-conditioning your hair and instead follow the instructions above. Finally, it helps to reduce hair damage causes, such as heat, dyes, and so on.

Final Verdict

Where proper conditioning can mean better hydration, we don’t recommend deep conditioning your hair overnight, as it can give it too much moisture. Accordingly, you can get hygral fatigue, leaving your hair brittle, dull, hard to maintain, and even prone to split ends and breakage. Not to mention, you might experience scalp irritation due to the buildup.

However, these adverse effects are applicable to a traditional conditioner or a rinse-out one. Otherwise, if you choose a leave-in conditioner, you aren’t supposed to wash it out, and it’ll help untangle your hair and keep it moisturized.