6 Tips for Using a Keratin Treatment at Home

While keratin treatments are amazing for your hair, they can get rather costly when often done at the salon. Want to know how to use a keratin treatment at home? Check out our helpful tips below, and learn how to tame unruly hair like a pro from the comfort of your own bathroom (and at a fraction of the price!).

What Is a Keratin Treatment?

Keratin treatment helps repair the damage on your hair, replacing the protein that your strands have lost due to chemical treatments, heat styling, and other damaging conditions you have exposed your tresses to. It rebuilds the damaged areas, adds shine, and eliminates frizz so your hair becomes more beautiful and easier to manage. Keratin treatments do wonders to your hair, offering a wide range of benefits like adding moisture to the strands that help make them soft and smooth and making your tresses strong, shiny, and free from flyaways.

6 Tips for Using a Keratin Treatment at Home

We often go to the salon to get hair treatments done, but what if you can do it yourself at home? That would most certainly be convenient, especially at times when you’re too busy or just can’t leave the house. One of the hair care pampering sessions you can DIY is a keratin treatment. You can definitely give yourself a keratin treatment at home and the result would be the same! But before we go into all of that, let’s talk about what it is and what it does.

Have Realistic Expectations

Let’s be honest: you can’t compare a DIY keratin treatment to ones you get at the salon. While the results will depend on the type of product you’ve selected, it’s safe to say that they won’t last as long as ones carried out by a professional stylist. And because home treatments contain less active ingredients than salon treatments, they usually last up to 7 days.

Ventilation Is Key

Again, this depends on the type of DIY keratin treatment you’ve selected. But just like with hair-dyeing, if you’re using a chemical hair treatment at home, you should make sure the room you do it in is well-ventilated, as it can let out a pretty strong smell. So, don’t forget to open a window to allow some fresh air in.

Make Sure Your Scalp Is Healthy

We can’t stress enough how important it is to assess your scalp’s health before getting any hair treatment. Even if you think it might just be a little dry, if you have – or suspect that you have – a scalp issue or condition, it’s best tor consult your GP or dermatologist beforehand. And if the instructions on the box of your DIY keratin treatment recommends you do an allergy test: don’t skip it!

Make Sure You Have Good-Quality Heated Styling Tools

If you’re using a keratin treatment at home, you’ll most likely need to activate it with heat, which means using heated styling tools, like a hairdryer or straighteners. Blow-dry your hair the right way by dividing your mane into sections and using your hairdryer’s attachments. And when it comes to straightening your locks, make sure that your hair straighteners are up to date, as tourmaline and ceramic are the best materials to help minimise damage caused by heat. Not sure about which straighteners you should buy? Why not read our hair straightener and hairdryer guides before your next purchase!

Hair Care Is Important

If you think you’ll be able to use the same shampoo and conditioner that you used prior to your home keratin treatment: think again. To maintain the effects of your treatment, you’ll need to go for hair care products that have been specifically designed to work with keratin treatments. How to tell which ones might be suitable? The right products for you will probably be infused with keratin and/or contain less or no sulphates.

For example, using the TRESemmé Keratin Smooth: 7 Day Smooth Shampoo and Conditioner in addition to the TRESemmé Keratin Smooth: 7 Day Smooth Heat Activated Treatment  will help you transform unruly hair into beautifully smooth tresses.

Remember: Nothing Lasts Forever…

It’s good to keep in mind that keratin treatments – even when done at the salon – aren’t permanent. As previously mentioned, a home treatment is likely to last up to a week, which means that, to maintain great results, you’ll have to use it regularly.

So now that you know that using a keratin treatment at home can be both easy and cost-effective, are you tempted to try it out?