Tips Tricks How to Use Lassëa Solid Shampoo Conditioner Bars

Tips & Tricks: How to Use Lassëa Solid Shampoo & Conditioner Bars

Lassëa Solid Shampoo and Conditioner Bars are a planet-friendly, hair nourishing way to condition your hair. Full of natural, organic ingredients, these bars are handmade and hand-poured in small batches, then lovingly sent to you in Zero-Waste packaging. Their name comes from the Tolkien Quenya Elvish word lassëa meaning “with leaves, leafy.” Making the jump from liquid shampoo and conditioner can be intimidating, so here’s some tips and tricks on how to get the most out of your Lassëa Solid Shampoo and Conditioner Bars!

What Makes Lassëa Detangling Shampoo & Solid Conditioner Bars Unique and Amazing?

Both what’s in it, and what isn’t! Most shampoo and conditioner bars are stuffed full of oils, but as we’ve discussed in the past, oils are not moisturizing. You’ll find truly moisturizing ingredients like Slippery Elm and Aloe Vera Gel, which you already know and love from Selkie Herbal Detangler.  These bars also use paraben-free and formaldehyde-free preservatives and pure essential oils rather than fragrance oils.

Essentially, I took everything you love about Selkie Herbal Detangler and turned it into a pH balanced, moisturizing, naturally detangling shampoo and conditioner bar set, including the signature Eventide aroma of crisp sea-spray over alluring sun-basked vanilla and herbs.

Some of the benefits of Lassëa Solid Shampoo & Conditioner Bars include:

  • Zero Waste / No Plastic- Lassëa Solid Shampoo & Conditioner Bars have no plastic packaging, and come in either a compostable pouch or brown kraft clamshell. The paper washi tape and instructions can be recycled.
  • pH Balanced- Unlike “hair soaps” Lassëa Solid Shampoo & Conditioner Bars are pH balanced to keep your scalp and hair happy.
  • Lower Carbon Footprint- Because there’s no excess water weight, the carbon cost to ship is much lower than that of a liquid shampoo.
  • Preserving Color & Treatments- Lassëa Solid Shampoo & Conditioner Bars are immensely gentle, allowing hair colors and other treatments to last longer on your hair.
  • Less water = more of the good stuff- Being formulated without water means more of all those fantastic ingredients. Even with adding water to activate the bar, it means your hair is getting a bigger dose of all the important ingredients.
  • Longer product life- Like any product, the number of uses will depend greatly on how often you use it, how much you use each time, and how you store it in between uses. But generally speaking a Lassëa Bar will last a long time so long as you don’t leave it in a place that collects water, and, instead, allow it to drain and dry before the next use.
  • Travel, gym & camping friendly- Liquid shampoos and conditioners have annoying restrictions when flying and the potential to leak. Lassëa Solid Shampoo & Conditioner Bars are hassle-free no matter how you’re traveling or where you’re stowing them.

But what’s a solid shampoo bar?

A shampoo bar is the solid form of the liquid version. Unlike “hair soaps” which are alkaline and can damage hair, shampoo bars are pH balanced, so your hair and scalp maintain a tight cuticle and healthy acid mantle. Lassëa Solid Shampoo Bars are much more gentle than traditional liquid shampoos, hair soaps, and even other shampoo bars. They’re packed with gentle cleansers, slippery herbs, and soothing oils, but still give a satisfying lather.

Lassëa Solid Shampoo Bar Ingredients

Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate, Sodium Coco Sulfate, Cetearyl Alcohol, Refined Coconut Oil, Cocoa Butter, Kokum Butter, Citric Acid, Optiphen, Slippery Elm, Aloe Vera Gel, Cedarwood Essential Oil, Lavender Essential Oil, Lime Essential Oil, Petitgrain Essential Oil, Sage Essential Oil, Benzoin Essential Oil, Peru Balsam Essential Oil, and Vanilla Bourbon CO2 Extract

How to Use

You can either comb the bar through your hair and then massage it to a lather with your fingers, or lather the bar in your hands and then rub the lather onto your scalp and hair. Starting at the scalp, massage through hair until desired lather is reached then rinse thoroughly. Repeat if necessary.

Lassëa Solid Shampoo Bar Tips & Tricks

  • Reuse the brown clameshell when traveling or on the go. Allow your bar to dry as much as possible first, but you can pop a damp bar back into the container it came in when on the go! It’s breathable enough short term to safely stash your bars in your luggage or gym bag. You can keep it closed with a rubber band or a hair elastic.
  • You DON’T need an ACV rinse because the bars are pH balanced! Many “hair soap” shampoo bars say to follow up with an apple cider vinegar rinse because it “restores” the cuticle of the hair, but this is little more than wishful thinking; by that point the damage is already done.
  • Instead, first use Alluvial Chelating Crystal Rinse  to break up mineral deposits that make hair dull, dry, and tangly, and THEN use a Lassëa Shampoo bar to remove them from your hair. You’ll be shocked how soft, shining, and tangle-free your hair is!
  • Lembas shampoo, Leaf conditioner. Many people find they go through the shampoo bar twice as fast as the conditioner (though not everyone!). If this is the case for you, get the Lembas-sized Lassëa shampoo bar, and the Leaf-sized Lassëa conditioner bar if you want them to run out at about the same time.
  • Use the edge of the bar (the one the orange arrow is pointing to) rather than the big, flat surface. Eventually, every solid shampoo or conditioner bar will get thinner and thinner with use until it breaks. In the picture, that sliver of a bar is what’s left of my Lembas-sized bar after a few months. It’s about a thin as it can get without snapping, but by using the edge of the bar, I’ve used nearly all three inches of shampoo before that happens. If I’d used the big flat size, it’d have gotten thinner much faster and then broken.
  • Make sure your hair and the bar are wet enough. You’ll want to start with soaking wet hair and then wet the bar, too. If you’re not getting as much later as you want, more warm water is the easiest way to get it!
  • After generating enough lather, switch to your fingertips. By using your fingertips to work the lather through your hair and down to your scalp, you’re not using any more of the bar than you have to, and by not applying extra pressure to the bar, can use it much longer before it breaks.
  • Let the bar dry out in between uses. Remember that these bars are activated by water, and the more water they’re exposed to, the faster they’ll be used up. Use a soap tray that has drainage and make sure it’s well out of the way of errant shower spray.

Surfacant Choices and pH Balancing

I started out making my own solid shampoo and conditioner bars because I wasn’t happy with what was out there, and thought I could do better. The two things I put the most research into were the importance of pH balancing and the surfacants I chose to use.

If you’re happy with your soap-based shampoo bar, godspeed. I’m not here to change your mind. That said, I’ve posted in the past about the importance of pH balancing in my article about how and why baking soda washes damage your hair, and it is literally impossible to pH balance a soap-based shampoo bar to the hair, scalp, and protective acid mantle. It’s simply the nature of the beast. I also noticed that the vast majority of the posts denouncing non-soap shampoo bars were… from the creators of soap-based shampoo bars. It seems very much a case of, to quote Upton Sinclair,  ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.’  I hadn’t built my entire empire on soap bars, I had no horse in this race, and so could have gone either which way–and I went the way I chose because both the research I did and my own personal testing bore it out.

In my quest to learn more about surfactants, I came across this post from Method which I’d highly recommend you read if you’re interested in the chemistry behind sulfates. It’s a great summary.

The tl:dr- I did an immense amount of research and personal testing to create what I feel is an effective shampoo bar that cleans gently and effectively, that’s a joy to use and is full of ingredients that you cannot find anywhere else (like the slippery elm and aloe, I’m immensely proud of the creative way I found to include those normally water-based ingredients) and essential oils instead of fragrance oils.

Okay, so what’s a solid conditioner bar?

A conditioner bar is the solid form of the liquid version.  Lassëa Solid Conditioner Bars are much more concentrated than traditional liquid conditioners, even other leave-in conditioners. They’re packed with restorative butters, slippery herbs, and soothing oils.

Lassea solid conditioner bars on a towel.

Lassëa Detangling Solid Conditioner Ingredients

BTMS Emulsifying Conditioner, Cetearyl Alcohol, Refined Coconut Oil, Cocoa Butter, Kokum Butter, d-Panthenol, Vitamin E Oil, Optiphen, Slippery Elm, Aloe Vera Gel, Cedarwood Essential Oil, Lavender Essential Oil, Lime Essential Oil, Petitgrain Essential Oil, Sage Essential Oil, Benzoin Essential Oil, Peru Balsam Essential Oil, and Vanilla Bourbon CO2 Extract

How to Use

Start with sopping wet hair (many longhairs are used to wringing out their hair before applying a liquid conditioner–you need the water here to activate the conditioner bar). Gently comb the conditioner bar through the hair, then massage in with your fingers. You may choose to put your hair up at this point while you do the rest of your shower. Finally, rinse well; you’ll feel the natural slippery nature of the conditioner at this point. You can also reapply a little bit to the ends and leave it in as a detangler.

Lassëa Solid Shampoo Bar Tips & Tricks

  • Use the Lassëa conditioner bar as a leave in. This is the easiest leave in you will ever use! Before you hop out of the shower, wring the excess water out of your hair, then give the ends another couple swipes with the bar.
  • Refresh your curls! If your curls need a little extra smoothing you can mist them with Selkie Herbal Detangler, rub a bit of the Lassëa conditioner bar between your (wet) palms, and then smooth or scrunch your curls to your heart’s content.
  • Keep it off metal. While it won’t hurt the bar, setting it on a metal rack can cause browning and give your bar what looks like grill-lines. Instead, set it on something nonmetallic, or even just atop the shampoo bar.
  • Add some to your henna mud (or similar treatment). This is my favorite thing to do with the little broken bits left at the end of a bar that are hard to use up–melt it down over low heat / in a double boiler and add one tsp melted bar to your henna as you dye release it. It adds great conditioning properties and doesn’t affect dye uptake. I add Selkie Herbal Detangler to my Fire Genasi, but a bit of Lassëa bar really took it to the next level!
  • Use the edge of the bar (the one the orange arrow is pointing to) rather than the big, flat surface. Yep, same as the shampoo bar! That brown sliver is what’s left of my Lembas-sized bar after a ELEVEN months (and I have three feet of hair!). The brown curing you see on the outside is something that can happen depending on the mineral content of your water, but it doesn’t hurt the bar at all.
  • Lots of water! The conditioner bar takes a little longer to activate than the shampoo bar, but it will after some warm water and a few swipes against wet hair.
  • Comb the bar through your hair. The curve to the sliver of my conditioner bar? That’s because I put one hand behind the length of my hair, use the other hand to press the conditioner bar to the first hand (with my hair in between the edge of the bar and my other palm) and gently slide the bar along sections of my hair.
  • Use it on your skin, too! Normal “lotion bars” are just a bunch of butters and oils, and we already know oils are not moisturizing. The amazing conditioning properties of the Lassëa conditioner bar will leave a soft, moiturized, almost powdery finish to your skin. Just use a wet bar on damp skin (and especially your cuticles)!

Loving your Lassëa Shampoo & Conditioner Bars and have tips to share?

Some of these tips came from NightBlooming fans already loving their Lassëa! I’d love to hear all about your experience with the bars and any other ways you’ve found to use them–and of course leaving comments nets you bonus Moonseeds.

10 thoughts on “Tips & Tricks: How to Use Lassëa Solid Shampoo & Conditioner Bars”

  1. Since I’ve been using these in place of my liquid shampoo and conditioner, I have nothing but good things to say about my hair. I tried my old products out to see what my hair would do and it completely rebelled, it loves this combo so much more. It gives my wurls so much more body and bounce while keeping them well moisturized and free of frizz… and honestly, what more can you ask for? These helped me embrace my natural texture and learn to love my hair as it is—I don’t think I can ever look back at this point, they’re amazing and I’m completely hooked!

    Thanks for sharing the tip about using the bars from the sides by the way. My large shampoo bar has been thinning out so you’ve saved me from premature crumbles!

  2. goldenphoenix92@yahoo.com

    Random question, where do you buy those compostable little clamshell boxes you ship the bars in? I’ve looked everywhere and cannot find that size and material.

    On a related note, I love using these bars everywhere! I lather the shampoo bar on a loofah to use as body wash, rub the bar directly onto my legs to shave, and I run the conditioner bar all over myself in the shower as a moisturizer before rinsing off.

  3. I’ve talked so much about how much I love the conditioner bar, since I got to try it two years ago. But here’s one thing that I don’t think that I have shared.

    My hair is a picky diva. I was almost 20 when I for the first time, found a conditioner that worked. After this I’ve in total found four if count correctly + your bar. And your bar is by far the best for my lengths!

    I have to try it in my henna next time I touch up my roots! I’m thinking about trying a small amount in my indigo too, since it’s more drying on its own than henna…. I am already mixing in all sorts of things in my henna and indigo :p

  4. I so appreciate the tip about using it from the sides, but there’s nothing like the luxury of foaming up with the big side. 🥰

    I have a plan for what to do with extras, since I have a nonverbal long hair in my life who needs more than a little help with tangles.

    Brody’s bath featuring lassea conditioner 😆

    https://youtu.be/7bL56Me9hG0

  5. I’ve been using the shampoo and conditioner bars for months now, and I absolutely love them- my hair has never felt or looked better. I really appreciated the conditioner bar tips for refreshing curls and using it as a leave-in conditioner. Thanks for helping us get even more out of the bars!

  6. veronica van hof

    This shampoo is the best on my finicky sensitive scalp.
    The conditioner bars are GREAT for shaving *and* once when I got a rash from a natural deodorant 🙁 I swiped it on last minute before work under my arms and I smelled great all day! Haha. They’re definitely multi purpose, soothing and smell soooooo good.
    I also use it daily as a leave-in on my natural curls and my hair loves it.

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