Ingredients

What is 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. The matching pH helps 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.

Some of the benefits of Lassëa Solid Shampoo Bars include:

• Zero Waste / No Plastic- Lassëa Solid Shampoo 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 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 Lassëa is much lower than that of a liquid shampoo.
• Preserving Color & Treatments- Lassëa Solid Shampoo Bars are immensely gentle. The bars 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. Your hair gets 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. That includes how much you use each time, and how you store it in between uses. A Lassëa Solid Shampoo Bar will last a long time if you don’t leave it in a place that collects water. Instead, allow the bar to drain and dry before the next use.
• Travel, gym & camping friendly- Liquid shampoos have restrictions when flying and the potential to leak. Lassëa Solid Shampoo Bars are hassle-free no matter how you’re traveling or where you’re stowing them.

Do I need a conditioner with Lassëa Solid Shampoo Bars?

Because they are so gentle, people who already don’t need much conditioner might find they don’t need any at all with Lassëa Solid Shampoo Bars. They find that the oils, butters, slippery elmDescription Ulmus rubra is a species of elm that has a mucilaginous inner bark, and it is this that gives natural slip and hydration to Selkie. It also naturally softens hair, provide natural plant protein, adds shine, and soothes an itchy or dry scalp More, and aloe in them is enough. Most people will still want a conditioner, and the obvious perfect pairing is the Lassëa Solid Conditioner Bar!

What makes Lassëa 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 ElmDescription Ulmus rubra is a species of elm that has a mucilaginous inner bark, and it is this that gives natural slip and hydration to Selkie. It also naturally softens hair, provide natural plant protein, adds shine, and soothes an itchy or dry scalp More and Aloe Vera GelWhile well-known for its benefits to skin, this mucilaginous ingredient provides deep moisturizing effects to the hair and scalp as well. In addition it helps restore pH levels and has both emollient and moisturizing properties, meaning that it smooths the cuticle and attracts and seals in moisture More, 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. The bars radiate NightBlooming’s signature Eventide aroma of crisp sea-spray over alluring sun-basked vanilla and herbs.

Directions

The most important thing to remember is that Lassëa Solid Shampoo Bars need generous amounts of water to activate!

1. Soak hair with water. Water will help create much-needed lather, so make sure your hair is dripping wet and soaked through.
2. Wet the bar. You don’t need to douse the bar, but a light pass under the shower will activate its surface.
3. Lather up! You can do this by rubbing the bar between your hands and then rubbing the lather on your head for a more gentle cleanse, or by rubbing the bar directly onto your wet hair. You may have to re-wet your hair or the bar as you go.
4. Work it through. Gently massage the lather through your hair and down to your scalp with your fingertips. The lather creates air spaces in between your hair and against your scalp for dirt, oil, and other buildup to be wicked away.
5. Rinse well. The lather is now holding all the grime that the Lassëa Solid Shampoo Bar just removed from your hair, so you’ll want to rinse well to make sure none of it re-settles on your hair.
6. Condition and detangle. Follow up with a Lassëa Solid Conditioner Bar and then some Selkie Herbal Detangler for smooth, shining, tangle-free hair.

Storage

Allow the bars to dry out in between each use. Once dry they can be stored in a closed container if desired.

I started out making my own solid shampoo and conditioner bars because I and thought I could do better than the ones I’d tried. 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.  It is chemically 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. 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, had no horse in this race, and could have gone either which way. In the end, 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 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 elmDescription Ulmus rubra is a species of elm that has a mucilaginous inner bark, and it is this that gives natural slip and hydration to Selkie. It also naturally softens hair, provide natural plant protein, adds shine, and soothes an itchy or dry scalp More 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.