How to Thoroughly Exfoliate Your Scalp at Home

Exfoliating your scalp can help to achieve the healthiest hair possible, but that starts once you discover tips on how to exfoliate your scalp properly. Your scalp needs as much attention as the rest of your haircare routine. After all, when you nourish from the root, you are providing the best environment for your hair follicle. While it might be an overlooked step, we are here to bring you the benefits of exfoliating your scalp. With these tips, you may unlock the gorgeous results you’ve always wanted for your hair.    

What is Scalp Exfoliation?

Taking a step back, before we discover how to exfoliate your scalp, we need to understand what it is. Scalp care is one of the most important elements to achieving luscious curls, which many can forget to include in their routine. Yet scalp care is fundamental to producing stronger, healthy hair. Without it, your curly hair, coily hair, or wavy hair may appear dull and lifeless. 

Scalp exfoliation is the process of removing dead skin cells, debris or product build up from the scalp. If you are unsure on how to exfoliate your scalp correctly, using our tips could help you make a healthy environment for your follicles to grow in. This, in turn, could lead to your hair being stronger and shinier. 

5 Benefits of Why You Should Exfoliate Your Scalp

Exfoliating your scalp has so many benefits that many don’t even realise. Often we can get caught up with applying various products throughout the week, that we may not notice our favourite has stopped performing as well as it used to. What may be causing this is build up. Using products, such as our scalp line when exfoliating, could help to combat this. As when you understand how to exfoliate your scalp, it can reduce both natural and product build up happening. Resulting in your hair thriving and looking its best. Below we demonstrate five benefits as to why you should be exfoliating your scalp. 

• You could notice a difference in appearance - once you understand how to exfoliate your scalp, the environment for your hair follicles is optimised. What this means is that over time you could start to see your hair appearing naturally thicker or shinier, since there is nothing blocking them at the root.
• You remove build up - over a week, your hair could experience so many different products that overtime start to build up and block the hair follicles, which could lead to an itchy head. Removing this build up from the scalp is important to achieving healthy hair. Not only this, but it could help to prevent build up happening since you are clearing the scalp of dead skin and debris. 
• Encourages hair growth - when you exfoliate your scalp, you are stimulating the skin in circular motions. This action removes the dead skin cells and allows for new ones to be produced, which is one of the elements that encourage hair growth.
• Prevents dry scalp - flakes of skin on your scalp do not always equate to dandruff, it could simply mean your scalp is dry or irritated. Exfoliating your scalp can help your natural oils to nourish the skin and help to keep your hair healthy, which could aid in preventing the appearance of dry hair.  
• Keeps oil under control - your natural oils can also be known as sebum. Some people may have an imbalance of this which causes them to have oily hair. By exfoliating regularly, you could help to prevent sebum build up and keep your natural oils at a healthy level.

5 Steps to Exfoliating at Home With Curlsmith

Exfoliating your scalp is super easy to introduce into your home haircare routine. There are many ways to perform this, whether you choose to use a scalp scrub, scrub glove or brush, or simply your fingers. We will take you through the steps of how to exfoliate your scalp so you can achieve beautiful hair. 

1. Usually performed on wet hair, use our Super Slip Pre-Biotic Primer first to prepare the hair before applying a scrub. This helps to strengthen the scalp's protective barrier, since the product contains balanced pre-biotics, which feed the ‘good bacteria’ for the skin.
2. Apply your chosen product to your root. We recommend a scrub like our Wash & Scrub Pro-Biotic, which is extra-fine so it won’t risk irritating your scalp and it won’t get stuck in your hair when you rinse it out. It is also a clarifying shampoo which is super-charged with live pro-biotics that help to form the scalp’s protective barrier. 
3. Use small circular motions to gently work the product in, while avoiding the rest of the hair shaft. This motion will help to lift the dead skin cells and build up away from the scalp.
4. Rinse your hair with lukewarm water. 
5. Apply a conditioner, such as our Post-Biotic Calming Conditioner to help lock in moisture and rebalance the scalp pH. This product is super charged with hyaluronic acid, which is known as the ultimate hydrating ingredient.

Top tip: If you are not using a glove or brush, try and avoid using your finger nails when working the product in. The harsh point of your nails may scratch the scalp’s surface, which could cause sensitivity. 

How Often Should You Exfoliate Your Scalp?

As well as providing tips for how to exfoliate your scalp, it's also important to understand how often you should perform it. If you neglect your scalp by not exfoliating, it may lead to dull hair, an itchy scalp, and blocked follicles. On the other hand, exfoliating too often could lead to stripping the hair of its natural oils, which can be resolved by doing a deep conditioning treatment. However, once you understand how often to exfoliate your own scalp, you could produce healthy, naturally thicker and shinier hair.   

Ultimately, when thinking how often to exfoliate your scalp, it varies from person to person. The general idea is to exfoliate every four to five washes, unless you have an excessive amount of product. If you are unsure as to how often to wash your hair, discover the optimal routine for what your hair type needs with our guide.

If you want to exfoliate less often, the best way to do that is by using scalp friendly products, like those in our scalp range, which could help to reduce build up. Our scalp products are packed full of goodness which help to regulate your microbiome and create the perfect environment for hair follicles to thrive in.  

Achieve Beautiful Hair With Curlsmith

Curlsmith is a gourmet haircare company. Our curl-loving, premium products are gentle enough for any hair type, which is why knowing how to exfoliate your scalp with our scalp line can help the prevention of build up. If you’re searching for our other recipes to achieve your hair goals, we have a moisture line, and strength line. We are sure there is something for everyone. We are also proud to say our ranges are cruelty free, so we never test on animals.