By the first week of July, anyone who swims regularly here knows the feeling. Hair that is straw at the ends and greasy at the roots, a scalp that itches, and color that has gone somewhere it was not supposed to go.

Three separate things are happening and only one of them is chlorine.

Chlorine

It strips sebum, which is the natural coating protecting the hair shaft. Without it, the cuticle lifts and stays lifted.

Lifted cuticle means moisture escapes, tangling increases, and hair feels rough no matter how much conditioner you use. It also means color washes out faster, because the cuticle is what holds pigment in.

On the scalp, chlorine is drying and irritating. Combine that with sun and you get flaking that people mistake for dandruff and treat with the wrong shampoo for months.

The green thing is copper, not chlorine

This is the part almost nobody knows.

Green tint in blonde, gray or light hair does not come from chlorine directly. It comes from copper, which gets into pool water from plumbing and from copper-based algaecides.

Chlorine oxidizes that copper. The oxidized copper binds to the protein in your hair shaft and deposits as a green tint. Lighter hair shows it because there is no competing pigment.

Which is why regular shampoo, and even most clarifying shampoo, does nothing about it. You are not dealing with a residue sitting on the surface. You are dealing with metal bound to keratin, and that requires a chelating agent.

Phoenix compounds this. Our water runs hard, generally 250 to 350 ppm total dissolved solids, so you are already carrying mineral load before you ever get in a pool.

Lake water and salt

Bartlett and Saguaro add a different problem. Salt draws moisture out of the hair shaft osmotically, and lake water carries its own mineral and particulate load.

Salt water pools are not the gentle option people assume. They still generate chlorine, just through a different mechanism.

Sun

UV degrades keratin and oxidizes melanin. That is the brassiness, the fading, and a meaningful share of the brittleness.

Your scalp burns too. Along a part line especially, and almost nobody protects it.

What does not fix it

Washing more often. That strips the ends further and does nothing to the metal bound to the shaft.

Deep conditioning masks alone. They coat and soften. They do not remove.

Purple shampoo for the green. Wrong color theory, wrong problem. Purple toner addresses yellow. Green needs red tones, and more importantly it needs the copper gone first.

Home remedies involving tomato juice or baking soda. Some of them do something. Most of them damage the cuticle further.

What does

Chelation plus mechanical removal at the scalp and along the shaft.

That is the core of a Japanese head spa: a clarifying and chelating cleanse that binds and lifts metals, sectioned exfoliation worked into the scalp with real pressure, then a micro-bubble rinse that carries loosened debris out of the follicle rather than redistributing it.

Then a treatment mask to address what the summer took out, and conditioning to lay the cuticle back down.

We scope the scalp before and after. On someone who swims regularly in July, it is the most dramatic before and after we see all year.

Sixty minute service starts at $130. Ninety minutes if your hair is long, dense, or textured.

What it will not do

It will not repair split ends. That is scissors.

It will not undo structural damage to the hair shaft. Severely compromised hair is compromised.

It will not stop it from happening again. If you swim four times a week, buildup returns on the same schedule.

Prevention that actually works

Saturate your hair with clean water before you get in. Hair absorbs a finite amount of water. Fill it with tap water and it takes on less pool water. This one is free and it works.

Leave-in conditioner as a barrier before swimming.

Rinse immediately after, not when you get home.

A cap if you will tolerate one. Most people will not.

Chelating shampoo once a week during swim season, not daily. Daily chelating strips the barrier and you end up itchier than you started.

Something on your part line. A hat, or a scalp sunscreen.

Book

Schedule a head spa at our North Phoenix studio.