How Often Should Men Wash Their Hair?

Shampoo two or three times a week, and rinse with plain water on the days in between. That is the answer for most men who sit in our chairs. Fine hair that lies flat by lunchtime can take a mild shampoo every day. Thick, curly or afro hair usually does better on once a week. So how often should men wash their hair comes down to what is growing out of your head and what you do with your day, and the rest of this page sorts out which group you are in.

Rinsing and washing are not the same thing

Most of the confusion starts with counting every shower as a wash. It is not one unless there is shampoo in it. Water on its own takes off sweat, dust and the loose top layer of whatever you put in your hair yesterday, and it does that without touching the oil your scalp needs. Shampoo takes the oil as well. That is its whole job.

So the routine has two parts. Water most days, in the shower you are having anyway, fingers working through the roots for half a minute. Shampoo on the days the roots actually need it, which for most men is two or three a week. Shampoo on all seven and you are stripping a scalp that had nothing on it to strip, and the scalp answers by feeling stretched and, on some men, by flaking.

How often should men wash their hair, by hair type

Fine, straight hair. Every day or every other day, with the mildest shampoo you can find. Fine hair shows oil first because there is less of it to carry the weight, and it collapses at the roots by mid-afternoon if it is even slightly greasy. This is the one hair type where a daily wash is usually the right call rather than a habit to break.

Thick or coarse hair. Two or three times a week. It holds oil without looking like it, and it tends towards dry rather than greasy, so over-washing shows up as frizz and a dull finish long before it shows up as anything else.

Wavy hair. Twice a week, three at a push. Waves need a little oil to hold together. Wash it out every day and you get volume you did not ask for and no shape.

Curly and afro hair. Once a week with shampoo, sometimes less, with a conditioner-only wash in between if the scalp wants refreshing. Oil travels down a curl slowly, so the ends are dry long before the roots are greasy, and shampoo widens that gap. If you keep a fade on curls, the sides can be rinsed daily without doing anything to the top.

Thinning or receding hair. Whatever your type was before it started thinning, that is still the answer. As far as we have ever seen, washing does not speed loss up and washing less does not slow it down. If the loss is worrying you, that is a GP conversation, not a shampoo one.

A buzz cut or a shaved head. It is skin now. Rinse daily, wash with something mild two or three times a week, and if you shave to the skin, treat it the way you treat your face.

What moves the number up or down

Product. If clay or paste goes in every morning, it needs to come out most nights, with shampoo or with a long water rinse, because three days of clay is what most men are actually describing when they say their hair is greasy. Wax and pomade need shampoo. So does salt spray if you have used it, because left in it dries the hair out.

Sweat. Training, cycling, a job on site, a hot kitchen. Rinse the same day, every time, and keep the shampoo count where it was. What to do with your scalp after the gym is written for men who train daily and it applies to anyone who sweats through their working day.

The season. London in August can justify a daily mild shampoo on hair that is fine twice a week in February. We wrote up the summer version of this routine in July. The winter version is mostly the reverse: heating dries the scalp out, so wash less, rinse more, and put some moisture back in.

Hard water. London's water is hard. Look inside your kettle. The same minerals that fur it up sit on your hair, which is why a shampoo that lathered beautifully on holiday does very little here. Use a small amount, lather it twice if you have to, and rinse for longer than feels sensible.

Signs you have got it wrong

Too much washing looks like this: a scalp that feels stretched and itchy an hour after the shower, small dry flakes that fall rather than stick, hair that goes fluffy and will not hold a style, and, oddly, oil that comes back faster than it used to. That last one is the scalp reacting to being stripped by a harsh shampoo, not the scalp producing more because you wash more. Change the shampoo for a mild one first. Change the frequency only if that does not fix it.

Too little looks like this: roots that feel waxy or tacky rather than slippery, hair that lies flat and heavy no matter what you style it with, a smell you notice when a hat comes off, and flakes that look like dandruff but feel waxy when you rub one between your fingers. That last one is product, not dandruff, and a single wash with a clarifying shampoo sorts it. If you cannot tell dry flakes from the other kind, the wash test in our dandruff guide settles it in two days.

If none of that fits, the number is probably right and the shampoo is wrong. Most men we see are washing at a sensible frequency with a product that is far too strong for what they are asking it to do.

Why we care what you did this morning

A haircut here is £15 and takes half an hour, and it does not include the basin, so we cut on dry or lightly damp hair. The Wash & Cut is £18 for forty minutes, and the extra ten minutes is the wash. That is not an upsell, it is a different haircut. Hair with product in it cuts heavier and falls the way the product pushed it, so the shape we cut into it is partly the shape of the product, and when you wash it that night it becomes a slightly different haircut. Clean hair shows us where your crown pushes, where it thins at the temple and where it wants to sit. We cut that.

So the useful thing to know before you book a haircut is whether there is a head of clay coming with you. If there is, book the wash. If your hair is clean and you skipped product, the £15 cut is the right one and you are not missing anything. Curls are the exception: for those we would rather you washed the day before, so the pattern has settled by the time you sit down.

Try this for a fortnight

Pick a mild shampoo, one without "clarifying", "deep clean" or "anti-dandruff" on the front of the bottle. Wash with it on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. On the other days, water only, fingers through the roots for thirty seconds. No conditioner on the scalp, no dry shampoo, and rinse everything for twice as long as you normally do.

At the end of the two weeks, look at day three. If your hair still looks like hair on day three, that is your number. If it had given up by the afternoon of day two, you are a daily-wash man, and the mild shampoo is what makes that safe. If it still feels heavy the morning after a wash, you are either washing too little or carrying build-up from the old routine, and you need one clarifying wash before the test means anything.

Two weeks is enough. Your scalp has an opinion about this, and it will give it to you by the second Friday.