Start dry – water is rarely the first step
Almost anything that ends up in hair is either greasy or powdery. Wax, candle wax and chewing gum belong to the first group; cinnamon, glitter, sand and plaster dust to the second. What they have in common is that water makes the job harder when it arrives too early: the greasy things get spread down the lengths, and the powdery ones turn into a paste that clings to the surface of the hair.
Give yourself five minutes of dry work first. Shake the hair out, tap it through gently with your fingertips, and then comb it with a wide-tooth comb – from the ends upwards, one small section at a time. The order matters: comb from the scalp downwards and you simply push everything into one knot at the ends.
Chewing gum and other sticky things
Chewing gum lets go when it becomes either very cold or very greasy. Try the cold first: a couple of ice cubes in a freezer bag, held against the lump for five to ten minutes, make it hard and brittle so it can be broken off in small pieces rather than pulled out.
If the cold does not do it, saturate the area with a cooking oil or a rich conditioner and work it through with your fingers. The fat dissolves the stickiness and the hair slides apart instead of matting. The oil then has to come out again, and this is one of the few occasions where we recommend an ordinary, strongly cleansing shampoo – coloured hair included.
Hair wax and candle wax need opposite treatment
Hair wax is made to be washed out and rarely causes trouble: lukewarm water and two rounds of shampoo will do it. The mistake people make is reaching for conditioner first – that lays a film on top of the wax and seals it in.
Candle wax, by contrast, should be made hard rather than soft. Let it cool completely, break the plate gently between your fingers and comb the rest out. If a thin film remains, wrap the section in kitchen paper and hold a hairdryer on low heat against the paper so the wax melts up into it. Keep your distance – it is the paper that should get warm, not the hair.
Paint, glue and glitter
Water-based paint and most face paints come out with lukewarm water and shampoo if you are quick. Once it has dried in, soften it with conditioner and leave it for a quarter of an hour rather than rubbing away at it. Rubbing mats the hair, and then you have two problems instead of one.
Oil- and lacquer-based paint belongs in the salon. White spirit, acetone and surgical spirit will indeed remove the paint, but they take the colour and the moisture with them, and a scalp that has had that treatment stays sore for days.
Glitter is not stuck – it is merely lodged. Lift it off while the hair is completely dry by patting a piece of tape lightly against the surface rather than dragging it through, and follow up with a fine-tooth comb.
Cinnamon after a 25th birthday
Cinnamon is a chapter of its own, and that is down to the sheer volume. In Denmark, anyone who turns 25 while still unmarried is showered in cinnamon, and the rule of thumb of one kilo per year of life means that some 25 kilos of finely ground powder come down over head and shoulders in one go.
In hair, cinnamon behaves like any other fine powder: it settles in the outer layer of the hair and on the scalp, and it gets worse if the first thing that happens is a hot shower. Shake and comb most of it out outdoors before the birthday guest comes inside, and the rest is an ordinary wash or two.
The shops behind the tradition have written about this in more detail than we have room for here. If you need a step-by-step guide to getting cinnamon out of hair, BilligKanel has one, and if the hair is coloured or bleached it is worth reading up on how cinnamon behaves in light and coloured hair before you start. Both guides are in Danish.
- Shake and comb it out in the open air – not in the bathroom, where the powder simply lands again
- Rinse for a long time in lukewarm water before any shampoo goes on
- Expect two washes and a moisturising conditioner at the end
- If you are the one being celebrated, most of the trouble can be avoided by preparing your hair beforehand
Sand, salt and chlorine
Sand needs to be allowed to dry. Shower straight away and the water binds the grains to the hair; let it dry completely and shake your head out, and almost all of it falls away by itself.
Chlorine is a different matter, because it does not just sit on the hair – it reacts with it. Blonde and lightened hair can take on a greenish cast that no amount of extra shampoo will remove. Rinse your hair in clean water before you get into the pool – wet hair absorbs less chlorinated water – and book a toner if the cast is already there.
When to leave it to us
Superglue, a tube of hair colour that has ended up in the wrong place, matted extensions and anything that has been left in overnight belong in the salon. So does any case where the scalp starts to itch, burn or turn red.
Call sooner rather than later. We can nearly always save the length – what really costs hair is the three hours of home-made solvents that came first.
