Avoiding Flakes and ‘Gooey’ White Balls When Mixing Your Gels and Moisturizers

We have all been there. You have finally purchased that new leave in conditioner* everyone has been raving about and decide to use it to create your signature wash and go.

You apply the leave in and then grab your favorite gel making sure every curl is covered because you cannot have any mistakes today, it’s late and you have to get to the office.

As you apply the gel, you notice little white balls appearing all over your hair, on every strand in every area. Uh Oh! It’s not like you can cover it up, you hair is officially a mess. Great! Now what?

We totally feel your pain, everyone has been through this once or twice, and picking out the balls is not an option because there are just too many, usually the best thing to do is go ahead and make the call, tell your boss the dog ate your home work because unfortunately work will not be an option today.

I know I am not alone when I say, that I really had no clue what caused the white balls, and if it was a new product more than likely it would end up in the trash with me declaring that it does not work for my hair.

The thing is, it’s all about chemistry, sometimes two products just do not mix well together, it could be your staple gel and a new leave in or a new gel and an old leave in, somehow the ingredients just do not mix well allowing for some of the properties of the product that would typically behave one way to behave in an entirely different and unacceptable way.

For example flaking is caused by the polymer molecules that are found in gels that are responsible for clumping our hair and giving us that hold we all know and love. In some cases if you even attempt to scrunch or touch your hair the molecules will shatter leaving you with literal flakes of gel all over your head, mix that with a leave in and a complete mess unfolds.

This isn’t a chemistry class so I won’t bore you with any more details however we do have a fool proof way of making sure you figure out what works well with what before you add them to your hair.

The test is simple, just take a little of your leave in and a little of your gel, rub them together in the palm of your hand. You will see one of 3 results:

1. If you get a creamy consistency with no clumps, that’s great and you have a winning product combo. Carry on with your styling session.

2. If you get cream plus a few clumps that disappear with more rubbing then your products are having a hard time combining but they may do so if you really work them into your hair, proceed with caution.

3.On the other hand if you get just plain old clumps, make a mental note NEVER to mix those products on your hair and give yourself a pat on the back for sidestepping that particular disaster.

The lovely NaturalMe4C tested a few of her own products doing the same thing we just described. Check out her video on below!

Do you ladies test your product combos before trying them on your hair?