My Curly Hair Routine: Products, Tips and Revelations

After a year of experimentation, I’m here to tell y’all about my curly hair routine. I ended up testing a lot of different products and unfortunately wasting a bit of money for science, but it was worth it to find out what works best for my curly hair. So let’s get into it!

I mentioned in my monthly recaps last year that I made it a goal of mine to be better to my hair. I don’t know if it’s because I now have a homebase to put my stuff in, or that companies like my beloved Ethique are coming up with more travel and environmentally friendly beauty solutions, or just that I’m getting older (hello 36…) and my hair is changing as I get more grays. But last year, I dove into the world of curly haircare.

• Review: Ethique Shampoo, Conditioner and Lotion Bars
• My Favorite Nomad Hack Of 2023: A Conditioner Bar

I started reading up about split ends and how they can negatively affect your whole head of hair. I think I had heard this before, but I seemed to never get split ends in the past and my hair remained healthy and happy without me having to do anything (ah the ease of youth 🙂 ). But that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

So I learned how to cut my own split ends by searching for someone who has my same type of hair (3C). I took my Partner’s hair scissors, (I learned how to cut his hair like a fancy barber during the pandemic 😉 ) and followed the instructions, and I was shocked at how my hair instantly changed.

It was curlier, softer and looked more full just from getting rid of a few centimeters of split ends. So I started doing that every 6 weeks like the video above suggests since my hair hadn’t looked this happy in a long time 🙂 .

Next, I looked into how to care for my increasing number of gray hairs, which are a different texture than the rest of my hair. Everything I read said hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!

So that was my next step. I started researching hair masks, leave-in conditioners and other things that can help hydrate my hair more than I usually do. That was my baseline goal. 

An Anecdotal & 3C Curly Caveat

Obviously all of this is just based on my experience and how products reacted to my hair. I have a few grey hairs and I also currently have all “fresh” hair that has never been bleached.

I used to bleach my hair all the time and dye it wild colors, but I stopped a little bit ago after getting unnecessarily stressed about accidentally dyeing white Airbnb towels and pillowcases purple 🙂 . So I currently only have never bleached hair on my head and my experience with these products will reflect that. 

• How To Bleach And Dye Dark Hair At Home
• What Does “A Purple Life” Mean?

I’m a black woman (in case you’re new here 😉 ) and as I mentioned, I also have 3C hair. However, all curls need moisture especially as we get older and get more grey hairs (which are more dry) so I’m here to share what works for me after a year of trial and error to get my ideal curly hair routine. 

My Routine

I’ll take y’all through all the products I tested and my thoughts on them in a moment, but here is my new routine after this experiment:

• Trim my hair every 6 weeks
• Wash and condition once a week (though I can just condition more than once a week)
  • After putting on the conditioner I let it sit while I do whatever else I’m doing in the shower
  • When I’m about to wash out the conditioner, I first gently finger comb the tangles out of my hair and then rinse
• After getting out of the shower I wrap my hair in a towel
• Apply hair oil or leave-in conditioner
  • If using a leave-in, I put some gel on top of it
• Air dry

The Products

So now I’m going to take y’all through every product I tried while attempting to find what works best for my curly hair.

Shampoo

All Other Shampoos

Throughout my life I’ve used a wide range of shampoos and every single time they have dried out my hair and made it frizzier, until…

Moroccanoil Hydration Shampoo 

Price: $2.49/oz

I didn’t intend to test shampoos during this experiment because every single shampoo I’ve used in my life left my hair supposedly clean, but otherwise worse – except this MoroccanOil Shampoo. My aunt had this stuff and I used it when I visited her and my life was changed. 

I didn’t know a shampoo could feel like this. It feels way more moisturizing than any other shampoo I’ve used.

When most shampoos make my hair feel like straw and give more work to my conditioner, this one doesn’t. It actually seems to moisturize while shampooing as advertised. The only downside is that it is expensive as you can see above, but since it’s the only shampoo I’ve ever tried that left my hair not feeling like straw, I’m sold!

Conditioners

Aussie Miracle Moist Conditioner

Price: $0.30/oz

This is the conditioner that I’ve been using for years whenever I could. That is luckily all the time when I’m home and don’t have to always worry about liquid limits at airports.

As a note for my bleach lovers out here, when I did bleach my hair, I would use Aussie 3 Minute Miracle Moist Deep Conditioner Treatment ($0.77/oz) as my regular conditioner until my hair felt hydrated again post-bleaching. I would then switch back to the regular conditioner above. 

Anyway, Aussie Miracle Moist Conditioner always leaves my hair feeling moisturized and tangle-free. I love it so much and it will be my baseline for the rest of these conditioners, which are both much more expensive 🙂 . 

Shea Moisture Curl & Shine Conditioner

Price: $0.62/oz

I had heard from multiple people that they loved Shea Moisture’s conditioners, but they don’t have the same hair as I do so I was curious if it would work for me as well and unfortunately, I was underwhelmed. This conditioner was fine, but it didn’t seem to give as much moisture as the Aussie conditioner above and it’s double the price so that was a no from me.

Also as a small side note, I was very disappointed in this conditioner’s packaging. I have used countless hair products with pump tops in my life and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to open this one. Counterclockwise/lefty-loosey? Nope. I even imagined I was an Eridian and tried righty-tighty. Nope!

I actually ended up having to look this up online and I guess it’s a common enough problem that there are videos about how to open it, but if your everyday product requires instructional videos to open – that’s a problem. 

Moroccanoil Hydrating Conditioner

Price: $2.49/oz

After being blown away with Moroccanoil’s shampoo above, I had to try their conditioner. I was expecting it to similarly blow my socks off compared to the much cheaper options above and…it did not.

It was nice to use, but I literally couldn’t tell the difference between the results and how the Aussie conditioner above makes my hair feel…for 8x the cost. Absolutely not 🙂 . 

Hair Masks

During my time researching how to best care for curly hair, a lot of the YouTube videos I watched and guides I read said that they recommended a weekly hair mask. So I went on a quest to find one that worked for me and did more for me than the conditioners above. However, as you’ll see below I unfortunately wasn’t very impressed with any of the ones I tried.

So I’m still on the lookout for a hair mask, but am not sure I’ll find one, so using a hair mask is not currently part of my routine. But regardless, let’s see what I learned during this experiment!

Shea Moisture Intensive Hydration Masque

Price: $1.13/oz

I gave Shea Moisture another shot 🙂 . When I searched around, everyone and their mother online and off, recommended this hair mask (or “masque” if you’re fancy) so I tried it. 

And it was…fine. It asks that you leave it in your hair for 5 minutes, which is a long time in my opinion, but I respected the process and actually used the entire tub over multiple weeks before writing this post. Overall, I didn’t see a difference in using this hair mask compared to my Aussie conditioner, which does not take 5 minutes to work and also costs about 1/4 of this mask. This mask did leave my hair soft, smooth and moisturized – but my conditioner already does that just as well. 

Moroccanoil Intense Hydrating Mask

Price: $4.14/oz

After Moroccanoil’s conditioner being lackluster for the price, I was really hoping for this mask to help me understand why their hair products are so expensive and…nope 🙁 . I found the mask to be a bit sticky, which is not a sensation I enjoy. It also didn’t seem to bring any extra moisture to my hair compared to my conditioner – it just brought pain to my wallet 🙂 . 

Oils

This was my first foray into hair oils! As I’ll talk about more below, I used to just use leave-in conditioner and some gel when at home. However, during my research everyone said I had to try hair oil. So here I am! 

Aussie Miracle Moist Avocado Oil

Price: $3.12/oz

This oil was lovely! My hair became softer overall as I kept using it, which was wonderful. Since this was the first oil I’ve ever used, I was concerned that it would leave residue on pillowcases and things like regular oil does, but nope!

I never saw any type of residue from any of these oils so that’s good to know – I guess they formulated it to not do that 😉 . This Aussie oil in particular though also felt very light while also letting me know it’s there because my hair looked better than normal between washes. Very nice. 

Shea Moisture Multi-Tasking 100% Argan Oil

Price: $6.87/oz

I also gave this Shea Moisture oil a try and sadly I was disappointed. It is a nice, light oil, but it didn’t seem as moisturizing as the Aussie oil above, which is half the price.

However, it works into my hair well and does seem to do something, but not enough to pay its elevated cost. Also the instructions say you can put this on wet or dry hair, but when I tried it on my dry hair, it made it look oily, which is a big no for me.

One ‘N Only Argan Oil Hair Treatment

Price: $2.02/oz

This stuff is absolutely awful 🙂 . It says to use it on dry or wet hair, but when I put it on my dry hair, it just sat on top of my hair like oil on top of water. Ah!

By comparison, all the other oils on this list work into dry hair just as easily as wet so I thought that was the case for all hair oils, but NOPE! I also tried this on wet hair and it was still super weird.

This oil doesn’t blend into hair seamlessly like all other oils I’ve tried, and I’m starting to suspect it’s just a cheap olive oil or something because that’s the only thing I’ve seen that acts like this on my hair. (And yes I’ve done that – I was trying to figure out what my hair liked in high school and tried everything). 

Moroccanoil Treatment Hair Oil

Price: $14.71/oz

I am shocked to say: this oil blew my socks off! It feels amazing, smells amazing and my hair looks professionally done when I put it on. Even my Partner commented on how nice my hair looked with this oil on without prompting. After I had been trying different hair products for months, this was the only one to get a reaction out of him, let alone an unprompted one.

This oil also works well on my dry hair – it instantly makes my hair look silkier. It’s not at all oily despite being thicker than other oils I tried and it gives me wonderfully defined curls without any additional products. 

But here’s the rub 🙂 – the price. I discovered how amazing this oil was on my hair about halfway through this hair experiment, and I spent the rest of the time trying some of the other oils above because I initially refused to believe that this very expensive oil was the only one that would perform this well. 

As the rest of my reviews above have shown, nothing comes close. I had to accept that this oil seems to be worth its high price to me based on how well it performs on my hair.

So to make me feel better, I did a mini experiment while I was in México this winter. Moroccanoil sells this oil in several different sizes from a $20, 0.85oz bottle for travel up to a large $50, 3.4oz bottle. 

On my trip, I took a 0.85oz bottle and learned that using it lasted me my entire 6 week trip despite it being so small, and my hair being so thick. So I extrapolated that to realize that buying a $50 3.4oz bottle would last me 4x as long aka half a year!

I can totally stomach that price if it lasts 6 months and makes my hair look sensational. So damn Moroccanoil – you win this one!

Leave-In Conditioners

In general, leave-in conditioners were my go to for post-shower moisture and curl definition (when used with gel), but after trying hair oils for the first time, I felt like a new woman. Oils seem even more moisturizing, but for less liquid, which matters to me when traveling.

Also using a leave-in conditioner obviously required that I have 2 items instead of 1 (oil). So I think I’m on the oil train, but will be using leave-in + gel as a backup when at home. So let’s learn about my favorite leave-in conditioners. 

Garnier Fructis Sleek and Shine Leave-In

Price: $0.44/oz

This leave-in has been my go-to for years when I’m able to find it. It’s moisturizing, well priced and light on my hair. It’s also my baseline for this experiment 🙂 . 

Aussie Miracle Curls Leave-In Detangling Milk

Price: $0.93/oz

Well I hate the phrase “detangling milk”, but I like the actual product. It seems to be more moisturizing than the Garnier one above and it also smells like the beach because of the coconut oil. However, it is also double the price of Garnier for not a huge improvement so I think I’ll stick with Garnier given how much leave-in conditioner my hair requires.

MoroccanOil Hydrating Styling Cream

Price: $3.52/oz

This is not technically a leave-in, but it’s advertised to fulfill the same leave-in function of moisturizing while also shaping like gel, so I wanted to try it and see if it removes the necessity for a gel. Sadly, that wasn’t the case for me. 

I found this product sticky, which I didn’t enjoy and it makes my hair a little crunchy, which is a red flag for me with a gel-like product as you’ll see below. Also strangely at times, it left white residue on my hair that I had to rub out. No thank you 🙂 . 

For the positives, it did make my hair look good and held my curls well, but all the negatives above combined with the very high price makes this a no-go for me. 

Gel

As I mentioned, if I’m using a leave-in conditioner, I need a gel to achieve the curl definition I want, so here is my favorite gel based on my previous 20 years of testing (I didn’t try additional gels for this experiment):

Aussie Instant Freeze Gel

Price: $0.45/oz

I love this gel because it’s not crunchy at all and it looks completely natural. It doesn’t look like you’re using a hair product and it keeps my curls not-frizzy, defined and smooth. 

I have tried what feels like a million gels in the past and this was the best I’ve ever tried so I didn’t reopen the search this time. All other gels I’ve tried are either sticky during application, crunchy afterward, or didn’t seem to hold my curl definition.

The Results

And finally, we’ve reached the results. I assume my preferences were clear above, but here’s the TL;DR of my winning products in each category:

Shampoo: Moroccanoil Hydration Shampoo 
Conditioner: Aussie Miracle Moist Conditioner
Oil: Moroccanoil Treatment Hair Oil
Leave-In Conditioner: Garnier Fructis Sleek and Shine Leave-In
Gel: Aussie Instant Freeze Gel

Conclusion

And that’s my curly hair routine and all the products I use for it! I was trying really hard during this investigation to find a curly hair routine that included affordable products that work well for me.

In my experience a solution that ticks both of those boxes usually exists, and I found that to be the case with a lot of hair products, but not hair oil. I can’t believe how bougie my hair has become – I guess it’s taking a cue from the rest of me 😉 . 

• From Frugal To Fuck It: The Evolution Of My Thoughts On Spending Money

Maybe I should have anticipated this given my requirement to only knit with high quality wool yarn, but I must admit, it surprised me. I was also surprised that the most expensive hair oil was not just the best, but worth its high price to me. Wild 🙂 .

Anyway, I just wanted to find a routine that works for me and I wanted to share my findings in case it helps someone else or if you’re just curious how the curly-half live 🙂 . Also, if you have curly hair and any products you absolutely love, feel free to share below! I’d love to hear your thoughts.