Leave In Conditioners... What are they? How do they actually work - and are they right for me?

We've rounded up the facts below. 

Leave-In Conditioners vs Rinse Out Conditioners

Whether you’ve tried one or not – it’s impossible to shy away from the advertised benefits of leave-in conditioners. If you’ve ever wondered or are looking for the type that’s right for you, you’ve come to the right place.

First off – let’s start with some statistics:

According to Unilever, 

On average, you could save 99 seconds per shower when you use a leave-in conditioner.

Over 120 gallons of water are saved just by using 1 bottle of leave-in conditioner. That’s just about the amount you drink in 7 months.

In the state of California alone – 4 billion gallons of water could be saved if every woman in the state used a leave-in conditioner for 1 year. Need some context? You could fill 6800 Olympic pools with that saved aqua.

This all sounds great, but let’s jump into the differences between these two options, and when you may choose one over the other. 

What’s A Rinse Out Conditioner?

Rinse –out conditioners are essentially designed to close the hair cuticle and restore any moisture loss experienced by your shampoo. A benefit of rinse out conditioner is that you can choose different formulas for particular hair concerns, such as more volume or less frizz, and pretty much see results right away. A drawback to this though, is that the results are usually temporary – and as mentioned above – the wasted water and time really add up. 

Okay – so what’s so great about Leave In conditioners?

Leave in conditioners are typically applied to damp hair and left in to help retain moisture, heal the cuticle, and can be used on dry hair as a styling aid and pick-me-up. You can pretty much find a leave in conditioner for every hair type these days as well. Long gone are the days of heavy conditioners made only for dry, damaged, or kinky/curly locks. 

The biggest pro to using a leave-in conditioner is the concentrated effect it is able to have on hair, since it isn’t rinsed out. These conditioners can treat the cuticle, while rinse-offs are made to quickly apply a “band-aid” of sorts to the problems. Some leave-ins (**cough cough..ours**) can also be stacked with a rinse-off to provide the best of both worlds, and give your hair the little bit of extra TLC it might need.

So… What’s Muku Milk?

Muku Milk is our answer to typical leave-in conditioners. Our biggest and most front facing mission is to provide ocean safe, reef safe, and body safe hair and skincare products. That means all of our conditioners are ocean-safe – down to how they’re packaged and formulated. We’ll get into this part in a minute.

Muku is one way to speak about the New Moon phase in Hawaiian, and we thought it was an appropriate nod to our new phase and collection, providing you even more reef safe conditioners and plastic free skincare to love. 

Muku Milk is formulated with things like coconut water, chlorella, and plant keratin to provide your hair with the nourishment it needs to feel full, sleek and manageable. Our favorite perk about Muku Milk is that is make a great air-drying styler. See below for ways to use. 

How To Use Muku Milk

When we formulate our products here at Surf Soap (always in house, and always with the feedback and support of our customers and community) we want to ensure they can perform in many different situations. Even though we are named “Surf Soap” we want our name to mean more than just surfer girls and beach days. Our interpretation of the Surf is the ocean – the depths from which we all originated and still find our way back to in some way or another. We make products that keep the oceans happy, and Muku is no different. 

Here are a few simple ways to incorporate this little bottle of moonlight:

• After a Cleanse & Condition: Shampoo with All-In-One and condition your hair (just the ends) with your favorite rinse off conditioner. Towel dry, then apply Muku Milk through ends and mid-shaft. Comb through with a wide tooth comb. 
• After this, you can either blow dry and style as usual
• Or, simply scrunch hair with your hands, apply some sea salt spray if you’d like, and allow to air-dry, applying Muku Milk to any frizzies once dry as needed. 

• As a Standalone conditioner: Shampoo with All-In-One. Rinse well. Towel dry hair and distribute through ends and mid shaft. Comb with a wide tooth comb and style as usual. 

• As a Styler: On towel dried hair, rub into palms and then scrunch hair to get smooth beach curls. Or distribute a small amount through dry hair to tame ends and flyaways.

 

 

What’s With The Bottle?

You might notice when perusing the Muku Milk product page that our bottle comes with an aluminum lid.

We had our bottles designed with a universal thread pattern to encourage you to look around your bathroom, kitchen, that junk drawer we all seem to have… and find an empty or almost empty spray bottle. Chances are, that sprayer is in perfectly good condition – and ripe for reuse!

Muku Milk is formulated to be pourable and sprayable, so that it is functional for any length and type of hair. Instead of adding to the pool of plastic by having new sprayers made – even if they were recycled plastic or “bioplastic” (check out our blog for why we don’t use bioplastics), it just didn’t make sense for us to add more into that already overflowing pool.

By encouraging you and providing an easy way to make the plastic items you do have stretch a little bit farther, we can all work to wards are more eco-friendly and sustainable future, without going insane. So, Muku has a recyclable cap, and the potential for a sprayer. Check out our Youtube channel for more information on why we made this decision.

Why We Created It

When we released our bestselling surf conditioner, Rehab Balm, we had no idea just how much support we would gain. Rehab Balm was created for extremely dry, salty, windblown hair and did the job. But some of you wanted something a little lighter for more daily use – so, after almost a year of research and development, Muku Milk is here and all of us here at the Surf Soap House hope you love it as much as we do. It’s become many of the Team’s daily go to leave in conditioner… surfers or otherwise.

Try out our newest addition to the lineup in our Post Surf Kit, or by itself in the Muku Milk Set. You can also add it into your custom kit builder.

We’d love to hear what you think over on IG @surf_soap, Facebook @surfsoapcompany, or on Google.

Mahalo and see ya out on the break!

-          Kayla