04/15/2025
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***Are drugstore brand hair products really bad for my hair?
***Is my hairstylist just trying to push the salon hair products for money?
I’m sure everyone has asked themselves these 2 questions. Well, continue reading for clarity…
In December 2024, Alix Earle, the queen of TikTok, posted to her TikTok account rhetorically asking her 7.4 million followers why her hair felt softer than ever after using her “expired Pantene shampoo and conditioner” back home.
“Is it a myth that it was bad for you?” she wondered.
Since posting the viral video, hundreds of women started questioning their own routine, curious if their salon-grade products were worth the price tag.
With strong opinions on both sides of the debate, it’s hard to know if you’re actually making the right decisions for your hair. Are silicones good or bad? Do sulfates make my hair brittle? Is the money I’m spending on expensive salon products really doing anything to help my hair color or overall hair health?
Let’s talk about it.
To Drugstore Shampoo or Not To Drugstore Shampoo?
For starters, most of them use some pretty dirty words. Somewhere along the timeline of beauty bloggers and Ulta hauls, silicones and sulfates entered into commonplace vocabulary, and we decided that they were B-A-D. Despite being used in hair products since the 1970s, these little agents lost popularity in the 2010s as more consumers shifted to using “clean” beauty products. Even so, drugstore shelves remained stocked with bottles of cost-effective yet questionable ingredients.
Silicones are often used in low-end and SOME high-end products to lubricate your hair strands, giving hair a shinier appearance while making it easier to detangle and protecting it from possible heat damage. The biggest red flag with silicones is that they don’t rinse out easily—or at all. After enough use, silicones build up in the hair, preventing strands from receiving moisture and attracting environmental pollutants.
Sulfates and harsh surfactants, used for cleansing, are strong enough to remove this silicone build-up; however, they’re likely to increase the damage done to your hair. Dr. Anna Chacon, a board-certified dermatologist based out of Miami, Florida, says that “sulfates are known to strip natural oils from the hair and scalp, which can lead to dryness, irritation, and damage.”
In response to the clean beauty movement, beauty giants began marketing their products as silicone-free, sulfate-free, paraben-free, and the list goes on and on. Now, any saintly product is labeled with a laundry list of ingredients it's formulated without, assuring the buyer that there’s nothing to be afraid of.
So if most drugstore products no longer contain these scary ingredients, is it okay to use them?
It’s complicated.
Cosmetic scientist Erica Douglas told The Cut that a product’s formulation is far more important than whether or not it has silicones in it. If a shampoo or conditioner is made with ingredients that just don’t react well together, the product probably won’t deliver a very good result. If you start to feel like your Herbal Essence shampoo isn’t performing how it once did, hairstylist and trichologist Shab Caspara says that “cheaper” ingredients might not be to blame; it’s likely that the product simply wasn’t formulated well.
The truth is this: haircare is personal. The Pantene shampoo that works for Alix Earle might not work for you, and your Kevin Murphy shampoo might not work for her. Everyone’s hair has a different composition and, thus, different needs. Of course, I’m a little biased and will always encourage you to support your local hair salon by shopping their retail selection. That said, do what works for you, however, don’t be surprised with a price increase if your hair needs a treatment before any chemical service, such as color, highlights, Keratin, etc, to ensure appropriate development of the service.
A little side note, the salon brands found on the drugstore shevles are not the same as the ones found in the salon. We call those “diverted products”, meaning the store purchasd those brands from an unauthorized seller. Don’t believe me, look at the back of the bottle. You find it clearly reads, “Not valid unless sold in a salon”. Those bottles could have expired, which means the chemical compound is broken and will not perform as intended, or the bottles are filled with something other than its original content.
If you’ve never given salon-grade products an earnest shot, consider picking up a shampoo or two. The best thing you can do for your hair is get to know it!
