Darker hair shows a greater difference in the contrast between light areas and dark areas. Thus, black or dark brown hair will generally appear more lustrous than lighter brown or blonde hair.

Notice that in many advertisements for hair products, a brunette or black-haired person is usually shown. This is because a big part of our perception of luster comes from contrast (the difference between the light areas and the dark areas). Since this contrast is more noticeable on darker hair, dark hair usually looks shinier than light-colored hair.

Shampoos and conditioners prep the surface of the hair for styling by cleansing away dirt and oil. Conditioners leave your hair feeling healthy, soft and smooth.

Most volumizing shampoos typically contain a harsh surfactant system to over-cleanse or “strip” each hair fiber. This causes the outer layer of the hair shaft, the cuticle, to lift up – thereby creating texture along the surface. End result? Your hair feels (and probably looks) like straw.

In order to mask this dry feel, a lot of volumizing conditioners contain materials that coat the hair surface, such as silicones. These ingredients make your shower experience fantastic, but by the end of the day your hair will likely end up with back where it started – flat on your head!

That’s why we’re so excited to bring you Full Shampoo and Conditioner this Fall! Our scientists invented a shampoo and conditioner system that provides the optimal care for flat hair and perfectly preps it for styling, especially with Full Thickening Cream!

Full Shampoo cleanses the hair gently with a sulfate-free, non-stripping surfactant blend. Full Conditioner contains a light blend of conditioning ingredients that won’t weigh your hair down but provide excellent detangling. Just what flat, lifeless hair needs. The result? Hair perfectly prepped for styling– or on its own,  hair that’s clean and healthy, with movement, body, bounce and shine.

The hair is white because it no longer contains melanin. Because the white hairs are surrounded by other strands that still have pigment, the hair appears gray—salt and pepper is a much more accurate term.

Second, gray is neither more coarse nor more wiry than pigmented hair. It appears that way because we see the white hair in contrast to the (many more) pigmented hairs around it. The pigmented hair would look coarser if there were only a few against a background of white hairs.

In general, proper hair care techniques are imperative no matter how old you are or what color your hair is. Some people find their hair thinning as they age in which case, Full Thickening Cream has been very successful for those with thin, fine strands. If you color your hair to hide the grays, then you might want to consider using the Living Proof Leave-In Conditioner to keep it as healthy as possible.

Now that you know the truth behind “gray” hair, what other hair myths would you like us to tackle?

When we think of microscopes and microscopy (the use of or investigation with a microscope), we are most familiar with “light microscopy”. Light microscopy views an object through a series of lenses that magnify the visible-light image. The result is a much closer view of an object than can be seen by the naked eye; however, the images we see are only 2-dimensional.

Living Proof scientists use an instrument to examine hair fibers called a scanning electron microscope or SEM. Electrons are shot down on the fiber and “deflected” onto a detector. These electrons are then converted into a high resolution, 3-dimensional image.

Since its development in the middle of the twentieth century, the SEM has been used to examine all different kinds of materials, from metal alloys to insects and cells. It’s most famously used in forensic science since it allows you to quickly analyze the elements that compose very small specimens and figure out the origin of many materials that are important in the chain of evidence.

The SEM has gone from places like crime scenes to cell analysis labs to the Living Proof lab — pretty cool, huh?

Humidity plays a far larger role in the appearance and behavior of hair than any other environmental factor. In fact, hair can absorb up to 40% of its weight from a humid environment!

Hair’s diameter swells nearly 25% when wet, yet its length hardly changes in water. This swelling causes the hair cuticles to expand and lift, creating frizz.

Finally, high humidity makes hair more likely to tangle, and much harder to comb. Hair is three times limper at high humidity, losing virtually all its stiffness when wet.

At a relative humidity of 30%, hair has a moisture content of approximately 6%. If the relative humidity increases to 70%, the moisture content in hair raises to nearly 14%. That’s a difference of 130%! In addition, when hair is damaged, and its porosity increased, its moisture content can approach 50%.

So if money is the root of all evil, then humidity is the root of all frizz. That’s why the humidity-blocking molecule found in our No Frizz products, PolyfluoroEster, is such a miracle-worker—it adheres tightly to the hair, which allows for long-lasting moisture resistance even in extreme humidity. In fact, repeat use after seems to improve the hair’s own ability to resist humidity change, and our product seems to keep working better!

PolyfluoroEster protecting hair from humidity

Awhile back, we wrote about how ultraviolet radiation can damage our hair just as badly as your skin. UV radiation is just one of the many things that can damage your hair. Here’s our list of the worst ways you can damage your hair:

1. Bleaching – Why is this #1? Bleaching the hair is the process of breaking down and dissolving melanin (the protein that gives hair its color) particles. It completely strips the hair of its original color and irreparably damages it. Hair will be more prone to breakage because of the weakened cortex and cuticle layers.
2. Chemical straightening – This includes relaxing your hair, straightening treatments, perms, etc. These processes rearrange the hair’s molecular structure and as a result, your hair becomes fragile, brittle, and extremely porous.
3. Bad Grooming Habits – Why does this come before coloring or heat styling? Mainly because it occurs on a daily basis and you don’t even realize that you’re doing it. Here are a few examples:
   • Excessive brushing/combing — especially when the hair is wet. We wrote about how Living Proof products take brushing and combing into account when developing their products but it’s good to remember that when your hair is wet, it is at its most fragile.
   • Not using a product before heat styling – your hair needs some sort of protection from heat appliances, especially when it’s wet.
   • Using damaging styling tools – make sure to use a wide-toothed comb or a brush with natural fibers so you don’t cause split ends and breakage.
4. Coloring –The use of chemicals to remove, replace, and/or cover up pigments naturally found inside the hair shaft will leave hair dry, dull, brittle and weak. Going to a lighter shade is even more damaging since you have to bleach your hair first to remove the original color and then deposit the new color.
5. Heat Styling – Heat styling your hair once in awhile isn’t too bad but blow drying or flat ironing your hair on a daily basis will make it lose its elasticity and more prone to breakage. It’s better to heat style your hair after you’ve let it air dry a bit.

A hair fiber is built much like a tree, with a layered outside and a fibrous inside. An average hair can support more than 3 ounces of weight before it breaks. Not impressed? Think about it this way: 3 ounces is over 100,000 times the weight of that hair fiber. If you braided a whole head of hair into a rope, it could support ten tons of weight. That’s approximately the weight of four Hummers!

If your hair is healthy, it will pull out of the scalp more easily than it will break. If you notice your hair breaking very easily, it’s a sign that your hair may not be as strong as it should be. Try and cut back on chemically processing your hair or over styling with heat tools like flat irons. And of course, take good care of your hair starting with a gentle, conditioning Shampoo, Conditioner and Leave-in Conditioner– check out our No Frizz line here!

To answer this, we’ll first have to look at the basic structure of the hair. Looking at the cross section of a hair fiber, there are three major parts from outside to inside:

1. The Cuticle is the outermost layer and it consists of overlapping cells (scales).  To visualize how it looks, think of shingles on a roof. The cuticle has a protective function and is responsible for hair’s luster and texture.
2. The cortex makes up the bulk of the fiber and it provides color, mechanical strength and elasticity.
3. The innermost layer is the medulla but this doesn’t play a part in hair cosmetics.

Lastly, there is a Cell Membrane Complex that surrounds the fiber and glues or binds all the cells together.

In healthy hair, the cuticle is smooth, unbroken and lies flat along the hair shaft appearing shiny & smooth.  When exposed to UV radiation, the cuticle is weakened so it chips and breaks more easily, leading to less shine, greater roughness and a tendency to tangle.

What else gets affected? Just within the cortex, the disulfide bonds (gives hair its strength) and the pigment granules. The degradation of the pigment granules is why you’ll notice your hair color fading in the summer. The Cell Membrane Complex lipids are also affected, and their degradation leads to dull, brittle, and weakened hair.

Stay tuned to find out how to keep your hair healthy in these sunny, summer months!

UPDATE: Part II is now available here!

An important test that we conduct on many products to meet our high standards is a combing force study. Using a very sensitive machine we have in our lab, we can measure the amount of force required to comb through a sample of hair.

What does this mean for you as a consumer?

Combing and brushing are two ways we regularly damage our hair every day- these simple acts can create friction between the hairs, forcing them to rub up against each other or the tools we use.

This can damage the protective outer layer of the hair, called the cuticle. Lifted or removed cuticles cause our hair to look and feel brittle and dull and create more friction between each strand, thus making it even harder to comb or brush through.

Certain ingredients in shampoos and conditioners reduce this amount of friction and stop this dreaded cycle. The combing force study shows us which ingredients we can blend to create a the ideal formulation- one which measures the lowest amount of frictional force and won’t weigh down your style, the perfect combination for beautiful results!

Most people would not associate the word “flexible” with hairspray. Instead, they think of words like “stiff” and “brittle”— not exactly the words you want associated with your hairstyle. The scientists at Living Proof looked to develop a solution that would keep hairstyles intact without sacrificing on look and feel. The result? Hold Flexible Hairspray.

Hold Flexible Hairspray’s formula features a unique blend of polymers that form a flexible web that holds strands together without freezing them into place. The web is what keeps your hairstyle the way you styled it but without the stiffness, brittleness or flaking.

You can even layer as much hairspray as you want (depending on how much hold you want–the more hairspray, the stronger the hold) and it won’t flake or get stiff!

As a result, your hairstyle will stay in place but maintain its natural look and feel so that no one will be able to tell you use hairspray – not even you!