Washing Hair with Laundry Detergent: Genius Hack or Horrible Idea?

I love trying out frugal hacks and DIY beauty ideas. Not only because I hate spending money, but also because it makes me feel resourceful and empowered. But sometimes I just have to pass on some ideas. And washing my hair with laundry detergent is one of those ideas.

But can you use laundry detergent to wash your hair if you want to? Washing your hair with laundry detergent will clean your hair, but it also can be damaging to hair. It also exposes you to several risks including skin irritation, eye damage, and developing allergies to the ingredients in the detergent.

So technically, you can, but should you? I’d say no, but if you don’t believe me, read on to understand the full risks of using Tide or any other laundry detergent to wash your hair.

What Happens if You Put Laundry Detergent in your Hair?

If you put laundry detergent in your hair, it will clean your hair. And I mean really clean your hair.

The detergents in these products are great at grabbing hold of grease and oils so you can rinse then down the drain.

Despite this, it may not feel as clean to you because unlike shampoos, laundry detergents aren’t designed to create a lot of lather. Lather in shampoos and personal care soaps gives us a feeling that we are getting something cleaner, even if we really aren’t.

Damage to Your Hair

On top of not feeling as clean as you’d like, your hair will be a dry, tangled mess if you wash it with laundry detergent. This is because shampoo products typically add some ingredients that restore moisture to hair. Without that added moisture, the laundry detergent will leave your hair dry, weak, and vulnerable to damage.

In addition to this, many ingredients in laundry detergent are outright harmful to hair. Most detergents have enzymes that are designed to break down biological molecules. This helps get rid of food and oil stains, which is great when you are washing clothes. But these will also break down molecules in your hair.

Some laundry detergents also contain bisulfite. This chemical compound is known to disrupt the chemical bonds that hold the proteins in hair together. So putting this in your hair will leave your strands weaker.

There is a reason that you can’t use most laundry detergents on wool, it will break down the structure of it. If it can destroy wool, it can destroy your hair too.

And there are tons of anecdotal accounts online of just how damaging it can be. Many people report that their hair becomes thin, brittle, or dry. Some people have even reported hair falling out after just one wash with laundry detergent.

Here’s an example of a worst-case scenario I found on Yahoo! Answers:

I washed my hair with laundry detergent. Joyful Expressions to be exact. I read that it would fade my really dark out. I know it was stupid.. no need to tell me that. But now it falls out. It breaks off, is horribly dry no matter how many treatments of deep conditioning I gave it, and sometimes it falls out from the root. It seems like the more I wash it, the more falls out. What should I use as a natural shampoo? Because it seems like any shampoo makes it fall out now, cause of all the chemicals.
-User on Yahoo! Answers

But that’s just what will happen to your hair. If you are thinking of washing hair with laundry detergent, you should be more concerned with what may happen to your skin or eyes.

Damage to Your Health

Unlike shampoos, most laundry detergents aren’t intended to be exposed to your skin. So when they are formulated, companies aren’t as selective about what chemicals they use. After all, how often do you get laundry detergent on your hands when you are washing a load of laundry in a washing machine? Rarely, if at all. And you probably wash it off immediately.

And how often do you get laundry detergent near your eyes? If you’re like me, pretty much never. So as you can see, chemicals that may irritate skin or eyes can be used in laundry detergents without causing much harm to consumers. And many of these chemicals are used in laundry soaps.

Take Tide laundry soap for example. Safety information for the Original Tide formula states, “Wash hands thoroughly after handling. If on skin, rinse with plenty of water. If skin irritation occurs, get medical advice/attention.” It also states, “for sensitive skin or prolonged use, wear gloves.”

Even Tide Free and Gentle, which is a laundry detergent designed for sensitive skin, has similar warnings. The safety information for this product recommends that gloves be worn in occupational settings that use this product. This indicates that the chemicals in this product are known to cause a problem called sensitization. This means that if you are repeatedly exposed to it, you may develop an allergy or asthma.

So no matter the reasons, you are risking skin or health problems if you use laundry detergent as a shampoo.

Bar soap may be the one exception. These are typically designed to be exposed to skin often because people use them to hand wash clothing.

And it’s actually fairly common in some developing countries to use laundry soap for the hair or the body. Preppers and homesteaders sometimes do this as well. And most people don’t seem to have long term problems with this. However, you have to keep in mind that there have been no long term studies on this so there is no way to know for sure.

Many of these soaps are also made outside the U.S. and may not be regulated as well as U.S. products. So you may not know exactly what ingredients are in the products. I had a difficult time finding a third-party reference for the ingredients in Zote bar soap, for example. You have to take the company’s word as far as ingredients go, and I don’t typically trust companies to be fully transparent.

But to get an idea of the potential issues of using bar soap, I looked up the safety information for one of the few laundry bar soaps manufactured in the United States in recent years, the Purex Fels-Naptha Laundry Bar. The safety information for this product states that “repeated or prolonged exposure may cause irritation.” So it seems that even using bar laundry soap to wash hair could have health consequences as well.

So as you can see, washing your hair with laundry soap is not a good idea.

Laundry Detergent Hair Loss and Damage

If you’ve already used laundry detergent in your hair and now have damaged hair, there still may be some hope for you.

Two ways to address damaged hair from laundry detergent include coconut oil treatments and using a protein filler.

Coconut oil has a high affinity for hair proteins and can penetrate deep inside the hair shaft. In a 2002 study in India, coconut oil was found to reduce protein loss remarkably for both undamaged and damaged hair.

To get these effects, you need to massage coconut oil into your hair, thoroughly saturating the strands. Then cover your head in a plastic cap, towel, or wrap and leave the oil on overnight. The longer you leave it in, the better. Then gently wash your hair the next day. One treatment can help significantly, but for best results, repeat this daily for several days.

Another way to repair damaged hair is to use protein fillers. These products can restore hair porosity and repair damaged protein bonds. Although more expensive than coconut oil, they are still pretty affordable at around $10 per treatment. I recommend trying a product like Colorful Products Neutral Protein Filler and following the instructions that come with it.

If you are experiencing hair loss from washing your hair with laundry detergent, these two treatments may help as well. Repairing protein bonds will strengthen hairs, which will stop them from breaking off when grooming. However, if these fixes don’t stop the hair loss, it’s best to talk to your doctor as you may have developed a health condition or you may need prescription medications to stop further hair loss.

Can Laundry Detergent Remove Hair Dye?

Despite the potential negative effects, you may still be interested in washing your hair with laundry detergent because you’ve heard it can remove hair dye.

Before I go into that, I just want to say that I HIGHLY recommend that you try Color Oops Hair Color Remover to remove your hair dye. It’s fairly safe and really affordable. And it will work better than any homemade option because it’s been designed in a lab to do so.

With that said, can laundry detergent lighten hair?

In some cases, this may be possible, but the effects are going to be very minimal. First of all, it’s not going to work very well on permanent dye. With permanent dye, the color molecules become larger during the dyeing process and get trapped into the hair.

You have to go through a similar chemical process to break down those color molecules so they can slip out of the hair shaft and rinse down the drain again. Some molecules may still slip out, especially with red dye or if you didn’t dye your hair correctly to begin with.

But most of the time, those molecules are not going to budge, unless you use very specific chemical processes. And it’s very unlikely that laundry detergents will have all the right ingredients to create these chemical processes as they are pretty complex.

But what about semi-permanent and temporary dye? These typically just stain the outside of the hair shaft and are designed to wash out. For these, it’s very likely that laundry detergent can expedite the process, washing out more dye than the typical shampoo.

In fact, many laundry detergents contain bisulfite, a chemical compound known to lighten hair. But even so, this chemical doesn’t lighten hair very much and would likely require multiple washings which will expose you to many other toxic chemicals at the same time.

Laundry Detergent Hair Stripping

If you know the risks and are still intent on trying laundry detergent on hair to remove hair dye, you probably want to use a soap that contains sodium bisulfite, as this ingredient helps lighten hair. You can find a list of products that contain this chemical on the Consumer Product Information Database here.

If you look at that list, you will notice that there are many dishwashing detergents that also contain bisulfite. And if you look on Youtube, you will also find that many people have had some success removing semi-permanent hair dye with dishwashing soap.

So if you are gung ho on this approach to removing hair dye, I’d really think about trying a dishwashing detergent with bisulfite instead of laundry detergent. This is because dishwashing soaps are designed for handwashing and will generally be more gentle on the skin.

Washing Hair with Dish Soap to Remove Color

If you want to try washing your hair with dish soap to remove color, first keep in mind that you could potentially irritate your skin or eyes with this method.

If you are okay with that, then start by wetting your hair and then thoroughly saturate the hair with dish soap, massaging the soap into the strands well.

Many people online recommend leaving the soap in for several minutes to an hour. If you plan to keep it in your hair a while, you can put on a plastic cap or cover your head with a plastic grocery bag. Then cover with a towel.

Next, thoroughly rinse your hair in the shower or sink and wait for your hair to dry to see the results before trying to wash again. You want to assess how well it worked and if it damaged your hair before doing multiple washings.

After you’re done, you should make sure to moisturize really well and use a leave-in conditioner because this process will strip all the moisture from your hair.

For better results, you may also want to add dandruff shampoo or Vitamin C powder in addition to dish soap. I’ve seen this suggestion from several people online, including this youtuber:

Final Takeaways

Washing your hair with laundry detergent is generally a bad idea. It’s likely to damage your hair. And it is not good for your skin or eyes. If you want to try it out for stripping hair color, it might be okay to use once or twice. But you’re better off trying a dish soap with bisulfite instead. But keep in mind that you will risk damaging your skin, eyes, and hair if you use these products in your hair.

Overall, I’d recommend that you just go to a salon or try a drug store product that is known to remove hair color like Color Oops Hair Color Remover. These two options are safer and more likely to actually work.