Less & Lavish

Comment GUIDE if you want me to teach you how to make your own natural haircare from scratch.

I’m currently building an interest list for my beginner-friendly Non-Chemist’s Guide to Formulation, and this is exactly the kind of thing I want to teach, not just how to copy a recipe, but how to understand why it makes sense.

If you’ve ever looked into natural hair growth remedies, there’s a good chance you’ve come across amla oil for hair or other forms of Ayurvedic haircare.

And honestly, this is one of those DIYs I actually really like.

A simple DIY scalp oil made with amla and a carrier oil can be a really approachable way to work with botanicals at home, especially because you don’t need fresh amla to do it.

You can make a homemade hair oil using dried amla or amla powder and infuse it into something like coconut, jojoba, or sweet almond oil.

That’s what I love about good DIY haircare, it doesn’t always need to be complicated.

Sometimes a simple botanical preparation makes perfect sense.

The important part is understanding what the ingredient is doing, how you’re using it, and whether the method actually makes sense for the type of product you’re making.

That’s also the direction I’m taking with my guide: beginner-friendly natural haircare formulation, explained in normal language so you can start understanding the “why” behind things like shampoo, conditioner, scalp oils, pH, preservation, and ingredient choice.

If you want me to create it, comment GUIDE and I’ll send you the link to join the interest list. 🥰🫶

Where are all the actually good DIY natural shampoo videos? 😂

I keep seeing homemade shampoo recipes that use Castile soap as the cleanser, or videos where herbs and botanical infusions get added to a premade shampoo and called “DIY formulation.”

And I think there’s a gap here.

A lot of people want to make their own natural shampoo, sulfate-free shampoo, clean haircare, and nontoxic hair products at home, but they also want those products to actually foam, rinse well, feel good on the hair, and perform like real haircare.

That’s where learning a little bit about natural surfactants, pH, preservation, thickeners, and conditioner formulation makes such a difference.

I love DIY and a good botanical hair oil, scalp treatment, herbal infusion, or homemade haircare recipe when the method actually makes sense.

I’d just love to see more DIY shampoo and conditioner formulas that move beyond the same old recipes and show people that natural haircare can still be well-formulated and effective.

So if you’ve seen a really good homemade shampoo, natural conditioner, or DIY haircare video lately, send it my way. I genuinely want more positive ones to review.

And if you’re interested in learning how natural haircare formulation actually works, follow Michelle Lavigne | Less & Lavish — I’m sharing a lot more of that here. 🤍

Hair growth home remedies are everywhere!!! Rosemary, onion, ginger, cloves, rice water, DIY hair growth shampoo, scalp oils… and I actually love looking into the research behind them.

But this is the part I think social media skips way too often:

It matters HOW an ingredient was used in the study.

Was it eaten?
Applied directly to the scalp?
Used every day?
Left on for hours?
Used at a specific concentration?
Tested for weeks or months?

That is very different from adding a little of the same ingredient to a shampoo, using it a couple times a week, and rinsing it off two minutes later.

An ingredient having research behind it does not automatically mean every DIY recipe containing that ingredient is backed by that same research.

And I think that distinction is really important, especially with hair growth claims.

I love botanical haircare, and I use plenty of herbs and plant oils myself. My Hair Growth Concentrate is actually a leave-on scalp treatment made with botanical oils and herbal ingredients because, for me, that format makes a lot more sense when I’m choosing ingredients for their potential scalp and hair benefits.

If you like natural hair growth remedies, DIY haircare, homemade shampoo, rosemary oil, scalp treatments, botanical haircare and ingredient science, follow Michelle Lavigne | Less & Lavish because this is exactly the kind of stuff I love researching.

And if you’d rather skip the DIY experiment, my Hair Growth Concentrate is available through Less & Lavish.

A good shampoo isn’t just about choosing the right surfactants.

You also have to think about viscosity. Basically, how thick or runny the shampoo is.

Some surfactants are naturally thick. Some are very thin.

But I don’t like relying on the surfactants alone to decide the final texture of my shampoo. I want to be able to control that.

That’s where a thickening system comes in.

One common way shampoos are thickened is with sodium chloride, which is just salt.

In many traditional surfactant systems, salt changes the way the surfactant molecules organize themselves in the water, and that can make the shampoo thicker.

But I use a lot of glucoside surfactants like decyl glucoside, coco glucoside, and lauryl glucoside.

Glucosides are non-ionic surfactants, which means they don’t carry the same electrical charge as many traditional shampoo surfactants.

Because of that, salt does not always thicken glucoside-heavy formulas very well or very predictably.

That sent me down another formulation rabbit hole into things like xanthan gum, HEC, Solagum AX, and guar.

And that’s one of the biggest things I’ve learned, it’s that you don’t choose a thickener by itself. You choose it based on the whole formula.

Because the thickener can affect:

* how the shampoo pours
* how easily it spreads
* how much it foams
* how it feels in your hands
* and whether it actually feels like a finished product

That’s why I don’t just ask, “Is this shampoo thick enough?”

I ask, “Does this texture actually work with the rest of the formula?”

Follow Michelle Lavigne | Less & Lavish for more natural shampoo formulation, DIY haircare, surfactants, thickeners, pH, preservation, and beginner-friendly formulation tips. 🤍

Turns out, three little stars can trigger a surprisingly large emotional response. 😂

When you’re a mom building a small business from the ground up, feedback can feel incredibly personal.

But owning a small haircare business also means accepting that no product will be perfect for every person, hair type or scalp. Honest feedback is part of growing and I’m not going to delete a review simply because it isn’t five stars.

My formerly perfect rating is now 4.92, which honestly I’m okay with. So I’ll take what I can learn from it, appreciate the many beautiful reviews my customers have shared and keep building. Thank you!!

Small-business owners: did your first less-than-perfect review send you into a brief emotional spiral too? 😂