Improving Shampoo Texture and Hair Feel

You are making shampoo using distilled water and a soap base, and finding it too viscous and leaving hair feeling sticky. To improve the texture and make your hair soft and smooth, you can add conditioning agents to your formula. These ingredients help to reduce friction, improve wet and dry combability, and leave a soft feel on the hair.

Here are some safe and effective conditioning agents you can consider adding to your shampoo:

• Silicone Hi-Cond: This is a liquid silicone that easily mixes with water. It is excellent for conditioning shampoos, helping to make hair soft, smooth, and preventing tangling. It provides a good coating on the hair.
• Clear-Cond™ (Quaternium-80): A highly effective conditioning agent that dissolves directly in water, allowing for clear formulations. It provides good conditioning performance, making hair soft and smooth.
• Cola-Cond™ (Cocamidopropyl PG-dimonium chloride phosphate): This ingredient acts as a hair and skin conditioner. It helps to soften hair in shampoo formulas and provides long-lasting conditioning benefits.
• Poly-Conditioner 28 (Polyquaternium-28): This water-soluble polymer enhances conditioning and manageability. It improves wet combability and leaves hair feeling soft without significant build-up.
• Hair-Cond™ Silk PMF: A lightweight silicone microemulsion designed for conditioning in rinse-off products like shampoo. It significantly reduces tangling and improves combability, leaving a silky soft feel without weighing hair down.

Adding one or a combination of these conditioning agents to your shampoo formula can help address the issues of high viscosity feel and lack of softness, resulting in a more pleasant texture and smoother, softer hair after washing. While these ingredients primarily improve hair feel and manageability, they can help reduce the perceived drag or stickiness associated with a highly viscous shampoo base.