Latest / The Pixie Garden Hair Podcast / Does Hairspray Have Alcohol In It? | The Pixie Garden Hair Podcast Ep. 25

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Does Hairspray Have Alcohol In It? | The Pixie Garden Hair Podcast Ep. 25 · The Pixie Garden Hair Podcast

• 0:00
  [Intro music]
• 0:21
  Jess: Welcome back to The Pixie Garden Hair Podcast. I'm Jess with Delena Markland. Delena, quick one that a lot of people type into a search bar and never get a straight answer to. Does hairspray have alcohol in it?
• 0:34
  Delena: Yes, most of it does, and that is exactly why the Hair Finishing Stick exists in my chair. Almost every aerosol hairspray on the shelf uses alcohol as the carrier. It is usually the second ingredient after the propellant. It is there on purpose, because alcohol evaporates fast, and fast evaporation is what makes the spray dry on contact instead of dripping down your neck.
• 0:58
  Jess: So it's not a filler. It's doing a job.
• 1:01
  Delena: It is doing a real job. The hold in a hairspray comes from polymers, little film-forming resins. The alcohol dissolves those polymers so they can be sprayed, and then it flashes off and leaves the polymer film behind on the hair. Water would do the same thing but it takes minutes to dry instead of seconds. So the alcohol is the trade-off the industry made for speed.
• 1:23
  Jess: And what is that trade-off costing my hair?
• 1:26
  Delena: Moisture, over time. Alcohol evaporating off the hair takes water with it. One spray on one night, nothing. Daily, for years, especially on hair that is already fine, dry, color-treated, or curly, it adds up. What I see in my chair is a specific pattern: ends that feel crunchy and brittle, a dull look, and hair that snaps when you brush through it in the morning. People blame their shampoo. It is the hairspray they have been using every single day for a decade.
• 1:56
  Jess: Is that why you moved to a stick?
• 1:59
  Delena: It is why I stopped reaching for the can for the things I actually use hold for most days. When I looked at what I sprayed hairspray on ninety percent of the time, it was not the whole head. It was the part, the hairline, the flyaways, the baby hairs, the two pieces that will not lie down. Blasting the whole head with alcohol to fix two inches of hair is a bad deal. The finishing stick is a water-based gel in a wand. You touch it exactly where you need it and nowhere else.
• 2:27
  Jess: Water-based. So no alcohol at all?
• 2:30
  Delena: None. The hold comes from the same kind of flexible polymers, but they are carried in water with glycerin and panthenol in there, which are conditioning, not drying. It is vegan, there is nothing animal-derived in it. And it is a gel, not a wax, which matters because a wax sits on top and feels greasy, while a gel sets and then you cannot feel it. I selected it for my own clients because it did what I needed without the thing I was trying to avoid.
• 3:02
  Jess: Now the honest part. Is there anything the stick can't do that the spray can?
• 3:06
  Delena: Yes, and I will say it plainly. The stick is not an all-over hold product. If you have built an updo for a wedding, or a full set of curls that need to survive eight hours, you need a spray, because you need a film over the entire style. That is what a hairspray is for. My rule is spray last and spray light, from a distance, so the style sets and you are not soaking the hair. Everything before that last step, the smoothing, the edges, the part, the touch-ups during the day, that is the stick. Most people can cut their hairspray use to almost nothing and not lose a thing.
• 3:46
  Jess: Is there a way to tell if a hairspray is alcohol-free?
• 3:49
  Delena: Read the ingredients, not the front of the can. Front of the can says things like "hydrating" and "nourishing" while the back says alcohol denat second in the list. You are looking for alcohol denat, SD alcohol, ethanol, or isopropyl alcohol. If one of those is in the top three, it is an alcohol-based spray. The alcohol-free ones are usually pump sprays, not aerosols, because without alcohol you cannot get that instant-dry mist.
• 4:20
  Jess: Any technique tips for the stick itself?
• 4:23
  Delena: Smooth first, then set. I run the Smooth and Polish brush over the area to lay the hair in the direction I want, then the stick over the top of it, one pass. Brush, then stick. If you put the stick on and then brush, you just wipe it off. And a little goes further than people think. It is a wand, not a paintbrush.
• 4:44
  Jess: Where do people find it?
• 4:46
  Delena: thepixiegarden.com. The Hair Finishing Stick and the Smooth and Polish brush are both there. It is the one product I put on almost every head that leaves my chair.
• 4:55
  Jess: Linked on this episode's page with the full written guide. See you Monday.
• 5:00
  [Outro music]