I use a lot of conditioner and so far I haven’t found the best one to make my wavy hair easier to handle and more curly. So I want to make my own recipe. Apparently it’s really easy to make, with only a couple of ingredients: water, oil, an emulsifier, and a preservative.
The emulsifier
I found two very similar recipes using BTMS as the main ingredient over at Humblebee & Me and The Things We’ll Make. BTMS is a lightweight, plant-based cationic emulsifier that is apparently a really good detangler and hair conditioner.
BTMS-25 and BTMS-50 are roughly the same price, but the latter is twice the BTMS concentration of the former, although with less of the stabilising additives blended in. I want a thin, lightweight conditioner that doesn’t weigh my hair down much, so maybe using less of the more concentrated BTMS is the best option for me.
For leave-in conditioner, about 3% BTMS-25 seems to work fine, so maybe I’ll try 1.5% BTMS-50. The TTWM recipe is 5% BTMS-25 and the Humblebee one is 4% BTMS-25 but those are not specifically leave-in, for which they recommend a lower strength. Humblebee does have a 1% BTMC leave-in conditioner recipe, and that is about twice as strong as BTMS-50. I could try the BTMC instead, but it’s harder to get and I’d have to get cetearyl alcohol too.
The oil
I’m looking for a lighter oil, this rules out things like shea & coconut butter. Also, I’m not really looking for a coating oil that makes my hair shiny – what I’m looking for is a penetrating oil. The following I think are light penetrating oils judging by this site:
- Sunflower oil
- Grapeseed oil
- Almond oil
- Argan oil
Grapeseed is the lightest oil and sunflower is by far the most penetrating out of these. The other two contain vitamins, almond oil also containts proteins, and none of these should leave greasy residue on fine hair.
TTWM uses a 1:1 oil-to-BTMS-25 ratio (5% oil), Humblebee uses a 2:1 ratio (8% oil). If I indeed go for 1.5% BTMS-50, I guess I could start with 3% oil. I could also try the Humblebee formulation without oil first.
The preservative
I need to do more research but it looks like 1% Geoguard would work. Interestingly it is the most expensive ingredient at around half of the total formulation cost.
Other ingredients
- Film forming humectants, plant gels
- Panthenol – expensive but good idea, 0.5%?
- HEC for enhancing slip? Should be 0.5-2%
- Carrageenan
- Aloe vera
- Film forming humectants, hyrolysed protein – I’ll try without first
- Glycerin