Best shampoo bars: The best natural and organic solid shampoo soap bars for your hair
With new arrivals and sales of traditional soaps soaring, it seems we’ve rekindled our love for chunky solid bars that offer the kind of old school reassurance we need in uncertain times.
It’s a trend that’s also moving north of body and face, as shampoo bars have a nascent moment too, gaining ground with shoppers focused on products natural credentials and high performance results.
Although still a comparatively niche beauty category, solid shampoo ics hitting the beauty zeitgeist on many levels.
Skincare benefits are key, with formulas mostly free of chemicals like sodium laurel sulphate that make liquid shampoos lather up, ensuring they are more gentle on hair and scalp, while a lack of packaging – many come wrapped in paper – also means less landfill waste giving them green credentials too.
A compact size and lightness reduces the carbon footprints so they take up less transportation space than clunky bottles, plus some can be used on the body too making bars even more cost and eco-effective. Another major step forward are the sophisticated formulas – regionally produced artisan blends of high quality ingredients and sophisticated scents that take them to a new level of luxury at a purse-friendly price.
Davines Solid Shampoo Bar LOVE Smoothing
Leave it to the experts to reform its cult shampoo into an eco-friendly solid product. There are bars for each haircare concern where the LOVE is for coarse or frizzy, VOLU is for fine or limp, MOMO is for dry or dehydrated and DEDE is the more versatile all-rounder. The formulas are high-performance to deliver that sought-after shine.
Intensive Repair Solid Shampoo
Putting an eco-conscious twist on your haircare practices, L’Occitane has formulated this shampoo bar from almost entirely (99 per cent) readily biodegradable ingredients, while also being free from plastic and all the packaging is recycled and recyclable. For those with dry, brittle and damaged hair, this one’s for you to fortify your tresses and protect against future damage.
Friendly Shampoo Bar: Lavender & Geranium
Friendly Soap have been creating 100 per cent natural, ethically and environmentally-minded soap bars since 2008. The handmade, biodegradable formulas eschew foaming agents and preservatives, instead using naturally lathering ingredients to ensure they feel silky and rich. Packed with essential oils, herbs and spices that will leave your bathroom smelling sublime. The packaging is both recycled and recyclable — an all around achievement.
Blended to be multi-tasking on hair, body and hands, try Lavender & Geranium for soothing, relaxing benefits boosted by the essential oils, while castor oil ensures an intensely creamy and conditioning cleanse for hair and scalp.
Lush Shampoo Bar: Montalbano
Montalbano is a mega-dose of lemon. Sicilian and lemon myrtle oils, lemon peel and fresh lemon juice give hair a super-deep clean as well as enhancing a glossy, lustrous finish. Green olives add strength while rosemary creates a calming, soothing balance to the invigorating, uplifting citrus scent.
The beauty label offer an extensive selection with a whole host of different scents and ingredients, including the Seanik with seaweed, sea salt and lemon. Yum.
Foamie Shampoo Bar: Floral Flair for Damaged Hair
Foamie shampoo bars are vegan, not tested on animals and free from parabens and silicones. They have also been carefully formulated to have a neutral pH and are ultra-gentle on the hair and scalp.
They last around 25 washes and the smart mesh sachet they come in helps boost lathering capabilities while the logo embossed onto the bar adds a lovely massaging effect. The ribbon on the bag also means they can be hung up to dry, avoiding any leftover lather making a sludgy mess.
Floral Fair is ideal for brittle, breaking hair as it nourishes, strengthens and bumps up shine with natural ingredients including nettle extract, as jasmine and patchouli to leave behind a subtle, pretty scent.
Christophe Robin Hydrating Shampoo Bar with Aloe Vera
Handmade using a traditional cold production process – and in line with his ethos of using ancestral recipes for his haircare products – Robin’s shampoo bar is a fantastic multi-tasker.
Packaged in an eco-savvy cardboard box, the vegan soap is packed with nourishing natural glycerine and castor oil as well as soothing aloe vera. We found it cleansed our skin as well as hair without leaving either feeling dried out. It's also so rich in nutrients and vitamins that our hair felt healthier almost immediately.
Expect a smooth, tangle-free finish to your locks with this one.
The Natural Soap Company Nettle & Rosemary Shampoo Bar
Everything from this Norfolk-based company, including a capsule collection of shampoo bars, is produced by hand and with the environment in mind. Even the postal packaging is recyclable. Formulas are gentle but wonderfully rich in natural oils, including avocado, almond and cocoa, as well as softening shea butter for soft, smooth and hydrated hair.
The Nettle & Rosemary shampoo bar is made from a ‘tea’ of nettle leaves and rosemary leaves which are steeped in hot water before being cooled down and infused into the shampoo formula before being made into a soap bar. It’s lightweight, won’t weigh hair down and leaves you with a lustrous finish.
Bain & Savon Shampoo Bar: Zesty Orange
Artisan producers of bath and body soaps and skincare since 2002, this Cumbrian company handmake everything themselves with botanical ingredients which they often grow and infuse on site. In fact the colour of each shampoo bar comes naturally from the herbs and plants packed into each one.
Free from SLS, preservatives and plastic packaging, they last up to three months. The Zesty Orange bar is a blend of nourishing oils including coconut, sweet almond and olive, plus shea butter, while the uplifting, pep-in-your-step scent and cleansing power come from essential oils of orange peel, lemongrass and grapefruit.
Primal Suds Head Cave Shampoo in Mop Top
Natural, affordable and with healthy dose of quirky attitude perfectly sums up Primal Suds. Based around age-old ingredients including clay, charcoal and essential oils, the company was born of a need for synthetic-free cleansers at a good price by one of the founders who was suffering from psoriasis. Having built up the business on Instagram, the company is proud of their plastic-free approach and zero waste policy. Of the four –strong capsule collection, Head Cave Mop Top is best suited to balanced, normal hair. As well as detangling coconut and hydrating hemp oil, there’s a fruity juniper scent that’s a perfect pick-me-up.
Verdict:
While all the shampoo bars were wonderfully effective, the Lush shampoo bar smells amazing and is the perfect pick-me-up for slow mornings. Christophe Robin Hydrating Shampoo Baris the best for parched locks and colour treated hair. But the lavender and geranium aroma of the Friendly Shampoo bar has an added calming effect that nudges it just ahead of the rest.
Pro tips:
These clever little bars are also more versatile than you might expect. "You can control the amount of surfactant you use,” explains Dan Campbell, Product Inventor at Lush. “So if you want something cleansing, you use more of the shampoo bar and if want something milder you use less.”
It’s finding the right balance of how much you use (start with a little then add more to avoid overdoing it and leaving residue behind) that’s the key to success, combined with a strategic approach to application.
"This solid formula, free from synthetic agents and with very little water, is a completely new experience for your hair so it'll take some getting used to,” advises world-renowned hair colourist Christophe Robin.
Either rub straight on from root to tip a few times or lather up between your hands first, then massage shampoo into the scalp and through the lengths. Don’t expect the kind of suds you get from regular shampoo though, as anyone who’s used an SLS-free liquid version will know. You’ll need to rinse thoroughly too to avoid any soapy residue being left behind. It takes time for hair (and new users) to adjust, so be patient while traces of built-up styling products and ingredients like silicone are banished.
“The adjustment period varies between users,” adds Christophe. “But once your hair has adapted to this new formula, it's easy to fall in love!"
