Sea Salt Spray: Your Tool to Beachy Hair

A how-to for wavy, textured hair

Written by Salvatore Marashi

For those of us lucky enough to live by the beach, you know that your hair somehow looks better after a day in the water. For everyone who can’t just cruise down to the beach, let me introduce the hair product for you, sea salt spray. Sea salt spray adds things like sea salt (duh), kelp, and coconut water to bring texture and volume to hair without the heavy chemicals of their counterparts. So even if you can’t get to the beach every day, we’ve found the best sprays to make you feel like you got your morning surf sesh in.

How to Use

Now that you know what it is, let’s teach you how to use it.

Step 1

Get things started with a clean head of hair. Sea salt spray can be applied on damp or dry hair. Just give your hair a few minutes to dry when you get out of the shower and you’re good to go.

Step 2

Shake vigorously to combine the salts, clay, water and any other ingredients that may have separated. Then spray equally over hair. Ten to twenty sprays should do the trick.

Step 3

This is where your styling skills come into play. Blow dry your hair for extra volume and control or use your hands to create waves and layers. To strengthen the look, take a small amount of product and work it through (preferably a clay or paste). You’ll be left with a laid-back look that will hold up all day long.

What Hair Styles to Use it With

Sea salt spray is an extremely versatile product. If you want to keep things simple, a few sprays will give you everything you want. If you’re trying to pull off something a bit more complicated, you can think of sea salt sprays as a pre-styler. This makes it great for adding definition to hairstyles like faux hawks, Caesar cuts, and quiffs. Ask your barber if they have any on hand and they can show you which looks will work best with it.

Bumble and Bumble Surf Spray

Combining all the good stuff from the beach like seaweed extracts and quality salts, Bumble and Bumble skips the junk and provides the texture. Better yet, their ingredients promote healthy hair so it might be even better than actually heading to the beach.

Sun Bum Sea Spray

Made with Hawaiian black lava salt and other good stuff, Sun bum provides the volume while being the cheapest product on the list. For guys with frizzy or curly hair, this one is for you. The spray is specially designed to keep strands separated, thus preventing any unwanted clumping.

Not Your Mother’s Beach Babe Texturizing Spray

Guys, you can be babes too. Their blend of kelp and dead sea salt gives the same lightness associated with the Dead Sea itself. Spray liberally to create touchable waves and texture.

Adding Sea Salt Spray Into Your Routine

Sea salt spray is a great and underused styling product. Its gentle nature makes it perfect for fine, damaged or thinning hair. It’s also just fun and easy to use, making it perfect when you don’t want to fuss with styling your hair. Grab yourself a bottle and enjoy all the wavy hair that you’ve been missing.

We love to hear from the Gentle Manual community, share your hair styling secrets below!

Salvatore Marashi

SOURCE: THE GENTLEMANUAL