Everything I Learned After Switching To Natural Beauty Products

Brought to you by Sukin

It’s what we leave out that makes us special.

Everyone who grew up in the 2000s had some truly cursed ideas about hair and beauty.

Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie were our style icons. The ideal skincare regime involved gels and scrubs that smelled like chemicals and looked like they were full of actual gravel. The ideal hair was impossibly silky and dead-straight — except for one large pouf that sat above our foreheads like a bloated jellyfish.

The style stuff was easy to shake. We all agreed to never speak of cargo pants or Von Dutch trucker hats ever again. But the beauty ideas were weirdly stubborn. It was only a few years ago that I learned how to properly moisturise my face and embrace my natural curls.

Recently I went one step further: I switched to all-natural products.

There are good reasons to switch

Natural beauty products have had a meteoric rise over the past few years, as more and more people reject synthetic ingredients like parabens, sulphates and silicones.

These things have always got the job done, but they have big drawbacks, too. Sulphates, for instance, effectively strip away dirt and impurities, but they can also strip away the healthy natural oils in your skin and hair. Silicones coat your hair to create that impossibly silky effect, but they can also make your hair heavy, limp and weak.

I’ve always been in a vicious cycle with these products. I used harsh cleansers to treat acne, which would send my skin’s oil production into overdrive… creating more acne. The same kind of thing would happen with my hair. Suddenly I’m stuck washing it every single day to avoid it getting too oily at the roots. This is why I went for a full detox.

The benefits of natural ingredients

Sukin makes products that are totally free of synthetic ingredients, so I hit up the whole range: cleanser, toner, moisturiser, eye serum, facial scrub, hydrating mask, shampoo, conditioner, scalp scrub and leave-in conditioner.

Its skincare is packed with natural goodies like rosehip oil, aloe vera and cocoa butter; and the haircare is full of things like baobab oil, rice protein and pineapple and papaya extracts. This means a) you can actually identify all the ingredients on the label, b) it’s all greywater safe, c) it smells very, very good. The hydrating mask is like a thick mango smoothie.

I heard that the initial changeover period can be tricky — particularly with natural hair care. Without the synthetic ingredients, your hair might not foam up as much in the shower or feel quite as silky when freshly washed. But I barely noticed a difference on those fronts. For me, the real differences came later on.

Change takes time

Making the switch to all-natural products doesn’t get results overnight. Sukin has a #10WashChallenge for that reason: your skin and hair need time to readjust to life without the usual synthetic ingredients.

You probably won’t notice the changes day by day, but once you flip through your phone’s camera roll it becomes pretty clear. These pics were taken six weeks apart:

Look at that glow! That volume! Those curls! I found that my hair was a lot lighter and stayed clean for longer, too. It was actually the perfect thing to break me out of the annoying wash cycle. That alone is enough reason for me to stick with it tbh.

After two decades of annoying and punishing beauty routines, the easy option looks pretty damn good.

—

Ready to make the switch to natural haircare? Head to Sukin’s website to explore their range, so you can start having good hair days naturally!