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Conditioners: A Comparison?
I’m seeking a understanding of conditioners as they relate to hair “repair”.
* *monium chloride
* quaternium-**
* polyquaternium-**
* silicone quaternium-**
* silicone polyquaternium-**
Which conditioner(s) are your favorite to date?
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4 Replies
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I havent experimented with the quats or anything other than BTMS 25 and fatty alcohols. That simple combination works well. In terms of repairing hair there’s so many ingredients that work in conditioners. Technically they all rinse off but when I made the exact same formula without the ‘actives’ it was trash. I didn’t use it long enough to see if the repairing function was similar so I can’t say anything for sure. I especially love keratin but I’m not sure what the scientists would say. So many things on the market are just for claims and not much else. What are you trying to make? Is it leave in, rinse off, bar? Liquid or solid?
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Based on my experience, BTMS 50 is the best cationic surfactant for rinse-off products. It has excellent conditioning power and gives hair an amazing texture ( in my opinion if you blend BTMS 50 with cetrimonium chloride the conditioning effect will be the best there is) For leave-in products, I would recommend using Dehyquart C4046, which is a blend of fatty alcohols, ethoxylated alcohol, and Dipalmitoylethyl Hydroxyethylmonium Methosulfate. This ingredient doesn’t weigh down straight hair and provides enough conditioning for curly hair.
In terms of polyquaterniums, my favorite is Polyquaternium-37. It’s a bit tricky to hydrate, but it’s definitely worth using. Polyquaternium-10 is good for leaving a soft feel, and Polyquaternium-7 is useful for delivering the positive charge needed to reduce frizz.
Cationic surfactants and polymers are great for neutralizing the negative charge the hair gets after shampooing, they help reduce frizz, static, and make detangling easier. However, they don’t actually repair the hair. For that, you need targeted actives like proteins, peptides, oils, and botanical extracts, which are the ones that can really help restore and repair damaged hair.
Hope this is of some help to you!!
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Peptides, proteins, botanical extracts, and oils do NOT repair hair. They’re marketing ingredients—there’s no solid science behind them. The studies that do exist are limited and often biased. Hair damage is not reversible. What we can do is use cationic emulsifiers, polymers, and silicones to mask the damage, improving the hair’s appearance by adding shine, softness, and elasticity.
The term “bond-builder” is just marketing hype—those products work in a similar fashion to a basic conditioner. Products like Olaplex and K18 are selling dreams. If they truly repaired hair, you wouldn’t need to keep using them weekly or monthly; one application would be enough—at least until the hair was damaged again. Botanical extracts are useless, very few of them actually do something with a ridiculous price point. They’re used to give the product the illusion of being safer and better and often used at 0.01% - 0.1%.
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While I understand your skepticism, I’d like to respectfully clarify my point. You’re absolutely right that hair is biologically “dead” once it emerges from the scalp and that we can’t truly reverse damage the way we might heal skin. However, there is evidence that certain peptides and hydrolyzed proteins can interact with the hair fiber in meaningful ways. For example, low molecular weight hydrolyzed proteins (like hydrolyzed keratin or wheat protein) can penetrate the hair shaft and temporarily reinforce its structure by filling in gaps in the cuticle or cortex, improving tensile strength and elasticity. Peptides, (particularly those designed to mimic natural keratin sequences), can bond to damaged areas through electrostatic interactions and help improve the mechanical properties of hair. These aren’t just marketing terms (even though they are most likely used for that haha), they’re backed by structure-activity relationship studies and measurable outcomes like reduced breakage and enhanced combability. I agree that oils and botanical extracts may not “repair” in the strictest sense (especially on the hair shaft), but they can certainly support scalp health and moisture retention. In the end, while it’s true that we can’t permanently fix damaged hair, not all conditioning or reparative claims are baseless, some of these actives do provide real structural support.
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