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Hair product flaking.
Hello everyone, if you’re reading my post I appreciate you taking the time to help me out.
I started formulating my own water soluble hair pomade that ends up being more like a gel everytime. Therfore I said the hell with it, I’ll just market it as a gel-pomade because it’s a cross between the 2. Now I’m running into the problem of my hair product producing white flakes. When I apply it, all is great but after a couple of hours I begin to notice white flakes in my hair that goes away once I apply some water to my hair. How do I make a product that won’t flake? The list of my ingredients are;
Water
Ceteareth 25
PVP k90
Propylene Glycol
Castor oil
Glycerin
Phenoxyethanol
ParaBen
ParfumShould I add something or deduct?
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9 Replies
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The relative proportions of the ingredients would be a help.
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Water. 58%
Ceteareth-25. 22%
PVPK90. 7%
Propylene Glycol. 5%
Castor oil. 5%
Glycerin. 1%
Phenoxyethanol. 0.5
ParaBen. 0.5
Parfum. 1% -
At a first glance, I suggest the PVPK90 is at least partially responsible for the flaking.
Try reducing it or possibly substituting with PVPK30 - or both.
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You might look into something that will plasticize the PVP a bit.
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@Bobzchemist what do you think about adding cyclo-dimethicone?
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Adding something volatile won’t help at all - it might even make the problem worse.
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You could try a small amount of IPM or Finsolv TN (C12-15 Alkyl Benzoate) and/or look at this thread:
https://chemistscorner.com/cosmeticsciencetalk/discussion/1770/hair-styling-gel
If you’re going to market more than this one product, you really should look into how to do your own research - not being able to use Google puts you at a severe handicap these days.
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Holy crap, that is a lot of PVP K-90! That is your sole problem here, both with the flaky ppt and with the lack of gel firmness in the end product. Lower that to 2% or less and you should not see flaking, plus you should have a firm w/s pomade. Even better, use PVP K-30 as johnb suggests.
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@chemicalmatt thank you for your advice! I will try that tomorrow! I brought it down to 3% yesterday and saw a significant reduction in flaking. Hopefully bringing down to 1% will do the trick.
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