What Colorado Summers Actually Do to Your Hair
Pictured above: even styled, the ends give it away. They have stopped reflecting light. This is what a Colorado summer leaves behind, before we treat and trim it.
You come in from an hour outside and there is a dry white line along your hairline. Your part is pink. Your ends feel gritty in a way they did not this morning, and you have not been near a pool all day. That is an ordinary Colorado summer afternoon, and what it is doing to your hair is not one thing. It is four, and none of them is the one people name first.
The sun is stronger here, but not because you are closer to it. Your own sweat dries into salt before it has a chance to drip. A day at the lake leaves a film you cannot brush through. And pool water turns blondes green, though not for the reason everyone blames. Underneath all four is the thing that makes every season here demanding: Colorado is a mood ring. One week it is a hundred degrees, the next there is snow that melts off by lunch, and hair takes on and gives up moisture with whatever the air is doing that day. A routine built for one kind of day stops working on the next.
We have already written the winter version of this. Summer is harsh differently. If you live here, the job is compensating for both.
The short version
- The sun is harsher here because there is less atmosphere above you to absorb it, not because you are closer to it. Lightened, blonde and red hair fades first.
- You sweat as much as anyone. It just dries onto you before it drips, and it leaves salt behind, on your skin and in your hair.
- Rinse after you sweat, then condition. Do not put dry shampoo over salt.
- Lake water leaves a gritty, itchy film. Do not fight it dry. Wet it, get conditioner through it, then detangle from the ends up.
- Pool green is copper, not chlorine. That one has its own post.
Is the sun really stronger in Colorado?
Yes, and the reason you have probably heard for it is wrong. People say it is because we are closer to the sun. The sun sits about 93 million miles away, and the mile of elevation you gain by standing in Broomfield rather than at sea level does not register against that. What actually changes is what sits between you and it. Air absorbs ultraviolet light on its way down, and up here there is less air overhead doing the absorbing. Same sun, thinner filter. That is the whole mechanism, and it is a better thing to know than the version everyone repeats, because it also explains why a cloudy day at altitude is still not a day off.
We deliberately do not publish a headline number for how much stronger it is. The industry has been quoting the real study in the wrong units for years, and we laid out what it actually says in why your scalp is so dry in Colorado. The honest summary for a summer afternoon is that the effect is real, it is not the number you have been told, and you should treat the sun here as a bigger deal than it was where you came from.
Does the sun give you free highlights?
No. It fades your hair. Those two things look the same for about a month. Sun takes pigment out of hair, and it does not care whether that pigment grew there or whether you paid for it in this chair. If you are blonde, red or lightened, your color is the first thing to go, and what is left reads warmer and duller than what you started with, not brighter. Toners and glosses are semipermanent by design, so they are always on their way out anyway. A Colorado summer just shortens the trip.
What actually helps with the sun
- A hat on the long days. It is the only thing that reliably keeps sun off your scalp and your part line, which is skin that never sees the sun the rest of the year. Everything else is a partial answer.
- Keep the lengths conditioned. Sun on hair that is already dried out does more than sun on hair that has something in it.
- Do not let wet hair dry in direct sun if you can help it. Wet hair is at its weakest.
- A gloss partway through the summer, instead of waiting until September to notice your color looks flat and asking for a bigger correction.
Why does my hair feel gritty after a hot day, even if I did not swim?
The belief is that Colorado is so dry you barely sweat. You sweat as much as you ever did. It just never gets the chance to run. Look at your shirt after a hot afternoon outside, or run a finger along your hairline. There is white salt dried onto you. In humid air, sweat sits on your skin and stays wet, which is the whole point of it. Here it flashes off almost as soon as it reaches the surface, and when water leaves that fast, everything dissolved in it stays behind. The same thing is happening at your hairline, at the nape of your neck, and under a hat, all afternoon. You just cannot see it in your hair the way you can see it on your skin.
The way I put it to clients is that we have just enough humidity to make it harsh. Dry enough that sweat evaporates before it drips and concentrates what it leaves behind. Not so dry that you stop sweating. That is also the honest answer to anyone who tells you Colorado has zero humidity. If it had none, this would not happen. There is enough moisture in the air to sweat freely and not enough to keep that sweat from drying onto you, and that combination is rougher on hair than either extreme would be on its own.
You already believe this about the ocean
Nobody argues about salt water. You come out of the sea and your hair is thick, matte, gritty and difficult to comb, and there is an entire product category built on exactly that effect. Sea salt sprays are sold because salt roughens the surface of the hair and gives it grip and texture. No one buys one for softness. A hot afternoon in Broomfield is a slower, quieter version of the same thing, except the salt is coming from you rather than from the water, it is happening several times a week all summer instead of once on vacation, and then you sleep on it.
What to do after you sweat
- Rinse. Plain water at the end of the day is enough most of the time, and it is the single highest value habit in this whole article.
- Condition after you rinse. Salt residue and dry summer air pull in the same direction, so put something back.
- Do not put dry shampoo over it. Dry shampoo is built for oil. It does nothing about salt, and it adds a second thing sitting on your roots on top of the first. Rinse first, then use it if you still want it.
- Wash properly after a heavy sweat day rather than stretching that wash out. This is the one place we will tell you to wash more rather than less. Our standing advice for a dry scalp is to wash less often, and a day of real sweating is the exception to it.
Why can't I brush my hair after a day at the lake?
You know this one if you have done it. You get out of the lake or the reservoir, your skin goes tight and itchy as it dries, and there is a fine film on you that feels almost like a thin layer of clay. Your hair has it too. It dries stiff, dull and matted together in sections, and when you try to run a brush through it in the car on the way home the brush stops dead an inch in. Air-drying does not fix it. Rinsing at the boat ramp barely touches it. Nothing improves until you get home and wash it out properly.
We are not going to tell you exactly what that film is made of. It varies from one body of water to the next and from one week of runoff to the next, and we would be guessing. What we can tell you is what it does and how to get it off without paying for it in breakage.
How to get it out
- Wet your hair with clean water before you get in, and run a little oil through the lengths. Hair that is already saturated takes on less of whatever is in the lake, the same trick that works before a pool.
- Rinse before it dries on you if there is anywhere at all to rinse.
- Do not fight it dry. Dragging a brush through a coated, tangled head of hair is where the actual damage happens, not in the water. Wet it fully, work conditioner through from mid-lengths to ends before any comb touches it, then detangle from the ends upward while there is still slip in the hair.
- If it still feels coated after a normal wash, a clarifying wash will usually finish the job. Follow it with conditioner, because clarifying leaves hair squeaky and summer hair does not need squeaky. A second wash does more than a stronger brush.
What about the pool?
Pool water gets its own post, because the thing everyone believes about it is wrong. Chlorine does not turn blonde hair green. Chlorine roughs up the outer layer of the hair, and copper in the water does the coloring once it can get in. The full explanation, what to do before you get in, and what to do if you are already seeing green are in why pool water turns blonde hair green.
What I recommend when summer has dried your hair out
Davines OI Shampoo and OI Conditioner, then OI Oil through the mid-lengths and ends. I use the oil two ways: on wet hair before it gets dried, and on dry hair to seal it and give it something between the hair and the day. It is what I reach for in the chair for hair that has gone dry, and it is the thing clients come back to rebuy.
What people tell us they notice is that the hair feels smoother and softer after a sweaty week, there is less frizz and static, and it holds up longer between washes. The oil helps hold moisture in and protects against dry air and heat. We carry the line at the salon, and there is more on it on our Davines page.
Why does it feel like my hair never gets a break here?
Because it does not. Hair is hygroscopic: it takes up water from the air around it and gives it back, so what it is carrying on any given day depends on the air it has been sitting in (Breakspear et al., International Journal of Cosmetic Science, 2022). Colorado's air does not hold still. Summer alone is sun overhead, salt from your own sweat, lake film and pool copper, and it can hand you all four in one weekend. Then it turns into winter, which is harsh in a completely different set of ways. Spring is the closest thing to a break, and it is a short one.
So the job is not to find the one product for Colorado. It is to make up, all year, for what the year is doing to your hair, and to change what you are doing as the season does. That is not a scare tactic. It is just what living here asks of you. The other half of the year is here: what Colorado winters actually do to your hair.
If you are new here, or your hair has stopped doing what it used to do, come see us. We talk through the plan before we start the service, so what we do fits your hair and how you actually spend a Colorado summer, and then we get to work.