How to Fix Oily Scalp and Hair (Without Dehydrating It, Too)
With oily scalps, you want to find balance without overcorrecting. Here are some solutions that don’t dehydrate the hair and scalp.
July 29, 2024
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Scalp oil is a good thing. Having a lot of oil up top is far better than the alternative. When your pores secretes oil, it nourishes skin and hair alike. But of course, too much of a good thing is not so good after all. That buildup of grease leaves you with weighed-down glossy oily hair, and you can feel it accumulating on the scalp, too. Blech. Nevermind that too much grease creates an optimal environment for fungal-induced dandruff, too. Double blech.
If you’re wondering how to fix an oily scalp, the solution might seem obvious: Just wash it, a lot. But that’s quite the opposite of what you want to do. See, the scalp is intuitive. It will evolve with your routine, and by over washing it, you might be perpetuating the problem by triggering the pores to then recover and produce more oil.
It takes a little time to get from being “too oily” to “perfectly balanced”. More on that later. But what’s most important to remember is that the right way to “stop” an oily scalp is to create balance, and not to parch it into oblivion. Because having dry, itchy skin up top is a nightmare in itself, as well as another recipe for dandruff.
So seek balance with these oily scalp tips. And yes, let’s start with one of the more surprising guideposts.
Jump to: Shampoo Less | Shower Smarter | Dry Shampoo | Best Ingredients
The Best Products for Oily Scalps
These are some of the oily scalp products that appear throughout the article.
- The Best Shampoo for Oily Scalps: Davines Naturaltech Rebalancing Shampoo
- The Best Dry Shampoo for Oily Scalps: Oribe Gold Lust Dry Shampoo
- The Best Dry Shampoo Hair Stylers for Oily Scalps: Hanz de Fuko Quicksand and R+Co Badlands Dry Shampoo Hair Paste
- The Best Salicylic Acid Treatment for Oily Scalps: The INKEY List Salicylic Acid Exfoliating Scalp Treatment
- The Best Tea Tree Oil Treatment for Oily Scalps: Paul Mitchell Tea Tree Hair and Scalp Treatment
- The Best Charcoal Treatment for Oily Scalps: Briogeo Scalp Revival Charcoal + Tea Tree Scalp Serum
Please use our links (those above as well as any links featured throughout the article); doing so supports the work we put into making Blue Print by Adam Hurly.
Oily Scalp Solutions
1. Shampoo Less
You probably do not need to be shampooing daily. No matter what level of grime you experience up there, it’s unlikely that your scalp and strands need a full blanching every single day—especially if your hair is long enough to lay flat and risk poofing or frizzing. Shampoo is a high-powered detergent, and overwashing hair will only dry out the strands and scalp so severely that your body responds by triggering even more sebum production.
So, the cycle continues: You dehydrate hair and scalp with shampoo, so it quickly gets oily again, and thus you shampoo again, and so forth in perpetuity. No more healthy hair, and you’ve got a dry, itchy scalp too. I repeat: You probably do not need to shampoo daily.
How often should you shampoo, then? Let’s frame it, first: By shampooing less often, you are prevent your scalp from drying out—which might feel silly because hello, the entire issue is that you have too much oil; so why is dehydration a concern? This is where we refocus: You can rinse away most of that grime without shampoo. Water works wonders. Even conditioner will help flush away some of it. Your scalp and your strands will be better off for it.
That said, if you have hair that absolutely needs to be a clean canvas every day in order to achieve a specific hairstyle—just be sure you have a standout conditioner to keep everything nourished, and use a good scalp mask regularly to nourish that dome.
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2. Shower Smarter
Oh, and on the topic of rinsing your head: Turn the temp down in the shower! Hot water dries your scalp out, as well as your strands and the rest of your body. Stick with mild temps.
As for the shampoo you use: If you have hair longer than a centimeter or two, then I recommend using ones that work with your specific hair type, since those one-size-fits-all formulas aren’t going to do you any favors. (Curly hair demands different ingredients than straight hair; fine hair and thick hair are quite different in their demands, too.) I always point to Davines first and foremost for the best targeted shampoos and conditioners. Their Rebalancing Shampoo is targeted at sebum-happy scalps…
3. Incorporate Dry Shampoo
Dry shampoo is a powder-based product that you spray, sprinkle, or apply near at the scalp, and it soaks up any buildup of oil to help de-grease the hair and help strands stand up higher and fuller (since that oil weighs them down). It breathes new life into a second- or third-day style, and buys you that one extra day before a shampoo. (Hey, this is often when your hair looks its best, too.)
Dry shampoo isn’t a product to apply on the day you shampoo in the shower, but rather on the non-wash mornings when your hair just needs a bit of a pick-me-up and a minor degreasing. Apply it to dry hair, too, since it will clump with water.
I always tell guys to wash their hair the night or morning after a dry shampoo day, since the powder itself can build up and turn clumpy on top of your scalp. You won’t really notice anything when you use it one day at a time, then shampooing.
So, my cadence would be: Shampoo on day 1, endure day 2 with a rinse, use dry shampoo on morning 3, then shampoo on morning 4. (But you could cut out day 2, and alternate between shampoo and dry shampoo.)
I much prefer the sprayable dry shampoo options; honestly, nothing plays this better than Oribe Gold Lust Dry Shampoo, with their salon-caliber results that look especially textured and full. If you have medium or long hair, then it’s a must.
However, I love the growing popularity of dry shampoo hair stylers, too, which you can apply at the base of strands to achieve extra volume and hold. Hanz de Fuko’s Quicksand hair wax is my favorite hybrid styler-dry shampoo product, which creates this bizarre gritty effect with its use of diatomaceous earth (pulverized rock, essentially) to act as the dry shampoo agent. It’s perfect in shorter styles, maybe 1-4 inches in length.
The other must-know product in this category is R+Co’s Dry Shampoo Paste, which is terrific in medium-length styles and which will also prevent any buildup of oil from working its way down your strands throughout the day. You get those dry shampoo benefits at the scalp and throughout the ‘do, plus touchable and voluminous hair.
4. Use Scalp Treatments with Targeted Ingredients
Scalp treatments can include pre-shampoo masks, topical serums, and overnight creams. They can be a pain to apply given that the scalp is often obscured by hair, but they can also work terrific as oily balances, depending on their active ingredients. Here are the three best ingredients to scout in an oily scalp treatment, no matter the vehicle. Funny enough, they’re all great for dry scalp, too, albeit sometimes for different reasons. And the first two ingredients are also terrific for preventing dandruff, too.
Salicylic Acid
Salicylic acid is a terrific exfoliant and oil balancer. Not only does it unclog the pores of sebum buildup, but it normalizes sebum production to mitigate future greasings. Use it every few days or so to free everything up from around those hair follicles.
Try: The INKEY List Salicylic Acid Exfoliating Scalp Treatment, which will tone oil levels and help exfoliate any dead skin cells up top to prevent flaking and fungal buildup.
Tea Tree Oil
Tea tree oil is an anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, and oil-balancing ingredient that doesn’t even feel like oil. It wears so light and is a common ingredient in many oil-balancing shampoos, serums, masks, and more. Don’t use it on its own—it needs to be carefully diluted—but in shampoos, scalp serums, and conditioners it provides tons of balancing benefits.
Try: Paul Mitchell Tea Tree Hair and Scalp Treatment targets all scalps and hair types, using universal ingredients like tea tree oil and aloe to promote balance (in terms of oil and inflammation alike).
Charcoal
Here is a common ingredient in purifying face masks, toothpastes, shampoos and yes, even scalp treatments. Charcoal absorbs excess oil and also helps purify the scalp by soaking up toxins, too.
Try: Briogeo Scalp Revival Charcoal + Tea Tree Scalp Serum, which is advertised to dry scalps but is extremely powerful on oily ones too, for its purifying and balancing properties. Plus, you get two oil-mitigating active ingredients in one treatment.
5. For Excessive Problems: Ask Your Dermo About Isotretinoin
Firstly: I am not a dermatologist. So the following is based on my decade-plus of experience as a grooming writer and editor, often spent interviewing dermos about this stuff. And with that said…
If you can’t seem to reduce your oily scalp—and it’s giving you some serious grief, especially if you have an inflammatory issue like seborrheic dermatitis—then one prescriptive solution is isotretinoin. (This generic drug is often called by the brand name Accutane.) Isotretinoin is an oral retinoid that shrinks your sebaceous glands and primarily helps reduce breakouts; it can be taken daily and a prescription could last anywhere from one to a few months.
And since it balances all the oil glands around your body, that means it targets the scalp, too. I’ll raise my hand here: I tried it—just for a month—and it worked to quell both my acne and oily scalp (my aim was to halt cystic acne). If you just want to temper a mildly oily scalp, try the aforementioned products and habitual changes, because this drug comes with some serious risks.
To go on isotretinoin, you need to speak with a dermatologist for a prescription and do bloodwork before and during treatment, since isotret can impact liver levels. So, it’s no shock that you need to cut out alcohol while taking the drug, too. Your duration of treatment depends on the severity of the situation and your desire to quell it; the doctor will help determine the path forward and the monitoring protocol.
Isotretinoin will likely leave skin feeling dry in the meantime, especially around the lips (this was the worst part for me), but everything will rebound to a balanced place a few days after the completed treatment. Even one round (~one month) will generate lasting, impactful results, particularly on acne, which could last many years, and even the better part of a decade. And if they do return sooner than planned (or you just don’t want to deal with oil yet) you can always do a bonus round of isotretinoin when that time comes.
I’ll repeat that this is really a solution for severe cases of oily scalp and seborrheic dermatitis—definitely not something for most casual cases of oily scalps. But hey, if today you learned about isotretinoin and are someone with severe acne—maybe you found your new prescriptive fix for that, instead!
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