No fuss hair conditioner

I have made many conditioners in my career, conventional and natural but this cationic surfactant blend is one of the easiest and most versatile to work with.

You can choose over a broad range of oil concentration and polarities, you can create solid conditioners as well as liquid conditioners and you can adjust and tweak the viscosity by varying the concentration of the oil phase, the surfactant concentration or by adding a non-ionic or cationic gum. When it comes to preservation, it is quite forgiving and not as picky as any of emulsense HC or Aminosensyl HC.

When it comes to efficacy and performance, it doesn't build up or feel heavy and imparts a nice and silky feel even without any functional additives.

As always we kept our formulation very basic and KISS for a start and warm-up and you will certainly see more tutorials coming with active ingredients and additives.

Just one remark before we proceed. We have made perfectly stable conditioners with the conditioner base but according to the supplier you need to use a buffer sodium lactate and lactic acid no matter what your final pH is (the recommended pH range is 3-5). You can easily make your own buffer by blending sodium lactate and lactic acid solutions and you can keep that buffer without preservation for at least two weeks in the fridge.

We are using a preservative (sensiva PA 20) that performs independent of pH but we still want to keep the pH under 4,5 for a better performance of the conditioner.

* We didn't show vitamin E in the video but it was blenden with the paprika oil

Procedure:

1- Blend phase A and B in separate heat proof beakers.

2- Heat both phases between 80-85 ^oC. When phase B is completely melted add phase B to A (you can do this as both phases are still in the hot bath or remove the beakers from the bath) and homogenize.

3- Start cooling down while stirring.

4- Add the buffer solution and stir for a while.

5- Add the paprika oil and the essential oil and blend completely.

6- Since the preservative system works independent of pH we can add it without measuring and adjusting the pH before that. Add the preservative. Prepare a 10% dilution and measure the pH. In our case it was 4,17 and that is perfectly all right.

7- Take your stability and micro kit samples and fill the rest in a suitable container.

You can watch the video here.

Stay safe and creative