How to recognise a treatment that was done badly

I often get the same question, almost always in the same words: «is it normal like this?». Someone has had a treatment — here or elsewhere — and doesn't know whether what she sees on her hair is part of the process or a mistake. I'll try to answer once and in writing, putting things in the order in which they actually appear.

I'll start from the sentence we already say to those who ask us before booking: a badly done smoothing treatment can break the hair. That's the serious thing, and there's no point beating about the bush. For the same reason here we always start from a diagnosis, and the product is chosen on your fibre, not on a protocol that's the same for everyone. Everything else comes after.

Who got it wrong isn't the point

Before the list I want to get one thing out of the way. When someone sits down in the chair and tells me the previous treatment didn't work, I don't ask her where she had it done. I don't need to know. A missed result almost never means incapable hands: far more often it means a product chosen for hair different from yours, or time that wasn't there.

On time I'm precise, because it's the thing I see underestimated the most. A keratin smoothing treatment here takes three and a half hours. A smoothing treatment combined with the restructuring one, four. A nanoplastia, five. An afro nanoplastia six full hours, and it's the longest treatment we do: the time is needed, it can't be shortened without losing quality. If something that requires four hours was done to you in far less, the result that doesn't hold isn't down to you.

And there's a step even before the product. The consultation is done on wet hair, in the salon, on the day and before starting. If nobody looked at your hair wet, nobody chose anything: they applied what they had available.

The same day

On the day of the treatment you notice few things, but they're the most important.

The first is hair that gives way. Not the hairs left on the brush, those are always there: I mean the strand that breaks while it's being worked and the ends that fray between the fingers. The elasticity of the hair is exactly what we assess before proceeding with a nanoplastia, and it's the reason for a rule that here isn't up for discussion: if in the consultation the test strand doesn't respond well, we don't proceed. We suggest a course of restructuring treatments first. A treatment done on hair that had already said no remains a treatment done badly, even when on the first day it looks beautiful.

The second thing is more mundane, and precisely for that reason it goes unnoticed: at the end you must see the finished result. With us cut and blow-dry are included in the price of the treatment — they can't be booked on their own, but they're always there — and the final blow-dry isn't a courtesy. It's the moment when you look together at how it turned out, with the hair dry and in the light. Leaving halfway, with a «you'll see tomorrow», isn't a good sign.

The third concerns the conditions in which the treatment shouldn't have been done. On bleached hair we advise against nanoplastia: we suggest a more concentrated smoothing treatment combined with a restructuring one, and after bleaching how long to wait we assess in the consultation, looking at how much it has affected the elasticity of the fibre. While breastfeeding we advise against chemical treatments, smoothing treatments included. If a nanoplastia ended up on a head bleached last week, the problem wasn't born at the first wash: it was already there before the straighteners were switched on.

After the first wash

Here appears the sign I get most often, and luckily it's the least dramatic of all: hair that feels greasy to the touch, heavy, as if it weren't clean even when freshly washed.

It isn't dirt and it isn't damaged hair. It's the pH of the hair that hasn't been rebalanced. A step is missing, a piece of fibre hasn't come off. It's fixed with a restructuring treatment after the smoothing one — on our price list there's also a «Trattamento pH» that exists exactly for this — and from then on the sensation disappears. I say it with this calm because it's the truth: it's a correction, not a recovery.

At the first wash another thing should be looked at too, but it concerns what happened at home. After a keratin, a Bixyplastia or a nanoplastia the hair isn't washed straight away: in the care sheet we give you the wait is forty-eight or seventy-two hours. If nobody told you how long to wait, or if you washed earlier because you didn't know, part of the result went there. It isn't the same as a treatment done wrong, and the difference matters: in the first case time was lost, in the second hair was lost.

After a few weeks

Slow things confuse more, because they arrive when by now nobody connects cause and effect.

Duration is the first clue. A smoothing treatment holds for three to six months, and repeated it reaches even six or seven, because the product builds up on the hair and the film gets thicker. A nanoplastia sits between six and eight months. If you're a long way off these numbers something didn't work, but it isn't necessarily the treatment. On hair that's already damaged the effect lasts less, and that's normal; above all, the shampoo you use at home weighs enormously. Sulphates and salt, the sodium chloride you read on the label, are the two ingredients that shorten the duration the most. Before blaming the chair, turn round the bottle you keep in the shower.

The second clue is the line. The regrowth treatment is done only with smoothing treatments, never with the anti-frizz: if an anti-frizz was put on the regrowth, after a few weeks you see the jump between the new part and the lengths that are already straight. On the first day you don't notice. You notice when the hair grows.

The third is hair that keeps breaking even a long time afterwards, with the ends thinning and the length no longer increasing. That's the sign that makes me change course: we stop talking about straight and start talking about rebuilding.

What isn't a mistake, even though it's frightening

Many of the worries I receive concern things that are expected. It's worth saying them one by one.

Coloured hair that after a nanoplastia comes out two or three shades lighter isn't damage: it happens because it's a very strong smoothing treatment, it's an effect we know and that is said beforehand. The anti-frizz that didn't straighten hasn't failed: it doesn't straighten, it takes away frizz and puffiness and leaves the natural movement, and if you were after totally straight hair the right treatment was another one. The restructuring treatment that didn't take away volume is doing its job: it works inside the fibre to strengthen it, it isn't a smoothing treatment and it isn't for frizz.

Nor is the mark left by a hair tie or a clip in the very first days a mistake. After a keratin or a nanoplastia, until the first wash the shape sets: that's why we ask you to keep your hair down, without clips and without putting it behind your ears.

Then there's the biggest fear, the one about hair loss. A smoothing procedure creates a protective film on the hair and doesn't act on the bulb. Hair loss depends on genetics, hormones, stress, deficiencies or the season. If you're losing hair it's something to look at, but it isn't the smoothing treatment that caused it, and it isn't an answer I can give you from the chair.

Colour too, if you're wondering, has nothing to do with it. We don't do colour: if you have it done elsewhere, have it done after the treatment and a few days later, because a strong smoothing treatment can lighten coloured hair by two or three shades.

What can be done now

I'll be honest, because it's the part where it's easiest to promise too much. Broken hair doesn't mend. No product puts back together a fibre that has broken: that part, sooner or later, gets cut. Whoever tells you otherwise is selling you something.

The rest, though, can be done, and it's a lot. If it's the pH, it gets rebalanced. If the fibre is worn but holds, we work from the inside with a restructuring treatment: it nourishes, strengthens, restores elasticity and resistance, and on very damaged hair it's the step that makes a smoothing treatment possible again later on. If the scalp is heavy or full of residue, a detox peeling takes away the impurities the naked eye can't see. And the home routine gets sorted out, which isn't a detail: sulphate-free and salt-free shampoo, lukewarm water and not boiling hot, hairdryer and straighteners on a low temperature, and after the sea or the pool a rinse with fresh water as soon as possible.

What isn't done is putting another smoothing treatment straight on top of the first to correct it. If the strand doesn't respond, we don't proceed: we restructure, we wait, we start again when the hair is in a condition to take it. After bleaching, for example, how long to wait we assess in the consultation.

If you've had a treatment that doesn't convince you and you don't understand what happened, bring it here and let's look at it together. The consultation takes fifteen minutes, it's free and you book it from the website. I won't tell you that everything can be recovered if it isn't true: I'll tell you what can be done, in how long, and what instead needs to be cut.