3 Reasons Why We Use Botanical Gels for Tight Curly + Natural Hair

Years ago, our co-founder + licensed stylist, Aeleise, took a few months off to test a variety of different products on the market to help develop our now curated product list. For professional stylists, we’re typically looking at quality, well-formulated ingredients, performance and wholesale availability.

We often get asked “well why these products?” in our digital education spaces like The SeeSomeCurls Visual Library. Our simple answer: performance. As licensed stylists, we see and touch up to hundreds of different heads a month and need quality products that simply work. This blog post will explain 3 reasons why we prefer to use botanical based gels for tight curly + natural hair.

What Are Botanical Gels?

While there are many gels on the market with synthetic ingredients like PVP and Carbomer in them, we tend to regularly choose botanical gels like Uncle Funky's Daughter Curly Magic Curl Stimulator as the base styler of choice for our Hydrate & Define (wash and go) clients. Why?

Nature gives us great hold and botanical gels tend to be plant-based and water soluble (meaning they wash out from the hair easily). Botanical gels typically contain herbal extracts and humectants (such as aloe, flaxseed, okra, pectin or marshmallow root) that are used to promote water retention in your hair by pulling moisture from the air and adding it to your hair.

“Humectant ingredients placed in gels are used to bind water to the hair in order to keep it hydrated.”

#1: Botanical Gels Provide Great Hold

Unlike popular gels that use synthetic ingredients, such as Eco Styler, botanical gels are not harsh. They typically provide a great level of hold as they are filled with plant extracts that don’t dry the hair out.

Since they are also water soluble, they rinse from the hair easily and don’t leave behind a bunch of product build up.

“Botanical gels can be a little pricey in costs. Consider it the same as buying fresh, organic ingredients from your local grocery store versus quick processed foods from your favorite fast food chains.”

Important Note: Styling products with “clean” ingredients typically have a higher chance of presenting allergies from use. If you experience any itching/burning of the scalp, please discontinue use immediately and consult with a medical professional to find the ingredient causing the reaction. The scalp is considered skin and this falls out of the licensure of a professional hairstylist.

#2: Botanical Gels Tend to Layer Nicely With Other Products

In our wash and go styling, we tend to layer what we call topper gels over our botanical gel. We use anti-humectant gels with polymers and carbomer as a topper layer over the botanical gels for a wash and go when the climate or lifestyle of the client determines that there is either way too much or way too little humidity in the atmosphere.

By placing the botanical gel next to the clean, wet, and bare hair we are supplementing the hydration available to the hair. The use of an anti-humectant gel over it such as Trepadora Papaya Slip Taming Potion, which we call double gelling, allows the hair to maintain hold and hydration.

“Anti-humectants can help reduce the likelihood of frizz and puffiness in your wash and go. To know when to use an anti-humectant, you must keep your eye out for the dew point. The dew point tells us the percentage of water present in the atmosphere.”

A lower dew point signifies a lower concentration of moisture in the air but the reverse is true also. A higher dew point is indicative of a higher concentration of moisture. This will help you choose what kind of styling product you’ll need for your given climate.

#3: Botanical Gels Help Promote Hydration

No one single product or method can actually “moisturize” the hair. If there was, there would be a billionaire product company owner out there somewhere that would have shut the market down and put everyone else out of business.

The root word of hydration, hydra, is the Greek word for water. Moisture also means water or other liquid diffused in a small quantity as vapor, within a solid, or condensed on a surface. Water, water, water, and nothing else.

You can acquire moisture/hydration through consistency with your cleansing/conditioning/styling which exposes the hair to water, using high quality products with ingredients that help the hair to retain that water such as botanical gels, reducing or eliminating protective styling which protects you from exposing your hair to water in the cleansing process, along with a big heap of realism.

Want specific recommendations for botanical gels that we use professionally for our in-salon and digital clients? Retrieve your very own free copy of The List with a subscription to the Black Girl Curls Digest. The List includes all of the products that we recommend from shampoos to stylers with specific instructions for how to use them.

The List will be updated and shared on a quarterly basis with Black Girl Curls Digest Subscribers.