Sea Salt Spray: The Pros and Cons

Few hairstyling products have garnered as much attention over the past year as sea salt spray — and for good reason.

The biggest style trend to emerge in the 2020s is that everything is loose and flowing. Shirts have gotten bigger and boxier, denim has gone back to more relaxed cuts, and pleated trousers are no longer reserved for film noir and your Grandpa Joe.

The same applies to your hair — long, flowing, and natural looks are where it’s at.

Hanging ten on a longboard in Malibu? That’s timeless cool. And looking like you just spent the day hot-dogging in the surf with the light offshore winds blowing your hair into messy windswept perfection is equally as timeless (and cool).

This is where sea salt spray comes in.

Sea salt spray gives your hair just a touch of hold. It’s enough to set your style, but unlike pomades or clays, sea salt spray leaves your hair soft and free to move.

And a bottled sea salt spray gives you and your flowing locks all the benefits of a day swimming in the ocean with a lot less of the drawbacks — crowds, sunburns, and sharks. Plus, bottled sea salt sprays aren’t full of the kelp beds, floating trash, and fish poop that make you want to wash your hair as soon as you get home.

Seems like sea salt spray is a win-win, right?

Naturally, the rise in popularity has also led to an assortment of questions — most notably — is it even a good idea to be putting salt in your hair? After all, when we think of salt, we typically think of it as a dehydrating mineral. So wouldn’t salt suck the moisture right out of your mane?

It’s a fair question.

To answer that question, we’re doing a deep dive on sea salt spray to help you decide if it’s a styling product that will be a good fit for you.

More specifically, we’re going to be focusing on Beardbrand Sea Salt Spray.

Let’s get into it.

What Does Sea Salt Spray Do?

Beardbrand Sea Salt Spray does three things exceptionally well:

1. Sea Salt Spray adds instant texture and volume to your hair.
2. Sea Salt Spray enhances the natural curl pattern of your hair.
3. Sea Salt Spray can actually help remove toxins from your scalp and hair.

Let’s dive a little deeper into each of these.

Sea Salt Spray adds instant texture and volume to your hair
As oil and product accumulate on the hair and scalp, hair shafts become heavy and weighed down. Additionally, the oilier hair gets, the more the hair shafts clump together and become matted and lifeless.

Sea Salt Spray helps to remove that excess oil buildup, allowing the hair strands to be lighter and more independent of each other. Naturally, this allows for greater volume because the hair shafts aren’t weighed down by the oil.

The salt, which naturally has a slight amount of grit, helps texturize the hair.

Sea Salt Spray enhances the natural curl pattern of your hair
Hair types are often characterized by their density, texture, and curl pattern.

In the simplest form, type 1 hair is straight, type 2 hair is wavy, type 3 hair is curly, and type 4 hair is coily.

Everyone’s hair has a natural curl pattern. Type 1 has no curl, type 2 has a natural “s” shape, type 3 has round ringlets, and type 4 is more of a "z” shape with sharp angles.

In Beardbrand Sea Salt Spray, the ingredients magnesium chloride, magnesium sulfate, and kaolinite adhere to the hair strands and apply a small amount of hold. This helps the hair’s natural curl stay in place a little tighter.

This curl-enhancing effect tends to work best for those with types 2, 3, and 4.

Apply Sea Salt Spray to wet hair and scrunched with the hand, and the hair shafts will settle deeper into their curl pattern as they dry.

What if I have straight hair?
Unfortunately, if you have type 1 hair, you won’t get much curl from using a sea salt spray. Type 1 hair is generally resistant to curling without some chemical assistance. Sea salt sprays will add volume to straight hair, but they won’t help curls magically appear.

Sea Salt Spray helps remove toxins from your scalp and hair
Each of the key ingredients in Beardbrand Sea Salt Spray—magnesium sulfate, magnesium chloride, aloe, and kaolinite—help to remove toxins, dirt, and debris from the scalp and hair. This can allow you to go longer between washing with shampoo, which can actually help your hair retain more natural moisture.

Aloe, in particular, is known for its anti-inflammatory properties, and many Beardbrand Sea Salt Spray users report that it has helped them prevent and control dandruff.

Beardbrand Sea Salt Spray adds texture and enhances the natural waviness of hair.

What Are The Benefits of Using Sea Salt Spray?

There’s a little more to sea salt sprays than just mixing salt and water. And we wouldn’t recommend going to the ocean and filling up a spray bottle with the intention of using it in your hair.

There are some differences in bottled sea salt sprays compared to ocean water.

For starters, the salt in ocean water is heavily composed of sodium chloride—what we know as table salt.

Most sea salt sprays use different forms of magnesium, and magnesium is loaded with vitamins and minerals and has a long history of wellness uses.

Specifically, let’s look at the key ingredients in Beardbrand Sea Salt Spray.

Magnesium Sulfate
Magnesium sulfate is more commonly known as Epsom salt—the kind that you put in the bathtub to help relieve muscle soreness and reduce inflammation.

Epsom salt is chemically different from table salt (sodium chloride), and technically, Epsom salt is not a salt at all. It’s only referred to as salt because it happens to look like table salt.

Although its usage as a bath salt is widely known, Epsom salt has a growing fanbase of people who use it in their hair.

The most significant benefit of using Epsom salt in your hair is that it may help remove excess oil and toxins from the scalp. This helps add volume and lift to otherwise flat hair.

All of that oil just weighs down the hair follicles, leaving your hair greasy and lifeless. By introducing Epsom salts and removing some of that oil, the hair strands become lighter and fluffier, giving you more voluminous hair.

Magnesium Chloride
Magnesium chloride is more commonly known as sea salt.

And with Beardbrand Sea Salt Spray, we’re not talking any old sea salt. We're talking sea salt extracted from the Dead Sea—a place that for thousands of years has been viewed as sort of a mecca for rejuvenating your skin and hair.

Compared to sodium chloride, magnesium chloride is a more enriched salt. It contains 21 essential minerals known for detoxifying, exfoliating, and healing properties.

Research of magnesium chloride in hair products is still limited, but early anecdotal reports are favorable.

Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Powder
Aloe is added to Beardbrand Sea Salt Spray to help replenish some of the moisture soaked up by the salt.

Additionally, aloe has benefits for your hair and scalp.

Its anti-inflammatory properties can reduce or altogether remove dandruff. It helps clean overly oily hair without being too harsh or drying. And aloe is packed with vitamins A, C, E, and B12—which all excel at repairing and strengthening hair shafts.

Kaolinite
Kaolinite—often referred to as kaolin clay—is a layered silicate clay mineral that forms from the chemical weathering of feldspar or other aluminum silicate minerals.

Kaolinite is rich in minerals and nutrients. It softens hair, helps with detangling, and enhances the natural curl pattern of hair.

When combined with water, kaolinite clay binds to toxins and helps eliminate them from the skin and hair.

Will Sea Salt Spray dry my hair out?

Salt does have a natural drying effect as it pulls moisture and oils out of the hair and skin.

Many brands add ingredients to their sea salt sprays to help counteract dryness. For example, aloe is added to Beardbrand Sea Salt Spray, which helps hair and skin retain moisture.

When using sea salt spray, some drying will occur instantly. As the damp hair dries, the salt pulls out excess water and oils, leaving the hair textured.

It is possible to overuse Sea Salt Spray, resulting in hair that has a dry, crunchy texture. But with regular washing and conditioning, the hair shouldn’t experience excessive drying.

That said, everyone’s hair is different, and there’s no one-size-fits-all answer on how a sea salt spray will affect your hair.

If your hair is excessively oily, the drying effect of a sea salt spray may be what you are looking for precisely. Conversely, if you already struggle with hair dryness, sea salt spray won’t be the best product for you.

For everyone whose hair falls somewhere between oily and bone-dry, it will take trial and error to find a balance between using sea salt spray and conditioning/moisturizing your hair.

Is Sea Salt Spray bad for your hair?

There's no indication or evidence suggesting that salt is bad for your hair.

We do know that sea salt sprays have a drying effect on hair, but this can be easily remedied with a proper conditioning and moisturizing routine.

Research on salt and hair is still limited, and likely will be for some time.

Is it okay to use Sea Salt Spray every day?

The frequency in which you should use sea salt spray will vary depending on your hair type and the amount of oil your scalp naturally produces.

If your hair is excessively oily, using a sea salt spray daily likely won’t cause any issues.

If your hair is more on the dry side of the spectrum, we’d recommend keeping the bottle on the shelf a few days a week to allow more of your natural oil to build up between uses.

At the very least, you should give your hair a thorough rinse and conditioning between uses of any sea salt spray.

Do you put Sea Salt Spray on wet or dry hair?

We recommend putting Beardbrand Sea Salt Spray on wet or damp hair and then using a blowdryer to style hair as desired.

Does Sea Salt Spray work on straight hair?

On straight hair, Beardbrand Sea Salt Spray will add some grittiness to the hair shaft, creating a more textured look.

Additionally, Sea Salt Spray removes excessive oil from the hair, leaving hair lighter and more voluminous.

If your hair is naturally straight, sea salt spray won’t magically make it wavy or curly.

Can you use Sea Salt Spray in your beard?

If your beard hair is naturally soft and wispy, and you don’t suffer from dryness, you can use Beardbrand Sea Salt Spray to enhance the texture of your beard hair.

That said, beard hair tends to be much drier than head hair, and sea salt spray can leave your beard feeling dry and crunchy.

A few sprays of Beardbrand Sea Salt Spray can help boost your beard’s curl, but be sure to use plenty of Beard Oil or Utility Balm to keep it hydrated and nourished.

TL;DR

Sea salt sprays are great for adding instant texture and volume to your hair, enhancing your hair's natural curl pattern, and even removing toxins from your scalp and hair.

The downside is that the salt will remove some moisture from your hair. This can be remedied with a proper hydrating and conditioning routine.

If your hair is more oily, sea salt spray can be a miracle styling aid. But if your hair tends to be very dry, to begin with, sea salt spray may not be the best product for you.

Have specific questions about using Sea Salt Spray in your hair or beard? Shoot us a message at support@beardbrand.com, or text "STYLE" to 512-879-3297 for a free personalized style consultation. We’ll be happy to help you out.

Keep on Growing.

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