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People always ask me ‘How can you achieve salon-quality results at home?’ The best way to achieve salon-quality results at home is to find products that protect and nourish the hair, says, Johnny Wright, Celebrity Stylist to First Lady, Michelle Obama, and Artistic Style Director for SoftSheen-Carson.

Here are a few tips for in between salon visits:

• It is very important to talk to your stylist.  When at the salon don’t be scared or intimidated to talk to your stylist about your hair and a healthy hair care regimen that suits your hair type and desired style. This conversation will help you and your stylist achieve and maintain the health of your hair.

• Remember to get regular trims. Women are often scared to trim their hair when it is growing out, because they rather keep the length than have healthy looking hair.  Not getting regular trims, can lead to breakage and split ends. TIP: Try trimming every 6-8 weeks to remove any split ends.  It will leave hair looking and feeling healthy!

• Shampooing and conditioning:  Many women don’t wash their hair often enough because they are scared of drying it out.  TIP: Try using salon-quality products.  A high-quality shampoo and conditioner, such as the Optimum Care Salon Collection Replenishing Shampoo and Fortifying Conditioner, will replenish and fortify your hair. They are formulated with a dual strength complex that strengthens and protects hair, giving you a salon-quality look at home.

• The Optimum Care Salon Collection Replenishing Shampoo infuses the hair with a healthy dose of moisture as it cleanses. Optimum Care Salon Collection Fortifying Conditioner reinforces and reconstructs the hair cuticle and restores softness for a noticeably healthier look.

Bonus Tip For the Ladies Who Relax

Relaxing your hair at home is easier and affordable. Make sure to use a relaxer that will help protect and strengthen your hair during the process, such as the Optimum Care Salon Collection Relaxer system.  It offers exclusive salon-quality breakage protection. This relaxer conditions at all 3 steps of the process – before, during and after – and works to repair, rebuild and replenish.  Plus, this exclusive system comes with two “Strength Building” packettes that deliver a unique complex to instantly rescue & treat over-processed hair, and to dramatically achieve a healthy look.

Tell us one of your salon-quality at home hair tips.

Follow Johnny Wright on twitter @johnny_wright

http://www.facebook.com/OptimumSalonHaircare

www.optimumsalonhaircare.com

Johnny is the Celebrity Stylist to First Lady Michelle Obama and Artistic Style Director for SoftSheen-Carson Laboratories, a division of L’Oréal USA.  His work has appeared in InStyle, O! Oprah Magazine, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Vogue Italia and on SoftSheen-Carson advertorial campaigns for publications such as Essence, Ebony, Jet and Sophisticate’s Black Hair.

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Join the Optimum Stronger, Longer Hair Challenge! Complete the Hair Survey and share your experience in the challenge by commenting below or tweeting us @MadameNoire with the hashtag #StrongerLonger for your chance to be our weekly winner and score amazing Optimum Care products!.

We are looking for the most engaged users. Participate in the challenge, send us your questions… and we could feature YOU on Madame Noire! At the end of the challenge, three Grand Prize winners will receive a salon experience, tons of Optimum Care product, and the opportunity to serve as an Optimum Care blogger. Join us!

Feel free to e-mail us at HealthyHair@madamenoire.com

http://blazeadams247.blogspot.com

My journey to the promised land of natural hair has been a path paved with many trials and errors, shampoos, conditioners, creams and oils. As I am learning to embrace and celebrate my natural hair in all its coil-y glory, I still like to wear my hair in a sleek, straight bob every now and then.

Enter my two BFFs: Hot Comb and Flat Iron.

I wasn’t always on good terms with the hot comb, having suffered scalp burns and trauma caused by many a styling ordeal during my childhood. Over the years, as hair styling techniques advanced and electric hot combs with heat settings became available, I let the hot comb back into my life, albeit slowly. Not knowing the tricks of the trade, I’ve singed myself and my hair more times than I care to remember.

Since I began my hair transition three years ago, I found myself relying more and more on my flat iron. Not knowing what to look for or the best way to use it to get my roots super-straight made styling my hair difficult. Still, I gave it a good ol’ college try and ended up watching my hair break, strand by strand. I assumed the breakage was caused by the heat on my hair.

What I didn’t know was that the kind of flat iron I was using was making matters worse. Over the years, I’ve amassed quite the collection of ceramic, “high-low” two-setting flat irons. I have black ones, blue ones, broken ones…you name it, I probably have it. According to Johnny Wright, SoftSheen-Carson artistic style director and celebrity stylist, the best flat irons are titanium-plated with variable heat settings. Wright recommends the Corioliss Baby SXE. It’s a smaller flat iron, because “it’s small enough to allow you to get as close to the hairline as possible without burning the scalp.”

Ceramic irons were once thought to be good. But if you look at the surface of a ceramic iron under a microscope, the surface was ridged like an orange peel. And that surface would cause friction on the air. The titanium-plated flat irons have a much smoother surface, and can straighten the hair in one pass, rather than the two or three passes it would take with a ceramic flat iron.

Don’t throw away that hot comb just yet. It still has its purpose. The hot comb is good for straightening hair around the perimeter of the head “to give the hair a straighter finish,” says Wright.

All this time I had it wrong. I would use the hot comb to straighten my roots, and then comb it through the hair for good measure (and torture). Then I would go over my hair with the flat iron over and over again until my hair was relatively straightened, or I got tired, whichever came first.

Wright recommends when you wash and blow-dry your hair, go ahead and set the iron on the highest setting your hair can handle. For those, like me, who flat iron their hair every day, turn down that flat iron!

Follow Kimberly Shorter on Twitter at @KimberlyWriter.

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Ever wonder who’s the creative genius behind Michelle’s perfectly coifed mane? It’s SoftSheen Carson’s Artistic Director and Celebrity Stylist Johnny Wright. You’re in for a particular treat today as Johnny will share his secrets on keeping your hair looking sleek and smooth and how to prevent your hair from looking a hot mess by the time you leave the gym. Check out the videos below.