How to Wash Pomade Out of Hair and Beard
The routine is second nature by now, because it is basically Groundhog Day every evening. You stand in front of the mirror after a long day at work, look at the beard you styled that morning along with the hair on your head, and wonder whether you can really get into bed with hair that looks this greasy.
Will normal shampoo even shift a strong-hold product? And more to the point, is stripping it all out right now actually a smart move? Washing pomade out of a beard?
After all, we are rather fond of the hair we have grown and looked after. Questions on top of questions, the kind everyday life keeps writing for us.
In the blog post below we will work through those questions and help you make the right call in these situations from now on, with the right tools, so that thick hair and fine hair alike get treated the way they deserve.
How do I handle shampoo when washing out pomade?
How you approach products like shampoo after styling your hair or beard, products whose main job is lifting out dirt and buildup, depends entirely on the situation and on which growth you are dealing with.
What pomade is made of
Water-based pomade, medium-hold pomade or firm-hold pomade
They all have one thing in common: washing pomade out does not work with plain water, and certainly not with cold water. Pomades are usually oil-based. That means that in most cases the main ingredient, to name just one, alongside the essential oils that give it that great scent, is petroleum jelly. That grease only comes out if you bring something to the job. What matters is that whatever you bring does not attack or dry out the hair.
The hair on your head
Between the natural oils your scalp produces over the course of the day and everything the environment throws at you, human hair gets dirty. And a film of grease up top is not just uncomfortable, it looks genuinely bad. Let us be honest, no woman anywhere has ever raved about a man whose greasy, almost wet-looking hair was doing the "shining". We know this from plenty of articles already: nobody likes a grease-slicked mop.
But back to the topic. Hair shampoo on your head gets a clear GO. Hair shampoo in your beard gets a NO.
Beard hair
You should not strip pomade out of beard hair completely, because that hair runs drier and needs to hold on to moisture over a longer stretch. So use a dedicated beard shampoo to clear out the dirt. Beard shampoo also has the useful side effect of not attacking or drying out the hair.
That is the only way a wash like this delivers the moisture drier beard hair needs without damaging it in the process. The good oils belong in the hair, and they should stay there even when you are washing pomade out.
How to do it
Once the pomade you have been wearing has run its course by the end of the evening, it is time, as mentioned, to reach for the right care products so you can wash out what you no longer need and pull the dirt out of the hair. The method itself is very simple.
Since we are going to assume you have washed your hair once or twice in your life already, we will focus here on washing the beard in a bit more detail.
Start by giving your beard hair a proper soak, or as my grandmother would put it, a good wet wipe-through, before you apply anything to wash the pomade out. Without water, beard shampoo cannot lather properly and will never do its full job. So use lukewarm or warm water to wet your facial hair.
With that first step done, take the amount of beard shampoo you need and massage it into the damp beard. Make sure it lathers well, and remember that shampoo works best when you do not rinse it straight back out. Give the product time to sit so it can actually do the job it was built for.
After that you can rinse away everything the shampoo has loosened, pomade included. Use lukewarm or warm water again here and take care that no residue is left behind in the beard.
As you can see, getting pomade out of hair is nowhere near as difficult as people assume. The only thing that matters is knowing which product suits which type of growth, so it can do what it was designed to do. Every product on the shelf sits at the end of a long development process, one shaped by a lot of experience pointing towards a specific goal.
In short, someone put thought into making sure a product works properly on you. So it is worth using it in a way that lets it work, rather than putting the wrong thing in the wrong place. To sum up: washing pomade out of a beard means dedicated beard shampoo, and washing pomade out of the hair on your head means a hair shampoo chosen for your scalp. Stick to those basics and your daily grooming is covered. And if you happen to be after great pomade or equally good care products, it is always worth a look in the Charlemagne Premium shop.
„A healthy and well groomed beard is important for a real man, that's why we offer everything you need to keep yours doing so.“
As barbers with more than 20 years in the trade between us, we went looking for styling & care products that convinced us 100%. There were some good products on the market, but none that gave us everything we needed. After some thought we decided in 2014 to develop our own range. For two years we used every free minute after work at the barbershop to refine the formulations down in our cellar. When it came to ingredients, only the best was good enough. We bought the finest jojoba oils available in Morocco, and argan oil from Italy.
After two years and a good many attempts our first product line was ready, and it has been winning customers over ever since. We think 98% positive reviews speak for themselves. Since the official launch in 2016 it has of course been developed further, continuously. That is just one of the reasons Charlemagne Premium products have won not one but several comparison tests in recent years.
You will find all our products right here in our online store. For any questions about them, you can reach us any time at info@charlemagne-premium.com.
