We are on a well, water tests around 250 ppm hardness with visible iron staining in the sink. My hair feels rough and my blonde is going brassy. I can either clarify weekly with a normal clarifying shampoo or use a proper chelating one monthly. I would rather not do both because my hair dries out fast. Which one is the actual answer for mineral water?
Do both, but not on the same schedule: chelate monthly for the minerals, and clarify only when your hair actually feels coated rather than on a calendar. For me that turns out to be about every six weeks.
At 250 ppm plus iron I would spend the money on a shower filter before either product. Treating the hair afterwards means fighting the tap every single wash. A filter will not fix it completely and the cartridges are annoying, but the difference in how the water felt was obvious to me within two showers.
Worth adding that most cheap ones do nothing against iron specifically. You want a KDF-55 medium rather than plain carbon.
@brinekeeper · last wk. · 3 replies
Chelating, monthly, and it is not close. Clarifying shampoos use stronger surfactants to remove product buildup and do essentially nothing to calcium and iron bound to the hair. You need an actual chelator — EDTA, or phytic acid — that grabs the metal ion. At 250 ppm with iron on top, weekly clarifying will dry you out while the brassiness carries on regardless.
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@brinekeeper · last wk.
It can lift some deposited toner, yes. I do mine the day before a toning session so the order works in my favour instead of against it.
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@perlite_pete · 7d ago
Does chelating strip colour faster? That is what put me off.
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