Ask the Owner: Your Florida Hair Questions, Answered

This is the first of something new. I spend my days answering hair questions from the chair, and most of them come up again and again — especially from guests who’ve just moved to Southwest Florida and can’t work out what happened to their hair on the drive down. So we’re writing the answers down. These are the questions I hear most, answered the way I’d answer them in the salon.

— Alli

“Why is my hair so dry since I moved here?”

I hear this almost every week, usually from someone who moved from up north and swears nothing else changed — same products, same routine, suddenly straw. It’s not your imagination and it’s not your products. It’s our water.

South Florida has very hard water. It’s full of minerals, and every shower deposits a little more of them onto your hair. Over weeks, that buildup coats the strand — it blocks moisture from getting in, leaves hair feeling rough and dry, and makes even good conditioner feel like it’s stopped working.

The fix is simpler than people expect: clarify once a week. I recommend Bumble and bumble Sunday Shampoo — one wash a week to lift out the mineral buildup and product residue, then your regular routine the rest of the week. And because hair here genuinely needs more moisture than it did up north, this is also the moment to add a proper leave-in conditioner. Buildup out, moisture in — most “Florida ruined my hair” dryness comes down to that order of operations.

“Wait — does my hair need sunscreen?”

Close to it, yes. You already know what our sun does to skin; it does a version of the same thing to hair. UV breaks down the proteins that keep hair strong and it fades color — fast.

What I reach for is Hairdresser’s Invisible Oil Primer, and the reason I love it is that it’s doing three jobs in one pass: it’s a beautiful detangler, it’s a heat protectant before you pick up a dryer or an iron, and Bumble and bumble built UV protection into it. Damp hair, a few sprays, comb through, done. If your hair is going to spend the afternoon at the pool or on a boat, that step is not optional down here.

“Why is my blonde turning brassy so much faster than it used to?”

Because in Florida your blonde is fighting on three fronts at once. The minerals in our hard water sit on the hair and push it warm and dull. The sun fades the cool tone out of it. And heat styling on top of mineral buildup bakes the brass in.

So the routine that protected your color up north needs upgrading here: keep that weekly clarifying wash going so minerals never accumulate, use a leave-in conditioner so the hair isn’t drinking in pool water and sun, and never skip the heat protectant. Blonde that gets all three holds its tone dramatically longer — this is most of what I cover in color consultations with new-to-Florida guests. If your blonde has already drifted further than toning will fix, color correction is its own conversation.

“What actually works on frizz here?”

First, be kind to yourself about it — everyone’s hair frizzes in this humidity. The air is carrying more water than your hair is, so your hair drinks it in and swells. The trick is sealing the strand before the humidity gets there.

If you’re curly and you like to air dry, my pick is Bumble and bumble’s Curl Anti-Humidity Gel-Oil — hold without crunch, and it keeps the humidity out of the curl all day. For a softer touch — wavy hair, or anyone who wants that effortless air-dried finish — the Seaweed Air Dry Cream is lovely, and it stands up to a Florida afternoon far better than most air-dry products.

And when someone tells me they’re done fighting it daily, that’s when we talk about a smoothing treatment. We offer three different systems — Wella’s Pro+ SmoothFiller, Keratin Complex, and Brazilian Blowout — and they are genuinely different treatments suited to different hair, which is why we choose in a consultation rather than off a menu. Months of low-humidity mornings from one appointment; for a lot of my guests that’s the best money they spend all year.

Keep the questions coming

If you’ve got a question you’d like answered in the next one of these, ask at the front desk, message us on social, or bring it to your next appointment — truly nothing is too small. The odds are excellent that ten other people are wondering the same thing.

And if your hair has been different since the move and you’d rather hand the puzzle to us: come sit in the chair. Diagnosing Florida hair is half of what we do.