Ayurvedic Shampoo Bar - Certified Organic

Radico Organic Shampoo Bar is a true soap — organic oils treated with alkali until they saponify, milled with bhringraj, amla and brahmi. Net weight 125 g (4.4 oz).

It does two jobs: everyday washing on hair in good condition — we use it daily ourselves — and the wash before a plant colour.

If your first plant colour did not take, this is usually why

Henna and indigo bind to the keratin in your hair. They have to reach it first. Conventional shampoos and conditioners leave a film behind — silicones, styling polymers, oils — and that film sits between the pigment and the surface it needs to attach to. The colour goes on, sits there, and rinses away paler than it should.

Nothing is wrong with the colour. The hair was still wearing the last product.

Soap cleans thoroughly. Before you colour, that is exactly what you want.

What it takes off

• Silicones. Dimethicone and its relatives are in most conditioners and many shampoos. They coat the strand deliberately and are not water-soluble; a mild wash does not shift them.
• Styling polymers. Anything that holds a shape leaves a film, and it builds up.
• Oils. Coconut, argan, leave-in treatments. Useful otherwise; a barrier here.
• Hard water minerals. Calcium and magnesium deposit on the strand over time.

If you have never used silicone products — if you have been washing with plant powders, or with a silicone-free shampoo — you may not need this step before colouring. We would rather you knew that than bought a bar for a job you do not have.

We measured it at pH 9.35

Soap is alkaline by definition. It is made by treating fat with alkali, and what comes out carries that character — a bar of soap typically sits around pH 9 to 10. This one is no exception, and we would rather show you the number than call it “gentle” and leave it there. The alkalinity comes from the soap-making, not from the herbs — amla, if anything, is acidic.

Hair’s own surface sits at 4.5 to 5.5. This is well above that, and it is why soap-based shampoo largely disappeared — alkaline conditions lift the cuticle scales, and lifted scales catch on each other, so hair feels rough. Every other product we make sits on the acid side for exactly that reason.

So we will not call it gentle on the strength of a pH number. What we can tell you is what we see: we wash with it every day, and our hair stays in good condition. It cleans; it does not repair, and no wash undoes damage that is already there.

The exception we hear about is small: hair that is already heavily damaged — bleached, chemically straightened, very porous — can come out dry or rough. If that is your hair, follow with an acid rinse, or wash less often. Earlier versions of this description told you not to use the bar daily; that was more cautious than our own experience, and we have changed it.

The part we are less sure about. You will read that an alkaline wash opens the cuticle so pigment can get in. Alkaline conditions do lift the cuticle scales — that much is established. Whether a lifted cuticle measurably improves how much pigment binds, we do not know: we have not found a study that tests it, and we have not run one. What we are confident about is the residue, and residue alone is reason enough.

It lathers, and that is not a contradiction

Our reetha and shikakai powders produce almost no foam, and we say plainly on those pages that foam is not what does the cleaning. Both things are true.

Lather is what happens when a surfactant traps air. Cleaning is what happens when it surrounds oil. A surfactant can do one well and the other barely at all. Saponins clean without foaming much; soap does both.

There is no SLS in here, and no foam booster. That is not only our word for it: COSMOS ORGANIC prohibits both, and this bar is certified on its own file. Soap foams because of what soap is — fatty acid salts hold air well — not because anything was added to make it.

What is in it

Five organic oils, saponified. Three Ayurvedic herbs, milled in. Liquorice root, sunflower seed oil, lavender oil and tocopherol.

What we will not tell you is that the herbs survive saponification unchanged, or that they deliver vitamins into your hair from a bar you rinse off in two minutes. Saponification is a hot, strongly alkaline reaction, and we have not found work establishing what comes through it intact. They are in the formula, they are organically grown, and that is what we can say about them. All three are also sold on their own, where the chemistry is worth going into properly.

Certified, and independently listed

This bar holds COSMOS ORGANIC, audited by ECOCERT Greenlife.

COSMOS ORGANIC certifies products, not brands. Every formula is audited on its own file — where the ingredients were grown, how it was made, what is and is not in it. This bar has its own. So does each of our twenty-four colours, and each of our single herbs.

You do not have to take our word for any of that. COSMOS publishes a searchable register of every certified product in the world. Ours are listed under Radico — forty-five of them at last count, this bar among them, registered as Certified Organic Lavender Hair Shampoo Bar.

Look us up in the COSMOS product register →

Three things to keep in mind

What we will and will not claim

That soap is an anionic surfactant, that it is alkaline, and that alkaline conditions lift the cuticle are all established chemistry rather than health claims. The pH figure is our own, on a handheld meter, and it is a number you can check yourself.

What we have not measured is whether washing with this before a plant colour produces a measurably better result than washing with something else. We are confident about the mechanism — residue blocks binding, and soap removes residue — and we have not run the comparison.

We are not claiming this bar treats any scalp or hair condition, that it promotes hair growth, or that it delivers nutrients into the hair. In the United States a cosmetic may not make those claims, and we have not found evidence that would support them here in any case.

Radico Organic Shampoo Bar is a cosmetic product for external use on hair and scalp. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any condition. Contains almond oil and lavender oil.