5 signs your shower water is the problem, not your hair products

If your hair feels better on holiday than it does at home, this is for you. Plenty of Australians blame their shampoo, their hairdresser or their age, when part of the answer is coming out of the shower head.

1. 1The bathroom smells like a swimming pool

   Australian tap water is treated with chlorine or chloramine to keep it safe to drink, and that is a good thing. A long, hot shower turns some of it into steam, which is why the bathroom can smell faintly like a public pool afterwards.

   If you can smell it, your hair is standing in it too, every single morning.

2. 2Your hair feels dry a day or two after washing

   Chlorine is the reason swimmers' hair feels rough after the pool. Shower water has far less of it than a pool, but you are in it every day, usually hot.

   A simple test: if your hair feels softer after a week away and rough again within days of coming home, the water at home is a likely suspect.

3. 3Your colour fades long before the next appointment

   Chlorine is one of the things that can dull colour, especially blonde, red and grey blending. If an expensive colour goes brassy or flat within a few weeks, it is worth asking your hairdresser about your water before you change products again.

   See the filter and price Free tracked shipping. 60-day guarantee.

4. 4There is white crust on the shower glass and taps

   That crust is limescale: calcium and magnesium left behind by hard water. It is common in Perth, Adelaide and much of regional Australia, and hard water can also make shampoo lather less.

   Be careful with shower filters that promise to fix this. A filter small enough to fit on a shower arm does not soften water, ours included. What it can do is take care of the chlorine part, so you are dealing with one problem instead of two.

   

5. 5You keep adding products to fix the same dry feeling

   Shampoo, conditioner, a mask, a leave-in, a bond repair. If the shelf keeps growing and your hair still feels the same, change the one thing every product has to work against: the water. It is also the cheapest thing on this list to try.

   Showerkind is our answer to that. A small chrome filter screws on between your shower arm and the shower head you already have. No plumber, no tools, about 60 seconds. Inside is a cartridge with 15 layers of filter media that helps reduce chlorine before the water reaches your hair. You change the cartridge about every 2 months.

   

   It fits a shower with a fixed arm and a separate screw-on shower head (standard 1/2 inch thread). It does not fit one-piece rail sets or rain heads fixed straight to the ceiling. And what it is not: a water softener, a drinking water filter or a treatment for anything. A small drop in pressure is normal on low-pressure systems.

   Try it for 60 days. If your hair does not feel softer, email us a photo of the filter on your shower and we refund you, no need to post it back. Shipping is free and tracked: it ships within 1‑3 business days from our partner warehouse and arrives within 8‑14 business days. There are no reviews on our site yet, because we are new and we will not make any up.