You pull your goggles off at the end of the lane, rake your fingers back through your hair, and it squeaks. Not the clean kind — the dry, grabbing kind, where your fingers stop halfway down.
That rough, straw-like feeling a few hours after a swim is what most people mean by swimmers hair. It is not a disease and not permanent, but it is real, and if you swim two or three times a week through an Australian summer it builds up faster than most advice online admits.
The quick answer: swimmers hair is dryness and cuticle roughening caused by chlorine stripping the natural oil layer off your hair, swim after swim. The two things that help most are saturating your hair with fresh water before you get in, and washing it with a gentle, sulphate-free shampoo and conditioner reasonably soon after you get out. No leave-in product removes chlorine on its own — rinsing and washing do that.
What swimmers hair actually is
Healthy hair has a thin layer of sebum — your scalp's own oil — coating each strand, over a cuticle that lies flat like roof tiles. That is what makes hair feel slippery and keeps water moving in and out of the strand slowly.
Chlorine is in a pool because it is an oxidiser: it breaks down organic material, which is why the water stays safe — and your sebum is organic material. Spend forty minutes in a chlorinated pool and that oil layer is largely gone. With nothing on top of it, the cuticle lifts, catches on its neighbours, and hair that felt smooth on the way in feels rough on the way out.
Why does chlorine damage hair
Two things happen at once. The stripping above is reversible: your scalp makes more sebum, and conditioner replaces some of that slip meanwhile. The second is not — repeated oxidation gradually alters the keratin in the cuticle, so each strand becomes rougher and more porous over a season, and porous hair loses moisture faster. That is why the dryness seems worse in February than November, and why it shows at the ends first, where the hair is oldest. If yours is snapping rather than just feeling dry, our guide on how to reduce hair breakage and keep length covers what is happening further down the strand.
Salt water pools are still chlorine pools
This is the most common misunderstanding we hear from Australian customers. A salt water pool is not a chlorine-free pool: a chlorinator splits the dissolved salt and generates chlorine on site instead of you adding it from a bottle. The sanitiser doing the work is still chlorine. Salt water pools do run at a lower, steadier level and feel gentler on skin and eyes — but if your hair goes dry and squeaky in one, that is not your imagination, and switching pool types will not fix it.
The ocean is a different problem: sea water dehydrates rather than oxidises, drawing water out of the strand and leaving salt behind as a crust, which is why beach hair feels stiff and gritty rather than squeaky.
Pre swim hair protection that actually works
Good pre swim hair protection is mostly about saturation. Dry hair behaves like a sponge, taking up whatever liquid hits it first; hair already soaked with clean tap water has far less capacity left, so less pool water gets in. Almost everything sold as chlorine hair protection works on this principle, with a conditioning layer on top.
- Soak your hair before you get in. Thirty seconds under fresh water, wet through to the scalp, not just damp on top.
- Add something conditioning while it is wet. A leave-in mist, a conditioner you do not rinse out, or a light oil through the ends all slow water exchange further.
- Put it up, loosely. A plait keeps your ends out of the water. Avoid tight elastics — wet hair stretches further before it breaks, so tension does more damage than it would dry.
- A cap helps, within reason. No silicone cap is watertight, but a well-fitted one over soaked, conditioned hair meaningfully reduces how much pool water reaches it.
Does a swim leave in conditioner do anything
Yes, but be clear about the mechanism. A swim leave in conditioner works as a barrier and a lubricant: it occupies space on the outside of the strand that pool water would otherwise take, and keeps hair slippery so it tangles less and combs out more easily afterwards. That is a real effect.
What it does not do is neutralise chlorine or undo oxidation already done. Anything sold as making hair chlorine-proof is overselling. It will not protect against UV either, unless it contains a UV filter — and most leave-in mists, including ours, do not.
Washing swimmers hair after you get out
The longer chlorine and salt sit on your hair, the longer they keep working, and this is the step most often skipped because people are cold or late. If you do only one thing, rinse: two minutes under the change room shower with plain fresh water, hair soaked and squeezed through with your hands, removes a surprising amount.
Use a gentle shampoo, not a harsh one. This is where a lot of swim advice goes wrong. In a six-morning squad week there is a case for a clarifying shampoo once a week. But using a strongly stripping shampoo after every swim means your hair gets stripped twice — once by the pool, once by you. For most people, a mild sulphate-free shampoo plus a proper conditioner is the better routine.
Condition the lengths every time, and be gentle while it is wet. Not the scalp — the mid-lengths and ends, which lost the oil layer. Squeeze water out with a towel rather than rubbing, and comb from the ends upwards with a wide-tooth comb. Chlorine-roughened hair catches on itself, and this is where most swim-season breakage actually happens. If yours has ever dried into a solid knot, our guide on how to detangle matted hair without cutting it walks through the patient version.
Chlorine, salt and sun: the Australian version
Most swim-hair advice online is written for an indoor northern-hemisphere pool. That is not the Australian experience. Here the pool is usually outdoors, the season runs October to March, and the UV index is high while you are in the water — so hair is oxidised by chlorine and photodegraded by sun at once, with the oil layer that would normally take some of that already gone.
Two things follow. Damage accumulates faster than a single-factor article suggests, which is why hair that coped with weekly winter laps feels rougher by January. And shade matters more than another bottle of product: a cap in the water, a hat on the deck, and hair kept up out of direct sun while it dries will do more across a season than anything you spray on.
Where Long and Strong fits in a swim routine
If you swim regularly, the wash afterwards decides whether your hair feels like straw or like hair again. That is the job Long and Strong is built for: a three-step shampoo, conditioner and leave-in mist, made in small batches in Australia, from $69. Because it is a sulphate-free shampoo and conditioner, it lifts pool water and salt off without stripping whatever natural oil the chlorine left behind. You get out of the shower with soft, smooth, shiny hair that combs through instead of squeaking.
How to use it around a swim. Rinse with fresh water at the pool. At home, shampoo once, focusing on the scalp where the sweat and sunscreen are, then work the conditioner through the mid-lengths and ends and leave it while you finish your shower. Comb through with it still in, rinse, squeeze dry. For the step before you get in, our Coco Aloe Mist Spray works as the light leave-in — through soaked hair before you leave the change room, and again on damp hair afterwards to help it comb out.
What neither product can do, plainly. What you feel straight away: soft, slippery hair that tangles less, smoother, shinier lengths all swim season, and less breakage from dragging a comb through rough, dry hair. If you already have chlorine damaged hair, nothing undoes it — you manage it gently and trim the roughest ends over time, and how to strengthen brittle hair naturally covers what else helps. The rest of the range is in our hair collection.
Common questions about swimmers hair
Why does chlorine turn hair green
It is not the chlorine itself. Green hair from chlorine is actually copper — from pool algaecides, copper pipework or the water supply — which oxidises in chlorinated water and binds to the hair's surface. Lighter, more porous hair shows it because there is less of your own pigment to hide it, which is why blonde, grey and bleached hair goes green and dark hair does not. Because it is a mineral bound to the strand, no ordinary shampoo will shift it: that takes a chelating product, worth asking your hairdresser about rather than guessing at home.
How to get chlorine out of hair
Rinse with fresh water as soon as you are out, then shampoo and condition at home. Water does most of the work: chlorine is water-soluble, and a long rinse genuinely dilutes it away. For heavy swimmers a clarifying shampoo once a week helps with residue, but daily use leaves hair drier than the pool did.
Is chlorine making my hair break
What chlorine can do is make existing hair fragile enough to break, which can look like shedding in the shower drain. Broken hair has a blunt end partway down the strand; shed hair comes out full length with a small pale bulb. If you are genuinely shedding more, swimming is unlikely to be the cause, and it is worth a chat with your GP.
Is swimmers hair treatment different from ordinary conditioning
Mostly not. Products sold as swimmers hair treatment are usually either a chelating shampoo for mineral residue or a rich conditioning mask, both of which exist outside the swim aisle. The rest is a gentle wash and a good conditioner.
When to see a GP or dermatologist
Dry, rough hair through swim season is cosmetic, and a routine change usually settles it. Some things are not, and no shampoo is the answer to them.
- A scalp that stays itchy, red, flaking, weeping or sore, especially in weeks when you are not swimming.
- Hair coming out noticeably more than usual over weeks or months, a visibly widening part, or patches where the scalp shows through.
- Any rash, hives, swelling or breathing symptoms after swimming, which may point to a chlorine sensitivity rather than hair damage.
- Hair snapping close to the scalp, or a change in texture that does not match your swim history.
Any of those is worth a conversation with your GP, who can refer you to a dermatologist if needed. Scalp conditions and genuine hair loss are easier to sort out when identified properly, and easy to lose months on by cycling through products instead.
The short version
Soak your hair before you get in, condition it, keep it up out of the water, rinse the moment you are out, and wash with something gentle rather than something fierce. Chlorine will still roughen your hair over a summer of swimming — the aim is to slow it down and avoid the breakage that comes from handling dry, tangled hair roughly. We make our shampoos, conditioners and soaps in small batches here in Sydney, cruelty-free and with zero nasties, and you can see the rest at Tasic Pure Oils, an Australian natural skincare brand.
