SWAIR's Showerless Shampoo puts dry shampoo to shame. Here's how the founders created the revolutionary product.

Everyone wants to work hard, play hard, and then look good after doing it.

With our 9-5 workday lives, we’re always striving for balance in our routines. We’ll take it wherever we can get it in our fast-paced, crunched-for-time world. Adapting to a slower pace of life thanks to quarantine has been a savior for many. Forget commutes, long coffee lines, and rushing through your morning routine. The WFH lifestyle has revolutionized us all one way or another.

Haircare brand SWAIR is hoping to help you save time in the morning or after a workout with their revolutionary showerless shampoo. Not dry shampoo, showerless! It’s designed to clean your hair without actually showering. Unlike dry shampoo, which just reduces the look of oil temporarily, SWAIR’s showerless shampoo actually cleanses your hair without water.

SWAIR was created by two best friends, Carrie Sporer and Meredith Krill, who met each other when training for the 2007 NYC Marathon. The two have a love for working out together but long found it challenging to complete a speedy beauty routine when it came to their hair afterward.

Carrie and Meredith set out to create a product that would cleanse their hair without going through a full wash and dry. Since SWAIR‘s launch, they’ve been dedicated to helping people save time and prove that living an active lifestyle doesn’t have to get in the way of having a good hair day. With their debut product, Showerless Shampoo ($36) they’re hoping to cleanse hair without “suds, rinsing, or residue.”

The brand

Carrie and Meredith had been working out for years together before starting their workday, always chatting about which products helped them get out the door and to their office sooner. Morning routines can bring a lot of anxiety, especially if you’re trying to get your morning workout in before 7 AM.

“I would always plan it out. I only have 30 minutes to get ready today, so I can’t do a full wash and dry and I can’t get too sweaty. We would have to temper our workouts around our hair, which was really frustrating,” says Carrie.

Meredith and Carrie joke about how they have tried nearly every dry shampoo, all the serums, and of course, all of the sprays. After 10 years, they still didn’t have a clear winner to aid their post-workout hair.

Putting together their backgrounds in sales and finance, they made the leap to start researching hair care and the beauty industry. Carrie and Meredith figured there had to be more individuals like them, in search of a “showerless” type of product. It wasn’t long before calls with manufacturers ending up categorizing their idea as a form of dry shampoo. This miscategorization pushed them to define a list of “no’s” and be more direct about what the formula should feel and perform like.

Ingredients

“We were looking for a lab and creating a totally new category. [The manufacturers] were telling us they couldn’t make something effective with no lead. It really took a lot of pounding the pavement, connecting with the right lab and the right chemists that were actually excited about the challenge of making this product instead of being turned off by it,” says Meredith.

SWAIR’s website notes the list of “no’s” on the explore tab. The brand is vegan, cruelty, paraben, gluten, and alcohol-free. SWAIR estimates that consumers using Showerless Shampoo can cut down hair washing to twice a week, which also saves on water.

“If a normal shampoo takes you three minutes, you are saving a minimum of six gallons of water each week,” their website says. Saving 312 gallons per year doesn’t sound half bad. Water conservation is just one of the ways SWAIR is tying in sustainability to the brand mission.

The review

I was skeptical. As someone who loves a cold shower after a hot and sweaty workout, the thought of feeling “dirty” makes my skin crawl. After the summer of 2020, I really wanted to make some lifestyle changes and step out of my quarantine stupor and bad habits.

I started by incorporating 6 AM workouts into my daily schedule. Once I got home, I never felt like I had enough time to shower. I felt immediately overwhelmed by the number of pending projects I had to do at work that day, so I would either rush my shower or get to it later in the day. I could definitely see myself using and enjoying showerless shampoo because dry shampoo truly makes my hair feel ickier. Dry shampoo is one of those things where it looks better, but it feels filthy to the touch.

To use SWAIR’s showerless shampoo and unleash its hair-cleansing magic, you still need a towel as you would after a regular shower. After spraying it in your hair, your follicles and scalp basically feed the product with all the gunk your scalp is holding captive. Once the product has completely absorbed all the dirt and grime, give your head a good towel-off to remove everything.

You can either air dry or grab your blowdryer to get rid of the extra moisture. It’s not really “wet” but rather gel-like and frothy. I definitely recommend a few seconds of blow-drying after. This sh*t totally works – even on fine hair that struggles with grease and volume.

TLDR;

– SWAIR haircare hopes to redefine your post-workout beauty routine

– They launched Showerless Shampoo ($36) to get rid of all the sweat and gunk without any water

– All you need is a towel to give your hair a little “zhuzh” after using

BUY or BYE?

If you’re on the go and need to make it somewhere speedy after your morning workout or a mid-day yoga class, this is a great product to use. When dry shampoo doesn’t cut it, you can really bring some life back into your locks with this. Dirt and sweat be gone! Buy HERE ($36).