Hair Care

Salon-line shampoo and supermarket shampoo:

share most Guatemalan bathrooms but are bought for different reasons. Supermarket shampoo and conditioner are the everyday buy, in big family bottles. Salon lines, the professional brands sold at beauty-supply counters and by stylists themselves, come in small bottles for trying and salon-size bottles with a pump, and they are what people move to after colour or a straightening. Leave-in creams, gels and oils go into damp hair and stay there. Box dye is sold by shade number with its developer and gloves inside, and only makes sense bought unopened. Hair dryers, flat irons and curling wands sit under hair styling tools, and body wash and bar soap under bath and shower.

Shampoo for hair that has been dyed, bleached or straightened:

is where the label matters more than the brand. Bottles say what the hair has been through: colour-treated, bleached, curly, or for use after a keratin straightening, and many of the after-keratin lines are labelled sulfate-free, which is what stylists tell clients to look for. If you had a straightening done, buy the name the salon gave you rather than guessing from the front of a bottle. People following the curly method read the ingredient list before anything else, so a listing that shows the back label is the one they answer. Try a salon line in a small bottle; the big pump bottle pays off once you know it suits you.

The small salon bottle and the supermarket family size:

sit a long way apart on price. A small bottle of salon-line shampoo costs around Q120 to Q300 at a Guatemalan beauty-supply counter, while a supermarket bottle several times the size runs from about Q30 to Q90, depending on the brand. The salon-size pump bottle brings the cost of each wash down a good deal, but only once you know the line suits your hair. That is why a sealed salon bottle nobody is going to open is worth listing: it is the same product for less than the counter asks.

Foil seals, copied labels and shampoo that has turned:

are what to look at before paying. Many salon bottles come with a foil seal under the cap or a pump locked down; if the brand uses one and it is missing, the bottle has been opened. Copies of the best-known salon lines circulate, and they show it in blurred printing, a label sitting crooked, thin plastic that dents under your fingers and a price that makes no sense against the counter. Product split from a salon-size bottle into an unlabelled one cannot be checked at all. An opened bottle, however full, cannot prove what got into it, so look for product that has separated into layers, gone watery or darker, or smells sour. Ask where it was kept: a parked car or a sunny window spoils it sooner. With box dye, the tubes and the developer bottle should be sealed, the box whole, and the shade number the same as the one in the listing.

The back label and the fill level:

are what a buyer wants to see before answering. Photograph the front and back labels, hold an opened bottle up to the light so the level shows, and say when you bought it. If a seal is broken, say so, even if you only tried it once. A stylist clearing a line the salon no longer carries does better listing each sealed bottle on its own with its size than one mixed box. For dye, put the shade number in the title. A buyer coming in from Jutiapa for a sealed after-keratin shampoo and conditioner will turn each bottle over to check the seal and the back label before paying, so bring them boxed with the caps untouched.