Trader Joe's New Dry Shampoo is Good. And Terrible. Here's How To Make It Work

I consider myself a dry shampoo connoisseur. I have VERY strong feelings about which are the best, and how to use them to their full potential. Years of trial and error have led me to my current routine. I wash my hair and let it air dry overnight. In the morning, I use Not Your Mother’s Dry Shampoo (my favorite is purple, but green is also good, and comes in different varieties like tinted or unscented). This is the number one trick for dry shampoo: It works best on CLEAN HAIR. If you’re trying to use dry shampoo to rescue your hair that needed to be washed yesterday? It’s going to fail. So day one of clean hair, I put in a “base layer” of dry shampoo, from an aerosol can. Then, that day and every day after until I wash my hair, I use a micellar dry shampoo after I work out (I put three to the test, and described how best to use them, here). I put my hair up in a clip and just let it be till the next morning. I wake up and brush my hair out, and the process starts all over again.

I can get away with washing my hair once a week, but the last two days are a bit grim. I usually go for washing twice a week. I exercise every day, and I get sweaty, but you couldn’t tell from my hair. I’ve finally found the perfect system.

OR HAVE I??

I was certain I had cracked The Case of How to Dry Shampoo, but while I love finding a solution to a problem, I’m always on the lookout for something better. There’s always room for improvement! So when Trader Joe’s, a surprisingly decent place to buy beauty products, came out with a dry shampoo of their own, I had to try it. And it’s both fantastic and terrible!

First, the good. It’s non-aerosol, which some people prefer (the anti-aerosol lobby is up there with chiropractic and TurboTax, ie upsettingly, shockingly powerful). It’s cheap ($5!) but effective. Plus you can pick it up when you’re getting all your TJ’s goodies. It also smells lovely. I would buy a whole range of products with whatever this scent is. Give me a shampoo/conditioner, a body wash, a lotion… I’ll take it all. The small size means it’s easy to travel with, or you could keep it in your car or gym bag. I have no idea when any of those things will apply to me, but someday we will return to the days of trips and gym bags! The formula is really nice, and it soaks up oil and volumizes without making your hair feel gritty or stiff or full of gunk. It is white, and I have no idea how it will work on dark hair, but on my blonde-ish hair it’s unnoticeable. (Another trick is to never put dry shampoo on the top of your hair. Always lift up sections of hair and apply underneath them, at the root. Then give it a little massage to work it in there.)

I was going to take a series of photos explaining how this overly complicated pump is meant to work, but it DOESN’T work so what’s the point?!

Now, the bad. The bottle this dry shampoo comes in is unusable. And I don’t mean hyperbolically, I just wish it were different. It is literally impossible to use. I tried. I took the bottle apart and examined the mechanisms and tried to clean the pump and shook the bottle after every poof of product. It just doesn’t work. The only “fix” I found that still used the original bottle was to unscrew the top, place a foundation brush over the bottle, flip it over to get some dry shampoo on the brush, then apply the dry shampoo on my hair with the makeup brush. As you can imagine, this method takes a lot longer, is messier, and fills me with resentment because the bottle SHOULD WORK.

Some people LIKE the makeup brush method of application. Just be sure it’s a densely packed brush, like this kabuki foundation brush.

There’s no way I was going to give up on this dry shampoo (I liked it maybe better than my beloved Not Your Mother’s) and I couldn’t find a way to get the bottle to work without making it a whole ordeal, so I started looking for other bottles to decant it into. Because of my investigative, curious spirit, I now not only know about how this overly-complicated TJ’s Dry Shampoo bottle works, I also know how OTHER bottles work. I know it ALL. I knew Klorane (another fave dry shampoo, my #1 before I found NYM) made a non-aerosol version of their dry shampoo, and I tried to figure out how that bottle worked and how I could buy a bottle just like it. Turns out, it was virtually impossible to buy just one poof bottle (I did not make this up, the best search results come from “poof bottle”), and the easiest solution was to just get a bottle of the Klorane. So I did.

And I took it apart. (It sounds more dramatic than it was. The top just screws off.) And finally I found the non-aerosol dry shampoo bottle I was dreaming of. So simple! So straightforward. So FUNCTIONAL. Whereas the TJ’s bottle is a pump system, where you press down on the nozzle and a spring and a bunch of interlocking plastic pieces (attempt to) bring the product up and out, the Klorane is simple. You turn the top so the nozzle is exposed, and you squeeze the bottle. The pressure pushes product up the tube and out the top. You can squeeze it many times in a row and it still works. Occasionally you give it a shake just to keep things clear and moving along, but I have used it many times and it’s always worked. And the product is good too!

Overall I think I prefer these non-aerosol formulas to NYM. The product seems to last a LOT longer, and you actually need a little less. I don’t know how much product is just lost to the ether when you spray an aerosol, or how much of that bottle is just AIR. It is a more involved process applying non-aerosol dry shampoo, and I still get it all over me when I apply (although less than I did at first). But I’ve developed a method where I don’t’ wear a shirt (so it doesn’t end up covered in dry shampoo dust) and I apply from the bottom of my hair up. I pull up all my hair but a little mullet, and I poof dry shampoo on the roots. then I let down another layer of hair, spray the roots, and continue till I don’t have any hair left clipped up. I flip my head over and give it a little tousle, then brush out. I can add more product anywhere I think I need it (usually around my temples), and that’s it! This takes longer than my haphazard method with an aerosol can, but we’re talking 2 1/2 minutes vs 90 seconds - not a big deal. Plus I’m still new at it. I bet I can shave down that time with practice.

So here’s my plan: I’m going to use up this Klorane dry shampoo, then refill it with Trader Joe’s dry shampoo. The TJ’s stuff works just as well, plus it’s cheaper and smells lovely. Added bonus: It will allow me to know when they swap out that cursed bottle for something that actually works.

UPDATE:

The Trader Joe’s Dry Shampoo does eventually clog the Klorane bottle and makes it unusable as well. Plus, my scalp was getting itchy and I realized the TJ’s Dry Shampoo was the culprit. I no longer recommend this product. The FAR BETTER product is Kristin Ess Fragrance Free Dry Shampoo. I wrote a whole post about it here, and did an in-depth comparison between it and Trader Joe’s. (Yes, I did try putting the TJ’s product into the Kristin Ess bottle and YES, it did once again fail.)