Is The Keracare Hydrating Detangling Shampoo All It’s Hyped Up To Be?

If you asked someone in the relaxed hair community what moisturizing shampoo they recommended probably the majority of the time they would say the Keracare Hydrating Detangling Shampoo.

Some of the big relaxed hair influencers like Hairlicious and Healthy Hair Junkie use the Keracare shampoo pretty consistently. And it’s always a recommended shampoo when people ask for recommendations or ask what shampoo have you been using.

Two Keracare Hydrating Detangling shampoo bottles on a marble background.



Keracare describes the shampoo as “a beauty bath for hair that produces a rich lather as it lightly conditions and cleanses hair.” Reading this the shampoo sounds wonderful! No wonder so many have tried out this shampoo but does it live up to the claims and hype?

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Because of all of this hype, I put this shampoo on my future use list even though I had a couple of moisturizing shampoos that I’d been using and was seeing good results from - the TGIN Moisture Rich Sulfate Free Shampoo and the Joico Moisture Recovery Shampoo. I like trying new hair products and it doesn’t hurt to have a shortlist of products you know work for your hair in case your favorite is discontinued or out of stock when you need to repurchase.

During a Sally Beauty sale, I purchased a couple of bottles of the Keracare Hydrating Detangling Shampoo. The shampoo sat in my stash for a few months before I pulled it out. What compelled me to start using it is that after moving to North Carolina I realized that I didn’t need to use a sulfate shampoo regularly like I did in Florida. Since the Keracare Hydrating Detangling Shampoo is sulfate-free I decided to use it instead of the Joico Moisture Recovery Shampoo.

Yep, this shampoo is sulfate-free. Some other good and interesting aspects of the Keracare Hydrating Detangling Shampoo are its claims to
  • Moisturize the hair as it conditions it
  • Helps minimize hair breakage
  • Decreases interfiber friction
  • Repairs damaged areas along the hair shaft and fly-away split ends Improves cuticle alignment
  • Seals hair cuticles as it repairs damaged hair
  • Have superior detangling for easy wet and dry combing
  • Leave the hair soft and shiny

After my first use of the shampoo, I can’t say that I really noticed any of these things happening to my hair. My hair was left feeling a little drier than normal and I was glad that I detangled before washing my hair as there was no slip.

I was not impressed.


Worried that I had a bad bottle, I checked it out but that didn’t seem to be the case. I also checked to make sure I had the right shampoo and I did. So why wasn’t this working for my relaxed hair?

I was curious and did some digging and found some comments and posts in the relaxed hair community groups that I’m a part of mentioning that this shampoo left their relaxed hair feeling matted or dry. So I wasn’t the only one who didn’t have the positive experience I was expecting

It also dawned on me that I had used this shampoo as the second lather after my clarifying shampoo. So I gave the Keracare Hydrating Detangling Shampoo a second try using it as the first lather and my go-to sulfate-free moisturizing shampoo the TGIN Moisture Rich Sulfate Free Shampoo as the second lather. The results were much better.

Same with the third use. I used Keracare for the first lather and TGIN for the second and had better results than my first use of the shampoo. I still wasn’t sold on it and feel like I should have been by then.


Since that third use, I’ve been using an applicator bottle to apply the Keracare shampoo. This is how I prefer to apply my shampoos but I haven’t been doing that for a while. To do this I squirt a little of the shampoo into the applicator bottle and then mix it with twice as much water. This creates a great lather and I can apply the shampoo more directly to my scalp.

Since I started using the applicator bottle I’ve started to like the shampoo more as I feel like it’s working better because it’s lathering better than it had been and I don’t have to use as much as I had been to have my hair feel clean.

I haven’t determined if it helps with detangling my hair because I detangle before I shampoo and when I first started using it I had about 9 weeks of new growth.

Over the last few weeks, I have noticed my hair is softer, looks shiner, and feels more moisturized. I’m not sure though that I can attribute that to Keracare as there’s been a couple of weeks where I didn’t use the shampoo and my hair was still really soft, shiny, and moisturized. I do think the shampoo has helped with that but that isn’t the sole cause. I do think it has played a large role in helping to decrease hair breakage.

I plan on using up the two bottles that I have. As of now, once those bottles are finished I don’t plan on re-purchasing. I do think it’s a good shampoo, but I'm not sure it’s THE shampoo for me. Could my opinion change, yes it could. The more I use it the more I may come to like it.


What’s been your experience with the Keracare Hydrating Detangling Shampoo?


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