Natural Hair Gel – Make an Easy and Natural Recipe - Simple Life Mom (2024)

I’ve only had to use hair gel on certain occasions. I’m a low maintenance gal. But there are times when I want to use natural hair gel, because I, of course, want it to be a healthy product.

I also recently discovered that teenage boys and sometimes girls in dance performances need to use hair gel. I don’t want to disallow all use of such products (hoping to work with my children and have them LOVE our natural lifestyle instead of hating it). This is actually what really set me to investigating and testing various recipes and tweaking compositions until I found what I love.

I decided to make my own hair gel at home to save money, control ingredients, and provide something for my teens to use. And of course, it’s great to have another self sufficient project under my belt, so to speak.

There is GOOD REASON to make your own natural hair gel!

Check out some common ingredients in most gels: Propylene Glycol, Fragrance, Polysorbate-20, Isosteareth-20, Tetrasodium Edta, Dmdm Hydantoin (a formaldehyde releaser, which is horrible), Benzophenone-4, and artificial coloring.

That alone should be a big motivator to find a healthy gel in the market or make your own.

It’s also very frugal. When you have simple ingredients that work, you can quickly whip up what you know is healthy and have those on hand for the next time you need to make more.

Does Natural Hair Gel Really Work?

There are homemade natural hair gel recipes all over the web using either unflavored gelatin or flaxseed as a thickener. This placed in the hair and allowed to dry should work, right? Well, I’m here to be your guinea pig.

This first time I made this gel it sat in the fridge and didn’t thicken whatsoever. So I tried again with a little more gelatin. It then became a wonderful gel consistency; not hard like jello, but not like water either. So far so good.

Next, was the testing.

I tried it in my hair first. It actually worked as any store bought gel has ever worked in my hair. It held my curls nicely.

I added a bit more to one area and it became really stiff and maintained a wet look to it. Since this is what store bought gel will do as well, I counted it as a success.

I did have to pick a few white pieces out of my hair of hardened gelatin, but only 2-3. So again, that effort seemed well worth it.

Last, I tried it on my son’s hair. It spiked wonderfully and held great. Again, I noticed a few white specks that I had to pick out, but that was really easy to watch for and do as soon as it finished drying.

All in all, super impressed!!

This is what I’m going to MAKE and USE when it comes to boys wanting to spike their hair or girls needing to hold back fly away hairs for up-do’s. So easy to make and it works well.

There honestly is no reason why I will ever use harsh, man-made chemicals again.

Homemade Natural Hair Gel Recipe

Gelatin: I use unflavored gelatin. You can find pasture raised beef gelatin by clicking here or if you don’t care about that you can go to the jello isle in your supermarket and find unflavored gelatin (sometimes it’s in a different area like by the pie making ingredients). You can also use a vegan gelatin type powder like Maca, though it is more expensive.

Essential Oils: I like to add a drop of rosemary essential oil to each batch. This is great for the scalp after being diluted and incorporated. It also helps preserve the mixture.

Check out Starwest Botanicals. They’re an affiliate and have been around for over 40 years and are well respected with great products that I use often in natural bath and beauty products and soap making.

Natural Hair Gel Recipe

Ingredients:

• ½teaspoonunflavored gelatin
• ½cupfiltered hot water
• 1droprosemary essential oil

Instructions

1. Combine water, gelatin and stir until dissolved.1/2 teaspoon unflavored gelatin,1/2 cup filtered hot water
2. Add essential oils and stir.1 drop rosemary essential oil
3. Allow to set in the refrigerator.
4. Keep in a closed container until ready to use.

Use the printable version below if needed. Don’t forget to save it for later.

Let your friends know that there is a great NATURAL alternative for Hair Gel!