Haircare tips for Holi from Anushka Sharma!

The Bollywood starlet provides tips to keep your hair glossy and undamaged during the Festival of Colours.

Holi is back! It's that time of the year to play with colour and have fun with your loved ones. Each colour has its own significance and the festival is meaningless without them.

But coloured powders are harmful to skin and damage hair. Most sold these days contain extremely harmful chemicals, heavy metals, acids and powdered glass and the bases in which these chemicals are mixed are highly toxic and affect your mane and complexion. But this doesn't need to stop you from having fun this Holi.

Anushka Sharma shares these tips with her fans to have a rocking Festival of Colours:

• Oiling your hair thoroughly before jumping into the playing area can go a long way in taking care of your hair.
• Post a wash after Holi, massage your scalp and do a good champi with coconut oil. This is the best treatment to regain the shine in your hair.
• Wear a hair-band/scarf or a bandana around your head to protect your hair from getting tangled or damaged due to artificial colour.
• If your hair is too dry, then hot oil accompanied by a hot towel treatment should be performed the next day. This will help the hair retain its lustre.

Dr Rashmi Shetty, hair specialist with the Parachute Advanced Knowledge centre has these tips to add to Anushka's:

• A coconut oil massage for your hair before you go out to play Holi is an absolute must. Applying coconut hair oil to your scalp acts as a barrier and prevents colours from coming in direct contact with hair and will lessen the damage.
• Coconut oil achieves up to 90 percent hair penetration right through to the cortex, thus forming a protective layer around your hair, preventing it from the damaging effects of not only colour, but heat and dirt, because the molecules are arranged in a linear fashion and light chained. Therefore, it can pass through the outer cuticle.
• Since coconut oil is very light, a single shampoo will remove the unwanted extra grease, unlike other oils which may require multiple shampooing and thus result in dry hair.

Enjoy the festival without being worried about your tresses. Have a happy and safe Holi.