I can hardly believe it, but I don’t think I’ve ever shared a formula for a leave-in hair conditioner before. I’ve had plenty of requests, but somehow such a thing has slipped through the cracks—until now! This lightweight Rosé Leave In Hair Conditioner helps hydrate, smooth, and re-vitalize hair between washes, and it smells delightful to boot!
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This lovely Rosé Leave In Hair Conditioner marks the start of a new series—Rosé! I thought it was a theme perfectly suited to late spring/early summer, so you’ll be seeing formulas with these theme roll out over the coming months. The core ingredients are both from Plant’s Power; their rich, juicy rose hydrosol, and their unique green cognac essential oil. The rose hydrosol will likely be familiar, but I’m betting the green cognac essential oil will be new to many of you, as it was new to me. It’s the essential oil made from green cognac grapes, and to me it smells of crisp, fresh white or rosé wine. It doesn’t have the weight of red wine, and doesn’t smell boozy—just fresh, crisp, and lovely. Paired with rose hydrosol and some citrussy grapefruit we end up with a scent blend that is beautifully reminiscent of mid-afternoon picnics in a beautiful French jardin with a bottle of rosé, a baguette, and a punnet of freshly picked strawberries. J’adore!
Because this is a leave-in conditioner, I’ve kept the oil phase quite small—just 4%, equal parts beautiful argan oil and conditioning BTMS-50. I have type 1B hair, which isn’t very tolerant of oils, but if your hair loves oil more you can double or even triple the oil phase, removing the extra amount from the distilled water. This will result in a richer, thicker end product (that would also work really well as a rinse-out conditioner for hair like mine).
Our water phase is mostly fragrant rose hydrosol, with panthenol (vitamin B5) for shine, cetrimonium chloride for detangling and added conditioning, and sodium lactate for humectant-y goodness.
In our cool down phase you’ll find our essential oil blend and some super cool hydrolyzed rice protein. Hydrolyzed rice protein contains both positively and negatively charged proteins, which means they repel one another—giving our hair volume! How cool is that?! You can learn more about hydrolyzed rice protein in the encyclopedia here.
This Rosé Leave In Hair Conditioner comes together just like a lotion, but because of the small oil phase it doesn’t thicken up like you might expect a lotion to thicken. It does thicken a wee but, but if you’re using an immersion blender to blast your emulsion together I think you’ll find it’s still pretty splatter-prone, so be careful!
I chose to store mine in little 30mL (1fl oz) squeeze bottles with turret tops (gifts galore from a 100g [3.5oz] batch!). I found a 100g (3.5oz) batch filled three 30mL (1fl oz) bottles perfectly. Because of the low viscosity of the end product I’d recommend something well suited to dispensing small amounts of runny product, like a treatment pump or a bottle with a small opening.
I love how the finished conditioner makes my hair feel—it tames flyaways beautifully and leaves my hair feeling soft, super comb-able, and generally well behaved. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
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Rosé Leave-In Hair Conditioner
Heated water phase
37.95g | 37.95% distilled water
50g | 50% rose hydrosol
2g | 2% panthenol powder (vitamin B5) (USA / Canada)
0.8g | 0.8% cetrimonium chloride (30% solution) (USA / Canada)
2g | 2% sodium lactate (60% solution)Heated oil phase
2g | 2% BTMS-50 (USA / Canada)
2g | 2% argan oil (USA / Canada)Cool down phase
0.5g | 0.5% green cognac essential oil
0.25g | 0.25% grapefruit essential oil
2g | 2% hydrolyzed rice protein (USA / Canada)
0.5g | 0.5% Liquid Germall Plus™ (USA / Canada)Prepare a water bath by bringing about 3cm/1″ of water to a bare simmer over low to medium-low heat in a wide, flat-bottomed sauté pan.
Weigh the heated water phase into a small heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Weigh the entire lot (measuring cup + ingredients) and note that weight for use later. Weigh the heated oil phase into a second heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Place both measuring cups in your prepared water bath to melt everything through.
After about 20–30 minutes the oil part should be completely melted (if not, give it a quick blast in the microwave—I find the BTMS-50 tends to need a bit of a kick in the pants to melt) and the water part should be thoroughly dissolved. Remove the water bath from the heat and weigh it. Add enough hot distilled water to bring the weight back up to what it was before heat and hold, and then pour the water part into the oil part. Stir with a flexible silicone spatula to incorporate.
Grab your immersion blender and begin blending the conditioner, starting with short bursts so the still-very-liquid conditioner doesn’t whirl up and spray everywhere. Blend for about a minute, leave to cool for ten, blend for another minute or two, and repeat this blend-cool-blend cycle until the outside of the glass measuring cup is barely warm to the touch and the conditioner is thick and creamy.
When the conditioner is cool it’s time to incorporate our cool down ingredients. Because cool down ingredients are typically present at very low amounts you’ll need to use an accurate scale—preferably one accurate to 0.01g. As these more accurate scales tend to have fairly low (100–200g) maximum weights you won’t be able to put the entire batch of lotion on that scale without blowing it out. So—grab a smaller dish. Add a scoop or two of conditioner, and then weigh the cool down ingredients into that, using the more accurate scale. Stir to thoroughly incorporate, and then stir all of that back into the master batch of lotion. Doing it this way minimizes the amount of cool down ingredients lost to the secondary container.
And you’re done! All that’s left to do is bottle it up. I used three 30mL (1fl oz) HDPE bottles with turret caps and gifted the other two to friends.
To use, spread a few drops of the conditioner across your palms and work into your hair, repeating as necessary.
Shelf Life & Storage
Because this conditioner contains water, you must include a broad-spectrum preservative to ward off microbial growth. This is non-optional. Even with a preservative this project is likely to eventually spoil as our kitchens are not sterile laboratories, so in the event you notice any change in colour, scent, or texture, chuck it out and make a fresh batch.
Substitutions
As always, be aware that making substitutions will change the final product. While these swaps won’t break the recipe, you will get a different final product than I did.
- As I’ve provided this recipe in percentages as well as grams you can easily calculate it to any size using a simple spreadsheet as I’ve explained in this post. As written in grams this recipe will make 100g.
- To learn more about the ingredients used in this recipe, including why they’re included and what you can substitute them with, please visit the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia. It doesn’t have everything in it yet, but there’s lots of good information there! If I have not given a specific substitution suggestion in this list please look up the ingredient in the encyclopedia before asking.
- You can use a different hydrosol in place of the rose hydrosol, or more water. Keep in mind this will impact the scent of the end product.
- You could try glycerin or sodium lactate instead of the panthenol.
- A different conditioning ingredient like polyquaternium 7 or honeyquat could work in place of the cetrimonium chloride.
- I don’t recommend swapping out the BTMS-50. BTMS-25 will work, but it has half the conditioning power and there’s already such a low amount of BTMS in this formula that halving it will have a very noticeable impact. You could try Varisoft EQ 65, but I don’t find it to be a very strong conditioner (be sure to meet its pH requirements if you use it).
- You can use a different liquid oil your hair loves instead of argan oil.
- You can use a different essential oil blend.
- You can use a different hydrolyzed protein instead of hydrolyzed rice protein.
- If you’re like to use a different preservative, please review this page.
Gifting Disclosure
The rose hydrosol and green cognac essential oil were gifted by Plant’s Power.
Marie you read my mind!! I’ve been using your recipes for cleansing conditioners for a year or so, and a leave in oil on my roots but have been wanting to make something lighter for summer!!! I cant wait to make this, and thank you so much for sharing with us!!!! Obsessed with your blog.
Thank you so much, Elizabeth! I hope you love it 😀
Could I add vege Keratin to this? if so could you recommend at what percentage and which item I would deduct the percentage from ? I have some I ordered by mistake now Im trying to figure out places to include it. Thanks
Veg keratin is a hydrolyzed protein, so use it instead of the hydrolyzed protein 🙂
This scent combination sounds so delectable! I was thinking about skipping this recipe, only because my hair is fine and oily. Literally got a haircut today and my haircut guy told me, unprompted, that I should use a leave in conditioner. So guess who’s buying some cetrimonium chloride! Can’t wait to try this out!
Ha, what a funny coincidence! Happy making 😀
I made no changes other than leaving out the essential oils and ended up with a cup of thick foam! Four hours later and it’s still all poufy and fluffy! What the heck?!? Is this a Deep South thing?!? Lol
Mine is split into emulsified foam on top and liquid below. I’m wondering what I did wrong.
Hey! Did you make any substitutions? What did you blend it with? And lastly, what was your batch size?
Lori sounds like it didn’t emulsify which may have bought the separation, that’s usually due to not high enough starting temps, I like my oils and water phase to be relatively withing 5 degrees within each other. just my two cents. 😉
omg the same happened to me! did you figure out how it was fixed? i tried the below ratios but still couldn’t get them to emulsify. i did scale to 120 grams, but that shouldn’t have affected anything as long as the percentages remained the same, right?
92.75% water phase (water + hydrosol) : 4% oil phase (btms 50 + camellia oil)
92.5% water phase : 4% oil phase (btms 50 + camellia oil)
91.5% water phase: 5% oil phase (btms 50 + camellia oil)
I fixed it! For anyone else having this problem, just thought I’d share that it helped when after pouring the (heated) water into the (heated) oil I stirred them first with my spatula to “incorporate” the ingredients before using an immersion blender. I’m sure there’s a better way to explain this, but it’s what worked for me.
Hmm, weird! What are you using to blend it up? How big was your batch?
I followed your directions exactly, and here’s the weird thing…I let it sit for a couple of days and now it’s completely emulsified! Plus, it’s the best thing I’ve EVER used on my hair that is DIY! I’ve been using your recipes for 2 years now and have LOVED all of the face and body products. None of your hair recipes, though, have worked as well as store-bought products on my hair…until this recipe! My hair is thick and curly but gets greasy easily. This made my hair silky smooth, with manageable curls and no greasy residue. I’m so glad I let it sit for two days…I’m going to use this recipe forever!!! Thank you so much!
Strange indeed, but I’m glad it all worked out in the end and you’re loving it 😀 Thanks for DIYing with me, and happy making 🙂
Hello Marie,
I couldn’t help but notice that when you add up the quantities you get 98% instead of 100%. I would really like to get this right from the start, just to avoid of a batch going bad. Should I add 2% more of water to get to 100%?
Hi!
I carefully listened to your video and what is missing from the ingredients list is 2% sodium lactate.
Thank you so much.
I’m going to try this and give a feedback should I have any problems.
Thanks for catching that, Stella! I wonder if that’s why some people’s emulsions aren’t turning out. You saved me (and others) from making that mistake and potentially throwing a batch out.
I wouldn’t think that would impact the stability of the emulsion, but perhaps more research is in order 🙂 And yes, thank you Stella!
Ah, whoops! Thank you so much for catching that mistake with the sodium lactate—I have updated the post and the video description 🙂
Woohoo! A leave in conditioner!
This is a slightly tangential question: I dilute commercial leave in conditioner with distilled water to make an everyday detangler for brushing out my daughter’s hair. Should I add more preservative to your recipe if I dilute it? (For that matter, should I add an additional preservative when diluting the commercial stuff.)
If you add more water, you’ll need more preservative. Weight everything together and calculate how much preservative you’ll need to get it to 0,5%.
About using store bought products and tweaking them, I think Marie will say she’s against it. You don’t know what is already in there. Maybe a preservative that counter acts yours, maybe the ph isn’t ideal for their preservative if you add water. Etc
Ann,
You are bang on! Thank you for your great reply!
Hi Kitty!
Hooray! A hair question I can actually answer!
1) diluting commercial leave in conditioners: I wouldn’t recommend it, but you’re going to do what works best! You are “technically” creating a brand new product by doing this. This means you would need to preserve the new product. So let’s say 99.5% new product, .5% Liquid Germall Plus. Makes sense?
2) If you are diluting the Rosè Leave in Conditioner, same principle as above.
Hello Marie!
Thank you for this recipe. I made this for myself and daughters. We have 3a/b and 4a/b curls. This worked very well for us. I doubled the oil portion; swapping coconut oil for the argan oil. I used Honeyquat instead of cetrimonium chloride as that was what I had on hand. For my daughters I used it on freshly washed and conditioned wet hair. Their hair drank it up! I used it on my dry frizzy hair as I was way past wash day and It really hydrated my hair. The scent was amazing even though I did not have the Cognac. I conditioned our hair with the Monoi Conditioner you posted a while back.
I’m so thrilled to hear you and your daughters are loving it! Thanks so much for DIYing with me 🙂
Hi Marie, do you know if it’s possible to make a solid leave-in conditioner bar? Could you just take out the water and increase the amount of BTMS and solid oils? Thanks!
I’d probably refer to this post for that sort of thing 🙂 Otherwise I suppose you could always apply a solid conditioner bar to the hair and not rinse it out, but I find the hair does need to be wet for the solid bars to apply well 🙂
YES! The conditioning balm is amazing. I tried twice plain coconut oil (pinterest inspiration) but that was terrible: my hair still felt dry but looked stringy. Marie’s balm is awesome. I use way more than her and it works wonders on my hair. I use loads of conditioner (also Marie’s recipes straight or tweaked) but the days after washing, my hair becomes drier and drier. Her balm makes my hair soft and easy to comb again.
I’m so thrilled you’re enjoying the balm! I love getting feedback from people who have different hair than mine—mine is pretty narrowly tolerant of oils. I definitely tried the Pinterest-style straight oils application when I first got started and, hoooboy. My hair looked utterly wretched, ha. I think it took at least two or three washings to get it back to normal. Yikes!
Hi Marie,
I started to follow you a few weeks ago and I have seen a lot of your recepies to see what I could do with the things I have. I would like to try this recepie and other hair recepies, but I don’t have any cetrimonium chloride or any other positively charged surfactant (and couldn’t find them in the stores). I only have the BTMS 50.
Can I do the recepie without those surfactants or replace them by other thing?
Thanks!!
Yup, that should work—you can replace them with water to start 🙂 The end product will be a bit less conditioning, but it should still work! You could even try bumping the BTMS-50 up by 2% to replace the cetrimonium chloride; this will make for a thicker final product, but it will bring in some more conditioning 🙂 Happy making!
Hi Marie,
I made this conditioner a few weeks ago and love the way it performs. I just noticed though that it split into thicker cream with a watery layer at the bottom as it sat. I blended it thoroughly with an immersion blender so I was feeling pretty confident that it would be stable. Any ideas?
As someone who has made 5 different versions of a formulation that keeps splitting over the last week, I feel you! My next plan of action is to incorporate 0.5% xanthan gum—perhaps give that a try here?
Ah good idea! I’ll try that next 🙂 btw my hair loves this stuff. Im really glad I found it because I can now go without heated tools in the mornings! Hooray!
Woohoo, I’m so thrilled to hear it! Thanks for DIYing with me, and happy making 🙂
My Shampoo turn to be very good – right texture and usual thickness. The Leave-in is very thin – why ? (I was very precise and thorough).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nahhXd87v8StKDpyBfamllmLjtCKVk4s/view?usp=sharing
Thanks for all the help and the inspiration 🙂
It’s supposed to be fairly thin, in large part because the oil phase is small, which is because it’s a leave-in conditioner 🙂 If you want it to be thicker in the future I’d recommend including a gum or gelling agent of some kind to keep it light on the oils.
On second though, we like it. Using same bottle as you, I pour it in my palm, scrub and apply on fair. I used this variant:
Heated water phase
89.25% H2O including some (0%-50%) Rose/Rosemary hydrosol
2% Hydroxyethyl Urea (Hydrovance) or Sodium lactate 60% or Glycerin
1% Cetrimonium chloride 30% (1% is advised since surfactant here)
Heated oil phase
3% BTMS-50
2% Jojoba oil
1% Sweet Almond Oil or Argan Oil
Cool down Phase
1% Hydrolyzed rice protein or Hydrolyzed Oat Protein
0.25% D-Panthenol (for leave-in they advise 0.25%)
1% Geogard ECT Preservative
I adjusted pH using [LOT] of lactic acid. Why ???
That sounds lovely! Are you wondering why the pH was initially higher than expected? Did you use distilled water to start with?
I used pH 7 (I did the test) demineralized water with added Ozone. I boil it before use as warm water. I had to put 2% lactic acide.
Hi Marie, do you think that this is thick enough to put in a bottle with a serum pump? It not, could I substitute some water for cetyl alcohol? Thanks, I can’t wait to make in a leave in hair conditioner! It’s so much easier to put some through my hair after a shower than waiting for a leave in one!
I’d probably incorporate a bit of a gum (~1%) if you want to put it in a pump—added viscosity but without added weight. Happy making!
Hi Marie,
This would be a nice pair to the rich rose conditioner I just made. I do have a question about this or for other hair care products as well. Is it okay to add fruit extract (in glycerin) to this? For how much? I swap some of my EOs with it when making creams but not sure for hair care.
Hi Marie,
I went ahead to add 1% of the fruit extract and took away 1% from water. I added it to the cool down phase. Because I don’t have the cognac EO, I used the FO version instead and added litsea cubeba in place of grapefruit. The smell is divine. Used whatever was left in the beaker after packaging and forgot about it. 6 hours later I looked in the mirror and I couldn’t find any frizzy strands. My hair is doing a shimmy dance for sure. Love how soft it is. Thank you for this wonderful creation!
I’m glad everything worked out! Thanks for DIYing with me, and happy making 🙂
Hi Marie, I’m curious about the percentage of cetrimonium chloride – in the encyclopedia you’ve stated that max usage rate for leave-on products is 0.25% and there it is present at 2%*0.3solution, giving 0.6% (and so are the other conditioners you’ve shared). Where’s the difference from? Are the numbers different for hair products or are you treating as a rinse off product for some reason?
That’s an excellent question, and you are very correct. I wonder what was happening in my brain here… my best guess is that I’d started with a rinse-out formulation and had a brain fart. I have adjusted the amount of cetrimonium chloride to be within the recommended range 🙂 Thank you!
Hi Marie! Thank you so much for this formula. I’d love to try it! I have a question: does the cetrimonium chloride needs to be on the heated water phase? Can it be added at the cool down phase? Thanks!
It doesn’t need to be heated; why do you want to move it to the cool down phase?
P.S. This info is in the Humblebee & Me DIY Encyclopedia entry for this ingredient—have you discovered my encyclopedia yet? ❤️
hi marie!
i was thinking of adding bamboo bioferment but was unsure at which phase to use it in. in your “rose cardamom cleansing conditioner” it’s in the cooling phase but in your “bamboo and broccoli oil hair conditioner” it’s in the heated / warm water phase?
just got your book off amazon btw and has given me more confidence experimenting in my kitchen. you’re amazing!
Hi, I wanted to know where I could buy the Rosé Leave-In Hair Conditioner? If not, do you know of any leave in conditioners with similar ingredients?
I don’t sell anything and I’m afraid I don’t purchase enough stuff to be able to recommend anything. Why not make it yourself? 🙂
Wow very useful recipe. Can we use panthenol gel instead of panthenol powder?
Yes, please look up panthenol (Vitamin B5) in the Humblebee & Me DIY Encyclopedia (https://www.humblebeeandme.com/diy-encyclopedia/) to learn how to modify the formulation to do so. Happy making!