Beauty Hair-Care Tips

The Top Skin-Care Brand in America Just Launched Its First Shampoo—And It’s $9

Zoe Weiner

July 22, 2020

Neutrogena healthy scalp — Photo: Getty Images/Nikki Bonuel

"Scalp care is skin care" is a phrase that dominates the hair-care world. And now, the scalp-love trend is going one step further, with skin-care brands tossing their latest formulas into the shampoo and conditioner ring. This week, Neutrogena—the number-one dermatologist-recommended skin-care brand in the U.S.—launched its first-ever line of non-medicated, scalp-forward hair care as a response to what they call the "skinification of hair care."

"We've seen the importance of the ingredients we put on our skin, not only in regards to how they make our skin look and feel but also how they make our skin function. If you want to have healthy, beautiful skin, it has to function properly, and ingredients help that," said board-certified dermatologist Michelle Henry, MD, at the digital launch event. "Your scalp is literally the extension of your facial skin, so it's a very natural leap to understand that if those ingredients are important for the optimal functioning of your facial skin, then your scalp shouldn't be excluded."

Experts In This Article

Michelle Henry, MD, board-certified dermatologist at Skin & Aesthetic Surgery of Manhattan

There are four different shampoo and conditioner combos, and each product is formulated with skin-friendly ingredients (plucked from Neutrogena's line) meant to nourish the scalp's specific needs while also nourishing your strands and scalp with ingredients such as hyaluronic acid, micellar waters, tea tree oils (I could go on).

While Neutrogena is bringing skin-friendly shampoos at a cost-effective price point to drugstores, it's not the only skin-care brand to make a move to hair care. Earlier this year, Drunk Elephant partnered with celebrity stylist Chris McMillan to launch a line of skin-friendly hair products that founder Tiffany Masterson calls "the essentials everyone needs for a healthy scalp and great hair." The hero product is an AHA (alpha hydroxy acids) scalp exfoliant that uses the same gentle acid as the brand's cult-fave night serum to slough dead skin cells and product buildup off of the scalp. And that's just the beginning: Sunday Riley recently released its own acid-based scalp serum, Venn launched a pH-balancing shampoo, Odacité has a soap-free shampoo bar, and Sol de Janeiro now has a moisturizing shampoo and conditioner duo inspired by its Bum Bum cream.

The reason this is happening? A healthy scalp leads to healthy strands. "The first thing I think about when someone talks about their hair is what's going on at the follicle, which lives at the scalp. If the follicle is disrupted in any way, it's going to prevent the scalp from functioning optimally," says Dr. Henry, adding that keeping your scalp healthy is "sacrosanct." And how do we do that? By using skin-friendly ingredients to reduce inflammation, which causes all kinds of issues, including hair loss. "Reducing inflammation is important, and we do that by keeping our scalps free of debris with a cleanser that allows us to cleanse, hydrate, and treat the scalp so that we can wash our hair as frequently as we need to for our hair type," she says.

Scroll through for some skin-ified hair-care products that will keep your scalp happy, healthy, and inflammation free.