Hot water can both be a positive and a negative in the routine. On one hand if the water is too hot it can be damaging and irritating to the scalp skin and hair, making it more vulnerable to external stresses like pollution or styling products. Therefore you do not want to turn up the heat in your shower too high! On the other hand, you do need hot water to be able to clean your hair effectively. For example: - Hot water helps our shampoos lather properly making them easier to use on our scalp. If you are finding your shampoo never lather up properly, it might be a sign your water temperature in the shower is set too low. - Hot water also helps us dissolve dirt and grease from our scalp, helping us achieve clean hair. If you find you struggle to remove the dirt from your hair when you wash it, it might be because the water you use is too cold. - The same goes for oils too. Hot water helps to melt the oils out of our hair, allowing us to remove them completely. Whereas colder water cools the oils down to a lower temperature, which although may not cause them to 'solidify' exactly, can certainly cause them to become more viscous and ultimately more difficult to remove from the hair! - Hot water helps us effectively rinse away all the shampoo and debris that we want to wash out of out hair! Therefore, it is important, particularly in the shampooing stage of your hair care routine to use hot water, however to also ensure that it isn't too hot. You want to aim for just above the body temperature- around 100°F/ 37.7°C is a good general guideline! It is also important to note that hot water can help increase your porosity within your washing routine. This can be useful for low porosity students as the increase in porosity when they wash their hair can help them get better results from conditioners and hair masks, as their strands will be able to absorb them more easily!