Beach holidays are the best. They're also, if you have kids with long hair, a complete disaster for their hair. Salt water, sand, wind, and sun are a brutal combination. By day three, you're dealing with hair that looks and feels like it's been through a hedge backwards — because it basically has.
We've had a few summers of figuring this out the hard way. Here's what actually works for keeping kids hair manageable at the beach.
Before you go in the water
This sounds counterintuitive, but wetting hair with fresh water before swimming in the sea or pool makes a real difference. Hair is like a sponge — if it's already saturated with fresh water, it absorbs less salt water or chlorine when you go in. Takes ten seconds at the outdoor shower and saves you a lot of trouble later.
A braid or plait before swimming also helps enormously. It keeps the hair together and reduces the amount of salt water working through every strand. Even a messy bun secured with a scrunchie (avoid tight elastics that can snap at the end of the day when hair is knotty) is better than nothing.
After the water
Rinse with fresh water as soon as you can. Salt and chlorine both dry hair out significantly and make it much harder to detangle later. A quick rinse at the beach shower while you're washing off the sand is all you need.
Then — and this is where Magic Mist earns its keep at the beach — spray through the hair while it's still damp and use your fingers or a wide-tooth comb to work through any tangles before they set. Salt water tangles that dry in are genuinely painful to brush out later. Catching them while the hair is wet makes the whole thing so much easier.
For overnight and the next day
After a beach day, a light braid before bed prevents overnight tangling and means you're not starting from scratch in the morning. In the morning, a spritz of Magic Mist and a quick brush and you're ready for another day.
We travel with Magic Mist in our beach bag every summer. It's one of those products that I don't know how we managed without. If your kids have long or tangling-prone hair, it's worth having with you on holiday — you'll use it every day.