Radico Organic Shampoo Bar
4.4oz Organic Shampoo Bar
shampoo bar case
organic shampoo bar ingredients
3 herbs and shampoo bar
Radico Organic Shampoo Bar
4.4oz Organic Shampoo Bar
shampoo bar case
organic shampoo bar ingredients
3 herbs and shampoo bar

Radico USA

Ayurvedic Shampoo Bar - Certified Organic

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Radico Organic Shampoo Bar is a true soap — organic oils treated with alkali until they saponify, milled with bhringraj, amla and brahmi. Net weight 125 g (4.4 oz).

It is the one product we make that we would not use every day, and it exists for one job: the wash before a plant colour.

If your first plant colour did not take, this is usually why

Henna and indigo bind to the keratin in your hair. They have to reach it first. Conventional shampoos and conditioners leave a film behind — silicones, styling polymers, oils — and that film sits between the pigment and the surface it needs to attach to. The colour goes on, sits there, and rinses away paler than it should.

Nothing is wrong with the colour. The hair was still wearing the last product.

Soap strips thoroughly. That is a drawback for everyday washing, and it is exactly what you want once, before you colour.

What it takes off

  • Silicones. Dimethicone and its relatives are in most conditioners and many shampoos. They coat the strand deliberately and are not water-soluble; a mild wash does not shift them.
  • Styling polymers. Anything that holds a shape leaves a film, and it builds up.
  • Oils. Coconut, argan, leave-in treatments. Useful otherwise; a barrier here.
  • Hard water minerals. Calcium and magnesium deposit on the strand over time.

If you have never used silicone products — if you have been washing with plant powders, or with a silicone-free shampoo — you may not need this at all. We would rather you knew that than bought a bar you have no use for.

We measured it at pH 9.35

Soap is alkaline by definition. It is made by treating fat with alkali, and what comes out carries that character — a bar of soap typically sits around pH 9 to 10. This one is no exception, and we would rather show you the number than call it “gentle” and leave it there.

shampoo bar: pH9.35

Product pH What follows from it
Shikakai powder 2.1 – 3.0 Acid. Lets the cuticle lie flat
Hair Treatment Powder 3.2 – 3.5 Acid. A wash or a mask
Reetha powder 4.54 – 4.90 Acid. A wash
Hair’s own surface 4.5 – 5.5 For reference
This bar 9.35 Alkaline. Before colouring, not routinely

Hair’s own surface sits at 4.5 to 5.5. This is well above that, and it is why soap-based shampoo largely disappeared — alkaline conditions lift the cuticle scales, and lifted scales catch on each other, so hair feels rough. Every other product we make sits on the acid side for exactly that reason.

We are not going to argue that this is somehow gentle. It is a strong wash, used once, for a specific job. Use it that way and the alkalinity does not matter much; use it every day and it will.

The part we are less sure about. You will read that an alkaline wash opens the cuticle so pigment can get in. Alkaline conditions do lift the cuticle scales — that much is established. Whether a lifted cuticle measurably improves how much pigment binds, we do not know: we have not found a study that tests it, and we have not run one. What we are confident about is the residue, and residue alone is reason enough.

It lathers, and that is not a contradiction

Our reetha and shikakai powders produce almost no foam, and we say plainly on those pages that foam is not what does the cleaning. Both things are true.

Lather is what happens when a surfactant traps air. Cleaning is what happens when it surrounds oil. A surfactant can do one well and the other barely at all. Saponins clean without foaming much; soap does both.

There is no SLS in here, and no foam booster. That is not only our word for it: COSMOS ORGANIC prohibits both, and this bar is certified on its own file. Soap foams because of what soap is — fatty acid salts hold air well — not because anything was added to make it.

Lathering of the shampoo bar - a rich lather

How to use it

Before a plant colour

  1. Wet the hair thoroughly, then work the bar into a lather between wet hands and apply that to the scalp. Rubbing the bar directly on the hair works too, but uses more of it.
  2. Massage into the scalp for a minute or two, then draw the lather down through the lengths.
  3. Rinse completely. Longer than feels necessary — soap residue left on the hair is the usual reason a soap wash feels waxy afterwards.
  4. Do not condition. Anything you put on now goes between the pigment and the hair, which is the problem you just solved.
  5. Colour on damp hair, or towel-dry and colour. Do not use a hair dryer if your shade contains indigo.

Once is enough. If your hair has years of silicone on it a second wash will take more off, but a single thorough one is what most people need.

If you are not colouring afterwards

Some people find their hair feels smooth straight out of this wash and want nothing else. Others find it squeaks. Both are normal, and the difference is your hair rather than the bar.

If it squeaks, that is the alkalinity: the cuticle scales are standing up. The fix is acid — which is the traditional answer to washing hair with soap, and the reason acid rinses exist at all.

Step pH What it does
1. This bar 9.35 Strips thoroughly, lifts the cuticle
2. Hair Treatment Powder 3.2 – 3.5 Brings the scales back down

Mix the treatment powder thin as a rinse-out wash, or thick as a fifteen-minute treatment — either brings the pH back down. This is not a new idea: soap and an acid rinse is how hair was washed for a very long time before pH-adjusted shampoo existed.

While you move away from synthetic shampoo

Our own view is that hair does not need to be washed as often as most people wash it. A scalp produces oil, that oil travels down the strand, and it is what makes hair smooth in the first place. Left alone, the system tends to find its own level.

What we see in customers moving away from strong detergent shampoos is that the level takes a while to find. Scalps washed daily with a powerful surfactant often feel oily again within a day, and washing again keeps the cycle going. Several weeks of gentler washing usually settles it.

We should be careful how strongly we put that. The idea that frequent washing drives the scalp to produce more oil is widely held and matches what we hear from customers, but we have not found it firmly established in the research literature. It is our observation, not a measured fact.

If you use this bar during that transition, use it sparingly and not daily, and follow it with the treatment powder if your hair squeaks. At pH 9.35 it is not a bar we would want anyone reaching for every morning — our reetha and shikakai powders sit on the acid side and are made for regular washing.

Looking after the bar

  • Let it drain and dry between uses. A bar left sitting in water softens and dissolves away. A dish that drains will roughly double how long it lasts.
  • Keep it out of the direct spray. Somewhere in the shower where running water does not hit it.
  • Do not store it sealed while wet.

There are no synthetic preservatives in this bar — COSMOS ORGANIC prohibits them. Proper soap does not generally need them, because the pH and the low water content see to that. But it does need to dry between uses.

What is in it

Five organic oils, saponified. Three Ayurvedic herbs, milled in. Liquorice root, sunflower seed oil, lavender oil and tocopherol.

Ingredient What it is
Sodium cocoate Saponified coconut oil
Sodium castorate Saponified castor oil
Sodium olivate Saponified olive oil
Sodium sesamate Saponified sesame oil
Sodium almondate Saponified sweet almond oil — a tree nut
Eclipta alba leaf powder Bhringraj
Emblica officinalis fruit powder Amla
Bacopa monnieri leaf powder Brahmi
Glycyrrhiza glabra root powder Liquorice
Helianthus annuus seed oil Sunflower
Lavandula angustifolia oil Lavender — a known contact allergen
Tocopherol Vitamin E, as an antioxidant for the oils

What we will not tell you is that the herbs survive saponification unchanged, or that they deliver vitamins into your hair from a bar you rinse off in two minutes. Saponification is a hot, strongly alkaline reaction, and we have not found work establishing what comes through it intact. They are in the formula, they are organically grown, and that is what we can say about them. All three are also sold on their own, where the chemistry is worth going into properly.

Two allergens, named plainly

Almond oil. One of the five oils saponified into this bar is sweet almond. Almond is a tree nut. If you have a tree nut allergy, do not use this bar.

That is worth stating clearly, because elsewhere on this site we point out that reetha — the soapnut — is not a nut at all despite its name. This bar genuinely contains one.

Lavender oil. A known contact allergen: its compounds oxidise on exposure to air, and the oxidation products are among the fragrance allergens the EU requires to be declared. Most people are fine with it. Some are not. It is in the product’s registered name — we are not hiding it in an ingredient list.

Patch test on the inner forearm 48 hours before first use, and stop use if irritation develops. If you have a diagnosed allergy to either, speak to your doctor first.

Certified, and independently listed

This bar holds COSMOS ORGANIC, audited by ECOCERT Greenlife.

COSMOS ORGANIC certifies products, not brands. Every formula is audited on its own file — where the ingredients were grown, how it was made, what is and is not in it. This bar has its own. So does each of our twenty-four colours, and each of our single herbs.

You do not have to take our word for any of that. COSMOS publishes a searchable register of every certified product in the world. Ours are listed under Radico — forty-five of them at last count, this bar among them, registered as Certified Organic Lavender Hair Shampoo Bar.

Look us up in the COSMOS product register →

Three things to keep in mind

  • Not after colouring. Henna and indigo keep developing for up to 72 hours, and a strong alkaline wash inside that window will take some of the result with it. Wait two to three days.
  • Not every day. At pH 9.35, regular use will leave hair rough. This is a wash for a purpose, not a routine.
  • Contains almond oil and lavender oil. Do not use this if you react to either. Keep it out of your eyes.

What we will and will not claim

That soap is an anionic surfactant, that it is alkaline, and that alkaline conditions lift the cuticle are all established chemistry rather than health claims. The pH figure is our own, on a handheld meter, and it is a number you can check yourself.

What we have not measured is whether washing with this before a plant colour produces a measurably better result than washing with something else. We are confident about the mechanism — residue blocks binding, and soap removes residue — and we have not run the comparison.

We are not claiming this bar treats any scalp or hair condition, that it promotes hair growth, or that it delivers nutrients into the hair. In the United States a cosmetic may not make those claims, and we have not found evidence that would support them here in any case.

Radico Organic Shampoo Bar is a cosmetic product for external use on hair and scalp. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any condition. Contains almond oil and lavender oil.

All items on Radico USA website ship for a flat-rate to any address in the continental US for just $4.99.

Get free shipping on any order above $25.

If you are unsatisfied with the result, please contact us for a free replacement of the color of your choice. Returns within 30 days receive a full refund.

Ingredients

A true soap: five organic oils saponified, with three Ayurvedic herbs milled in. Net weight 125 g (4.4 oz). COSMOS ORGANIC certified by ECOCERT Greenlife, on its own product file. No SLS, no synthetic preservatives, no foam boosters. Mixed with water, our own reading was pH 9.35 — alkaline, and the only alkaline product we make.

CONTAINS ALMOND OIL, A TREE NUT, AND LAVENDER OIL, A KNOWN CONTACT ALLERGEN. Do not use if you react to either. Patch test on the inner forearm 48 hours before first use. Keep out of the eyes. Do not use within 72 hours of a plant colour application. This is a cosmetic product for external use on hair and scalp; it is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any condition.

FAQ

For one job: the wash before a plant colour. Henna and indigo bind to the keratin in your hair, and conventional shampoos and conditioners leave a film — silicones, styling polymers, oils — that sits between the pigment and that keratin. It is the most common reason a first plant colour comes out paler than expected. Soap strips thoroughly, which is a drawback for everyday washing and exactly what you want once, before you colour.

Our own reading was 9.35, on a handheld meter. Soap is alkaline by definition — it is made by treating fat with alkali — and a bar of soap typically sits around pH 9 to 10. Hair's own surface sits at 4.5 to 5.5, so this is well above it. That is why soap-based shampoo largely disappeared, and why every other product we make sits on the acid side.

We would not recommend it. At pH 9.35, regular use will lift the cuticle scales and leave hair rough. This is a wash for a purpose rather than a routine. For regular washing, our reetha and shikakai powders sit on the acid side and are made for it.

Yes, and it is the alkalinity: the cuticle scales are standing up, and standing scales catch on each other. Some people find their hair feels smooth straight out of this wash and others find it squeaks — the difference is your hair rather than the bar. The fix is acid. Following with our Hair Treatment Powder, which reads pH 3.2 to 3.5, brings the scales back down. Soap and an acid rinse is how hair was washed for a very long time before pH-adjusted shampoo existed.

Not within 72 hours of colouring. Henna and indigo both keep developing for up to three days after application, and a strong alkaline wash inside that window will take some of the result with it. After that, occasional use to clarify is fine — but bear in mind that a thorough strip will fade a plant colour faster than a gentle wash would.

Because they clean by different chemistry. Lather is what happens when a surfactant traps air; cleaning is what happens when it surrounds oil, and a surfactant can do one well and the other barely at all. Saponins — what reetha and shikakai use — clean without foaming much. Soap does both. There is no SLS or foam booster in this bar; COSMOS ORGANIC prohibits both, and the bar is certified on its own file.

Yes. One of the five oils saponified into this bar is sweet almond, listed as sodium almondate, and almond is a tree nut. If you have a tree nut allergy, do not use this bar. It is worth being clear about, because elsewhere on this site we point out that reetha — the soapnut — is not a nut at all despite its name. This one genuinely contains one. The bar also contains lavender oil, a known contact allergen.

Let it drain and dry between uses. A bar left sitting in water softens and dissolves away, so a dish that drains will roughly double how long it lasts. Keep it out of the direct spray in the shower, and do not store it sealed while wet. There are no synthetic preservatives in it — COSMOS ORGANIC prohibits them, and proper soap does not generally need them because the pH and low water content see to that — but it does need to dry.

  • ・100% Pure Plants, No Synthetic Chemicals
  • ・Free from Additives, Artificial Fragrance & Harsh Preservatives
  • ・Crafted with Traditional Ayurvedic Herbs

We create products rooted in nature and tradition.
Made with certified organic plant ingredients and no synthetic chemicals, our formulas support naturally healthy hair and skin—without compromise.

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