Amodimethicone: The Science of My Favourite Hair Ingredient | Lab Muffin Beauty Science (2025)

Since I bleached my hair and dyed it purple (and am now slowly shifting to pink), my hair care needs have changed massively.

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Typical straight, black East Asian, hair naturally has low porosity, with the outside cuticle lying very flat. This means that water and other ingredients don’t go in or out of the hair strand as easily, so using the wrong product didn’t have a huge effect before bleaching.

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But the bleaching process causes the hair to end up with lots of gaps in it, so the porosity and damage increased. That meant my hair needed a lot more conditioning, and it was far pickier. Choosing the wrong product would make my hair weird and limp, or worse, rough and prone to snagging and tangles – and since bleach also made my hair weak, this would mean a ton of new split ends and damage.

So in the past 6 months I’ve gone through a long process of trial and error to work out which products and ingredients would work for my bleached hair – and it turns out, amodimethicone is my hair saviour (apart from Olaplex, of course).

What Is Amodimethicone?

Amodimethicone is a silicone. Silicones have a bad reputation in haircare, and I think it’s because of the huge range of hair types and needs. One person’s saviour is another person’s kryptonite.

Dimethicone, for example, was Michelle’s Old Hair’s hero. Dove Damage Therapy Intensive Repair Conditioner, heavy on cetearyl alcohol and dimethicone, was amazing at making my hair smooth and tangle-free.

It’s still my sister’s favourite conditioner of all time – she uses it daily, and her hair hangs down to her buttcrack like a silky shiny curtain.

Related Post:The Science of Hair Products: Shampoo and Conditioner

But after bleaching, dimethicone was no longer my friend. It made Michelle’s New Hair weird and limp.

Enter amodimethicone. It’s a silicone, but it has unique properties that have translated to soft, smooth shine for my bleached hair, although I found it a bit underwhelming for my hair pre-bleach:

Selectively attaches to damaged hair

Amodimethicone is an amine-functionalised silicone, with NH and NH₂ groups. In an acidic environment, like in a hair conditioner, amine groups become protonated when H⁺ ions attach to them, and it acquires a positive charge.

Healthy hair is covered in a protective water-repellent (hydrophobic) layer of a fatty acid called 18-methyleicosanoic acid (18-MEA).

This layer, known as the F-layer, is chemically bound to hair, but wears off with damage, especially during oxidative chemical processes like bleaching.

When the F-layer breaks off, there are water-attracting (hydrophilic) groups left behind. Damage also leaves the hydrophilic proteins of the hair more exposed. These all acquire a negative charge in water, so damaged sections of hair are more negatively charged than the undamaged portions.

Opposite charges attract, so this means that amodimethicone will selectively stick to the damaged sections of hair more strongly.

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Avoids buildup

One of the issues people complain about with silicones is that they weigh hair down – some form more durable coatings on hair that can’t be washed off easily. Over-conditioning can lead to a thicker coating on hair that can make hair feel dull and lifeless.

Amodimethicone’s amine groups decrease the chance of this happening. Since strands of amodimethicone have positive charges, they repel each other.

Any amodimethicone that’s already stuck to the hair will repel any extra strands that try to latch on. This means that the silicone film doesn’t get too thick, so overconditioning is much less likely than with uncharged conditioning ingredients.

Forms a durable film

There are two reasons for amodimethicone staying on your hair more strongly.

The first reason is the positive charge, which gives an extra stickiness to the silicone layer.

The other reason is cooler (in my nerdy opinion, anyway!).After the amodimethicone sticks to your hair, it also crosslinks. This is when the OH groups on adjacent amodimethicone strands react to form a more durable film.

This film can last through multiple washes. According to one study, some of the benefits lasted for 20 washes!

On my hair though, the silky soft feel is gone enough to require topping up every 2-3 days, even without washing – I’m guessing there’s lots of variation between products, hair types and hair routines.

Benefits of Amodimethicone

These are the benefits of amodimethicone according to cosmetic scientists:

• increased softness, smoothness and shininess
• reduced fly-away
• faster drying time
• colour protection
• thermal protection from heat styling
• improved combing
• no reduced body or volume
• increased hair strength

I’ve noticed some of these effects in my hair after using conditioners and masksthat have amodimethicone high in the ingredients list.

• My hair is very noticeably smoother and softer. Instead of feeling grippy and tangle-prone, or dry and spiky, it’s soft and smooth – like a lighter version of my old hair. Sometimes I’m even tricked into thinking it’s “healthy” (although that illusion disappears once I go too many days without using an amodimethicone product)
• There’s no dullness or limpness when I just use a rinse-off amodimethicone mask or conditioner, unless I also use other conditioning products on top, like dimethicone-rich “shine serums” (sometimes still necessary when my hair is feeling too fluffy).

• I can comb my wet hair easily in or out of the shower with my fingers or a wide-toothed comb.
• My hair feels stronger and less prone to breakage, especially during brushing and combing – after using some other products, I can sometimes hear strands breaking!
• I haven’t been monitoring drying time, colour or thermal protection.
• My flyaways haven’t decreased, but I think this is because they tend to come from my hair being coarse and stiff rather than from static repulsion.

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Rinse-off Products

My preferred way of using amodimethicone is with rinse-off products, for a few reasons:

• Washing my hair properly with water resets it into shape – sometimes the “straw” feeling is just when all the hairs dry in a bent configuration instead of smooth and aligned
• It’s hard to apply too much conditioning ingredients, since you rinse off the excess that didn’t stick
• Water makes it easier to distribute the product

Unfortunately for rinse-off conditioners, performance depends a lot on formula, so seeing “amodimethicone” in the ingredients isn’t a guarantee (although it’s given me a much better success rate!).

Toni and Guy Volume Addiction Conditioner – There are a couple of different versions of this. The one that works well for me has amodimethicone as the 3rd ingredient. I didn’t expect this to work so well, given it’s meant to be for “volume”, but I took a gamble based on the amodimethicone and it paid off. It’s on sale a lot at my usual supermarket.

Elizavecca CER-100 Collagen Ceramide Coating Treatment is meant to be a protein treatment, but I feel like the amodimethicone is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. It’s really effective on my hair, but the tube is quite small.

Make Hair Soft Treatment – This was the product that got me hooked on amodimethicone. It was nice in my unbleached hair, but when I tried it in my hair after bleaching, there was a complete transformation. I thought I was doomed to years of babying my hair, but after using this once it was almost like I had my old resilient hair back. I’m yet to try anything else from their range, but since this wasn’t designed for damaged hair, I’m optimistic that they have even more effective products for my hair.

Essano Acai Berry Colour Protect Conditioner – I leave it in for around 3 minutes before washing it off. I’m incredibly impressed by how well this works, although I haven’t noticed a difference in hair colour fade time.

Kerastase Discipline Fondant Fluidealiste Conditioner – This has a similar effect to the Essano conditioner in my hair.

Since there’s such a wide variety of hair textures, I don’t think everyone will have the same experience with amodimethicone. But if your hair is snag-prone from damage, amodimethicone products might be worth a try even if other silicones haven’t worked for you in the past!

References

Disapio A & Fridd P, Silicones: use of substantive properties on skin and hair,Int J Cosmet Sci 1988, 10, 75-89.DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-2494.1988.tb00004.x

Yahagi K, Silicones as conditioning agents in shampoos, J Soc Cosmet Chem 1992, 43, 275-284.

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