A Boil Wash is a method that uses hot water to restore damaged hair on Barbies and other dolls. The result will vary depending on the hair material. Here I show you how to boil wash Barbie’s hair.
Barbie dolls’ hair is made of synthetic fibers. Vintage Barbies usually have saran hair, but between the late 80’s and early 90’s kanekalon began to be used. Kanekalon is a cheap and fragile material that only looks good as long as you don’t play with Barbie, but over time it becomes very dry, dull, changes color, looks frizzy, tangles easily, and is difficult to handle. The only advantage of this synthetic material is that it can withstand very hot water which will make it straight, soft, and restore its shine.
One of the worst kanekalon hair that came my way was 1987 Doctor Barbie’s hair. She had melted rubber band, like hard caramel stuck in her hair. It was difficult to remove but not impossible. If you want to know how to remove melted rubber from Barbie’s hair, click here.
After treatment with conditioner and lots of brushing, the melted rubber band was removed, and the hair regained some shine and softness. But, over the days it became unmanageable, super dry, and there was no way to style it and make it look good. So, after thinking about it several times, I took the risk of doing my first broil wash on Barbie’s hair.
The way to make a boil wash may vary a little from person to person, but this is what I did, and it worked for me:
1. Make sure the hair is completely detangled. If necessary, wash and apply conditioner or fabric softener and brush until frizz and loose hair fibers are eliminated.
2. Heat water on the stove and turn off just before it starts to boil, when small bubbles appear. Remove the pot from the stove.
3. Dip Barbie’s hair in hot water. Take the Barbie by the legs and submerge her hair for about 30 seconds. Remove from hot water, lay on a towel, and brush several times with a fine-tooth comb.
4. Repeat if necessary. In this case I repeated the process three times, brushing each time I took her out of the water.
5. Rinse with cold water. This will seal the hair style.
It is important that you keep in mind that this process will eliminate all curl from kanekalon hair, unlike saran hair, which will soften while preserving the curl. If your Barbie has bangs and you don’t want it straight, secure it by rolling it up. You can also make a boil wash by putting curlers on Barbie, following the steps described above, for curly hair. That’s something I’ll do later and show the results. But at the moment, this is a before and after of how my Doctor Barbie looked with her straight hair after the boil wash. It was extremely soft, silky, and shiny!
