Best Hair Growth Products: What to Buy and in What Order
Most people buy in the wrong order. The cheapest steps are the ones that get skipped.
Working out the best hair growth products means matching the format to your actual problem, then buying in the right order. Cosmetic products act on the scalp surface and the hair fibre: they reduce breakage, keep the scalp comfortable and make hair look fuller. They do not change what a follicle produces. Fix a deficiency first, get the wash and conditioner right second, and only then add a leave-on serum or a supplement.
The short answer
Start with Grow Me® Shampoo, £14.95, and its conditioner. If you want the whole routine in one go, the Hair Growth Boost Set, £53.40, adds the leave-on scalp elixir.
Key takeaways
- Order matters more than brand. Blood tests, then a gentle wash, then conditioner, then a leave-on serum.
- Breakage is the cheapest problem to fix and the one most often mistaken for thinning.
- A supplement only helps if you are genuinely short of something, which a free blood test settles.
- Give any product 12 weeks and change one thing at a time, or you will never know what worked.
- Cosmetic products cannot reverse pattern thinning. Anything claiming otherwise is overselling.
What problem are you actually buying for?
Three different problems get treated as one, and the right product is different for each. Thinning means the follicle is producing finer hair, showing as a widening parting or a see-through crown. Shedding means more hairs than usual leaving the scalp, usually two to three months after an illness, birth, crash diet or stressful period. Breakage means strands snapping along their length, so hair gets shorter and rougher while the parting stays the same.
Buying for the wrong one wastes money and time. A supplement will not help breakage. A conditioner will not change a widening parting. Look at a fallen hair: a shed hair has a small pale bulb at the root end, and a broken piece is the same thickness at both ends with no bulb. Our guide to telling thinning from shedding walks through the checks.
| Problem | What you see | What genuinely helps | What will not |
|---|---|---|---|
| Breakage | Short broken pieces, rough ends | Conditioner, masks, heat protection, gentler handling | Supplements |
| Shedding | More hairs, 2 to 3 months after a trigger | Time, iron and thyroid checks, gentle care | Any single bottle |
| Thinning | Wider parting over months | GP assessment first, cosmetics for appearance | A cosmetic fix |
| Flaky scalp | Itching, visible flakes | Antifungal wash from a pharmacy, gentle shampoo | Growth serums |
In what order should you buy the best hair growth products?
Sequence saves more money than brand choice. Step one costs nothing: ask your GP for ferritin, thyroid function, vitamin D and B12. Low stored iron is common and well recognised as a contributor, and no product compensates for a deficiency left unaddressed.
Step two is the wash and the conditioner, because they touch your hair more often than anything else you own. Step three is a leave-on scalp serum, which has the longest contact time and is the only cosmetic format that stays on the skin. Step four, if anything, is a supplement, and only if the blood tests pointed somewhere. Anyone selling you step four first is selling, not advising.
Which product categories actually earn their place?
Shampoo and conditioner do the most reliable work because you use them constantly. A gentle, sulphate free wash keeps a dry scalp comfortable, and conditioner provides the slip that stops wet hair snapping in the comb. Neither is exciting and both change how hair looks within a few weeks.
Leave-on scalp serums have the best contact time of any cosmetic format, which is their genuine advantage. Supplements are worth it only against a confirmed shortfall. Hair fibres and root powders change nothing about your hair but work extremely well for how it looks on the day. Heat protection matters if you use hot tools, because styling damage is the most common preventable cause of hair looking thinner than it is.
Grow Me® Shampoo £14.95
Sulphate free, with biotin, caffeine, rosemary, niacinamide and hydrolysed lupine protein. It cleans without stripping and reduces breakage for fuller looking hair.
Hair Growth Boost Set £53.40
Grow Me Shampoo, Condition Me Conditioner and the Grow More Scalp Elixir together. The wash, the slip and the leave-on step, which is the order this guide recommends.
Get a discount on the hair growth range
Join the Watermans mailing list and we will email a discount code straight to your inbox, so you can try the hair growth range for less. Made in the UK, over 6.5 million bottles sold since 2012.
Which ingredients are worth paying for?
Caffeine, rosemary and niacinamide appear across most of this category and carry the most published work, though much of it is small or short. Hydrolysed proteins and cholesterol do quieter, more dependable work on the fibre by reducing friction. Panthenol and glycerin hold a little moisture at the surface.
Be wary of ingredient lists where the hero active appears after the fragrance, because that tells you the concentration is tiny. Be equally wary of a long list of botanicals with nothing doing the structural work. A formula needs something that cleans or conditions properly before the interesting extract matters at all.
Do hair supplements belong in the list?
Supplements help when they correct a genuine shortfall and do very little otherwise. Iron, vitamin D and B12 are the deficiencies most often linked to hair changes in the UK, and all three are testable. Biotin deficiency is genuinely rare in people eating a normal diet, which is why biotin capsules disappoint so many people.
One practical warning: high dose biotin interferes with several common blood tests, including thyroid and troponin assays, and can produce misleading results. Tell whoever takes your blood that you take it, and stop it well before testing if they advise. Our guide to which hair vitamins matter goes through the evidence nutrient by nutrient.
GrowPro Hair Growth Gummies £22.95
Sugar free vegan gummies with biotin, zinc, MSM and bamboo silica. Nutrients that contribute to the maintenance of normal hair, two a day, for people whose diet has genuine gaps.
How do you judge whether any of it is working?
Twelve weeks is the minimum, and six months is fairer. Hair grows roughly a centimetre a month, so new growth needs time to reach a length where it changes how dense your hair looks. Judging at four weeks is the most common reason people conclude that everything failed.
Use the same photograph every time: same parting, same light, same day of the week. Count shed hairs on one wash day a week, not daily. And change one thing at a time, because starting three products at once means you will never know which one earned its place. Our guide to tracking hair growth honestly explains why mirror checks mislead.
When should you speak to your GP?
Speak to your GP before buying anything if the parting is widening quickly, if there are bare or patchy areas, if the scalp is sore, scaly or has sores, if heavy shedding has continued beyond three months, or if hair changes come with weight, energy or period changes. The blood tests that answer most of these are free. If your question is about products or a routine rather than a medical one, you can talk to Gail Waterman, our co-founder, as an AI avatar on the Watermans homepage.
If you want one place to start rather than a shelf of bottles, the hair growth routine set gives you the wash, the conditioner and the leave-on serum in the order this guide recommends.
What is the bottom line on the best hair growth products?
The best hair growth products are the ones matched to your actual problem and bought in the right order: blood tests, then a gentle wash and conditioner, then a leave-on serum, then a supplement only if something is genuinely low. Cosmetic products reduce breakage and keep the scalp comfortable, which makes hair look fuller and thicker. They do not change what the follicle produces, and a guide that tells you otherwise is selling.
If you would rather buy that order as one thing, our hair growth routine set pairs the sulphate free shampoo and the breakage defence conditioner with the overnight scalp elixir, so the wash, the condition and the leave-on step are matched to each other rather than assembled from three different brands.
Frequently asked questions: what else do people ask about best hair growth products?
What are the best hair growth products for thinning hair?
A gentle sulphate free shampoo, a conditioner used every wash, and a leave-on scalp serum, in that order. Ask your GP for ferritin, thyroid, vitamin D and B12 tests first, because a deficiency changes the answer entirely.
How long do hair growth products take to work?
Feel changes in two to three washes. Anything involving length or density takes three to six months, because hair grows about one centimetre a month and you are judging new growth.
Are expensive products better than cheap ones?
Not reliably. Price tracks fragrance, packaging and marketing as much as formulation. Read the ingredient list and where the actives sit on it, and judge a product on how your hair behaves after twelve weeks.
Should I buy a set or individual products?
A set is usually better value if you were going to buy the pieces anyway, and it removes the temptation to skip conditioner. Individual products make sense if you already have a wash you like.
Do hair growth supplements work?
Only against a genuine shortfall. If your iron, vitamin D or B12 are low, correcting that matters. If they are normal, extra capsules give you expensive urine and, at high biotin doses, distorted blood test results.
Can any product bring hair back where the scalp is shiny and smooth?
No. A smooth, shiny area means the follicle is no longer producing, and no cosmetic product changes that. Products help where hair is still growing but finer or breaking.
What is the single cheapest improvement?
Handling. Comb wet hair with a wide tooth comb from the ends upwards, condition every wash, drop the heat setting and stop tight styles. That costs nothing and prevents the breakage most people mistake for thinning.
Should men and women use different products?
The formulations do not need to differ, though the pattern of thinning usually does. Men more often thin at the temples and crown, women more often across the parting, and that changes where you apply a leave-on serum.
Sources and references
- NHS: Hair loss
- NHS: Vitamins and minerals
- NHS: Iron deficiency anaemia
- DermNet: Female pattern hair loss
- DermNet: Telogen effluvium
- NHS: Blood tests
Watermans products are 100% cosmetic and do not treat medical hair loss. Individual results may vary.
