Cedarwood oil for hair: what it is, what it does, how we blend it

Atlas Cedarwood: pieces of cedar wood with shavings and a cedar twig, beside a small glass dish of the oil.

Atlas cedarwood oil is the dry, pencil-shavings wood in the warm family: the scent of Sunday Ritual at 1% and of Clean Line at half a percent beside vetiver.

Role	Essential oil, warm woody family
On the label	Cedrus Atlantica Bark Oil
In our blends	Sunday Ritual 1%; Clean Line 0.5%
Builder limit	Up to 1% of a hair blend (all essential oils together: 1%)

What it is

Steam-distilled from the wood of Cedrus atlantica, the Atlas mountain cedar, the oil is mostly himachalenes with atlantone, a set of sesquiterpenes that give a dry, slightly sweet, woody scent and make it one of the slower essential oils to evaporate. It is pale yellow and a little thicker than the herb oils. It is a different oil from Virginian cedarwood, which is a juniper.

How it feels on hair

At 0.5 to 1% it gives a dry, warm, woody scent that stays on the hair for hours and reads as quiet rather than perfumed. The blend's weight and finish are unchanged.

Who reaches for it

Short hair and fades that want a woody, unperfumed oil (Clean Line, 0.5% with vetiver), lengths oils built on argan (Sunday Ritual, 1%), and anyone who finds florals too sweet.

Where it sits in our blends

Sunday Ritual carries atlas cedarwood at 1% (with Argan 78.5%, Avocado 10%, Baobab 10%). Clean Line carries atlas cedarwood at 0.5% (with Jojoba 52.3%, Fractionated Coconut 26.2%, Black Seed 10%, and more). The blends with a product page can be bought as they are; every one of them can be opened in the builder and changed oil by oil.

How to compose with it

Essential oils share at most 1% of a hair blend; the builder allows Atlas cedarwood up to 1%. It pairs with vetiver, rosemary, bergamot or sandalwood over jojoba or argan with black seed, hemp seed or baobab.

Compose with atlas cedarwood Find your formula

Weighed to the gram and blended to order in New Jersey, with the recipe printed on the label. For external use only; patch test before first use. Every oil, with its INCI name, is in the oil library.