How a hair “X ray” can help mend damage and rebuild strength (2025)

From intolerance testing and glucose monitoring to genetic profiling, it seems we can’t get enough of health MOTs to test our inner wellbeing. But have you ever thought about giving your hair a health screen? It’s an idea that certainly piqued my curiosity when I was invited for a hair “X-ray” at award-winning London salon Haug London Haus.

Okay, so it’s not an actual X-ray (we’re still talking hairdressing gown, not a hospital one). But using infrared technology, the rather whizzy Schwarzkopf SalonLab Smart Analyzer gizmo does allow salon pros to take a peek into your hair’s inner health, assess any hidden damage lurking within and prescribe a reparative treatment course.

It only takes a minute or two for the handheld gadget to assess your mid-lengths and ends, then deliver a rating about your hair’s overall inner strength. As Haug’s co-owner Siobhan Haug explains to me: “It analyses hair strands at a microscopic level, looking at damage and colour health, and giving a score out of 100. The first scan we do shows the breakage of naturally occurring original bonds inside a client’s hair, giving a base inner strength score.”

This “X-ray” is useful for taking away the guesswork, making her job as a colour expert easier – and safer. “It can definitely help us decide whether something like drastically lightening hair in one session is a good option, and suggest alternatives if it’s not. It just might need to be done over a few stages with the correct haircare routine in between,” she tells me. (Also, when your hair is being rated objectively by AI, it’s probably easier to suck up the advice, be sensible and lay off the bleach for a bit.)

With a long rap sheet of balayage and heat styling, I’m nervous about being scan-shamed, but Siobhan assures me it’s rare that hair is beyond repair and needs chopping off. Besides, a below-average score should just be seen as an opportunity to mend your ways and your hair. As she puts it: “Hair that’s damaged or has lost its strength is like an empty Smarties tube. What we want to do is begin a good conditioning regime with products to fill it back up again.”

This rebuilding process starts right away at the salon backwash, with a rehab treatment tailored to your “X-ray” results, and can be continued with take-home products to keep up the good work. And because every good health consultation needs a follow-up, you can be rescanned at a future appointment, ideally in 6-8 weeks’ time, to check how your hair rehab is going.

The scanner is available at selected Schwarzkopf salons, and it’s free at Haug London Haus as part of a consultation (other salons may vary), but it’s designed to complement treatments and/or colour services, which obviously you do have to pay for. Ah, if only we had a free National Hair Service...

The hair “X-ray”: the GH verdict

The scan is very quick, easy and far more pleasant than my last dental X-ray! Siobhan takes a section of hair each side and feeds it into the gadget, which looks a bit like a mini straightener. It then uses an infrared sensor to “read” the mid-lengths and ends before sending the findings to an iPad. Finally, the health of my hair is translated into a snazzy computer graphic, showing both the outer cuticle layer (“that’s for shine and to hold colour into the hair”) and, crucially, the inner cortex, “the thing that determines your hair’s strength and actual health”.

Alarmingly, my cortex looks like a ladder that definitely wouldn’t pass a health and safety inspection, with plenty of broken rungs to send my mood plummeting to the ground. But before I can say “better just chop it all off then”, Siobhan points to my score – a surprisingly respectable 73%! “That’s actually quite high,” she says. “Definitely not beyond repair.”

Hurrah! My inner schoolgirl swot glows with pride.

Being brunette is most definitely in my favour, she tells me, because hair that’s lightened all over will inevitably score lower. “Bleaching does empty out a lot of those Smarties from the tube,” she says. While I do have a few, grown-out lightened pieces, most of my damage is down to heat styling and sun damage, and that’s easier to remedy.

The immediate fix is an indulgent Hair Rehab treatment (£35 as an add-on to a cut, colour or blow-dry), matched to my hair goals. (Although when I’m asked to pick between things like shine, smoothness, volume and strength, I do ask if I can just have all of them, please.) We settle on repair and nourishment, and the algorithm dispenses a recommended treatment – “reversing up to three years of damage in one application”, I’m told – while Sinead prescribes a toner to combat brassy bits. The human eye is far from redundant amid all this technology.

After a scrub, head massage, mask smother and hot towel wrap, my hair and I are both feeling superb, and I swish out of the salon, imagining generous handfuls of Smarties stuffed into my inner cortex. (Really must stop thinking about chocolate.)

I bounce home armed with advice on how I can work on that remaining 27% (did I mention I was a bit of a schoolgirl swot?). “This can be about both moisture, if hair is dull, and bond building, if hair is weak. Schwarzkopf Fibre Clinic (salon only) has a Bondfinity technology that creates permanent bonds within the hair to repair damage,” says Siobhan. Watch out, knackered ladder rungs.

Now, none of this is a Get Out Of Jail Free card, so things like heat, chemicals and sun exposure (fat chance) will continue to nibble away at your hair health, even while you’re putting strength back in. And, being realistic, there’s no way I’m going to stop using my straighteners or hairdryer. However, armed with the news that I’m not a lost cause, I’m going to see if I can tip the balance between damage and repair, and see what the scan has to say in a couple of months’ time. Health hair kick, here I come.

GHI Approved home hair repair

Our top rated bond repair treatments to buy without a salon appointment