Sand Skincare Talks: Episode 4
The haircare routine in Dubai that finally worked for Maria took the better part of twenty years, two Emirates, and a lot of trial and error to get right. Her hair is where the UAE humbled her fastest, and where her story is most useful to anyone just off the plane.
From Al Ain to Dubai, Maria’s twenty years here are a small masterclass in how you actually settle into expat life in the Middle East.
In this article
I met her well into my third year in the UAE, when I was putting together a small skincare startup and needed an accountant I could trust with it. I posted in a social media group; we spoke once, and that was more or less that. We had too much in common not to click.
Every expat carries a version of the same story. How we arrived, the excitement, the dreams we were chasing, and everything the desert quietly and without warning taught us once the excitement wore off.
The distance, the traffic, our workloads, our lives happening, and especially because of summer, when it’s almost impossible to step outside, made it hard for us to meet, but we connected online, and I sent her a set of questions so I could put up this article.
Here is Maria’s story.
She starts where I always ask people to start. “My name is Maria Galben. I’m originally from Romania, and I’ve been living in the UAE for almost twenty years. I’ll be turning 45 very soon.”
More than a decade of that was spent in Al Ain before she settled in Dubai, where she now runs her own financial and tax consultancy, primarily serving European entrepreneurs operating across the GCC.
She’s witty, she’s precise, a little wry, and completely allergic to the social media hype, which is exactly why her advice is worth trusting.
From minus 25°C to 50°C: the climate that changed her hair
Maria grew up in Brașov, a mountain city in the Carpathians where winters can drop to -25°C and the whole place turns into something straight out of a postcard.
She got all the four seasons. Her hair adjusted with them, quietly, the way it does when you live somewhere your body has known since childhood. In a Romanian winter, she says, her hair fell into place almost by itself.
Then December 2007 happened. She and her husband came over for Christmas with relatives in the UAE; he was offered a job almost on the spot, and she flew back just long enough to sort out the paperwork on their business before joining him.
“Thankfully, my first trip was in December,” she told me. “Otherwise I’m not sure I’d have had the courage to walk out of the airport.” The heat and humidity were the first things she had to negotiate, and her hair took the brunt of it.
There’s a rhythm to living here that nobody warns you about: you spend the whole day ricocheting between 48°C outside and fierce air conditioning inside. Hair never gets to settle. It’s forever adjusting to a temperature and humidity swing it didn’t ask for, and fine hair feels every bit of it.
We share the same hair type and the same hair colour; I cannot believe I am actually writing this; I thought it was impossible. Maria has fine, thin, naturally dark-blonde hair with a bit of wave and a mind of its own. In this humidity, that means volume vanishes and any style surrenders by lunchtime.
When she talks to me about her first years in the UAE, she is blunt about it, and she keeps telling me, “I made almost every mistake possible.”
She washed daily, sometimes twice, and reached for every styling product and heat tool she owned to recreate the looks that came effortlessly in Romania. She kept her hair long for years because she loved how the local women wore theirs, but in reality it lived in a bun, because long hair on the back of your neck in a UAE summer is its own kind of misery. When she cut it shorter to cope, it just looked thinner.
There was no winning by force. The climate had other plans, and it took her a long time to stop fighting them.
The plot twist in Maria’s hair story isn’t the heat. It’s the water. Both she and her son are naturally dark blonde, and within a few years they noticed their colour and texture shifting in ways they never had back home. Not just after a swim, but from ordinary tap water. Desalinated, mineral-heavy, relentless.
So they fitted shower filters in their bathrooms and started swapping the cartridges every couple of months. She won’t swear whether it’s the minerals, the desalination, or something else entirely. She’ll only say it made a difference they could both feel. For a fine-haired blonde, that one unglamorous piece of plumbing did more than most of the shampoos and other “fancy” bottles on her shelf (here’s the research on how hard water roughs up the cuticle).
The haircare routine in Dubai she finally approved
I had 3 questions about her UAE hair care routine: Describe your current hair washing routine in the UAE; What hair treatments or masks do you use regularly? And how do you protect your hair from the UAE heat and sun? In her own words: “I will answer all 3 questions… as easily …”
Unfussy and rotational rather than loyal, Maria’s haircare routine in Dubai is about: deep-conditioning masks, leave-in treatments for damaged hair, heat protectants, curl-defining creams and serums, and lightweight oils to control frizz without weighing her hair down.
“Purple shampoos and conditioners are also a permanent part of my routine to help maintain my natural blonde tones and keep unwanted yellow or dull shades under control.”
Her brand shelf reads like a well-traveled one: Olaplex, Kérastase, Moroccanoil, L’Oréal Professionnel and Vichy Dercos are the regulars, with Sachajuan, Moremo, Aunt Jackie’s and a rotating cast of Korean and Japanese lines she tries whenever a review or a recommendation catches her eye.
Two small psoriatic patches on her scalp mean she has to be choosy about what goes up there. Her honest verdict after twenty years: there is no miracle bottle. Most good products can stand in for one another, and what actually matters is consistency, protecting hair from heat and UV, and feeding it regularly.
She washes far more often than she used to, sometimes every day.
Between heat, humidity, perspiration and dust, a fresh wash is often the fastest way to feel human again. Some days she runs the full treatment; other days she reaches for an Olaplex shampoo and calls it done.
“Don’t fight the climate,” she said. “Learn how to work with it.” It’s the closest thing she has to a motto, and I honestly say it applies to far more than hair.
One detail from her answers stayed with me. During her pregnancy, on prescribed prenatal vitamins, she noticed her hair looked healthier and stronger. Not dramatically, but enough to register. It taught her that nutrition, sleep, stress, and hormones all get a vote.
As Maria puts it, looking after your hair means looking after the rest of you.
Skin was the other battle: psoriatic dermatitis in the desert
I’m always fascinated and curious about women’s greatest fears when it comes to their skin health, and so I always ask: What are you most afraid of when it comes to your skin?
About ten years in, Maria developed psoriatic dermatitis, and she had to rethink her priorities. When summer brings 45-50°C, being outdoors isn’t optional, and even mild perspiration is enough to trigger a flare. So her skincare started being about keeping her skin calm and comfortable.
No doctor ever pinned down a cause, and she’s careful not to claim one. She does suspect several things such as: years of heat, the constant indoor-outdoor whiplash, a glass-walled office that ran like a greenhouse, and the ordinary stress of building a career far from home.
What changed most wasn’t the products, it was the mindset. She now treats her skin as a system that has answers to sleep, stress, and environment, not just to whatever serum is trending.
I asked: Walk us through your current morning skincare routine. She replied:
- Step 1 – Washing/ Enzyme Cleanser: iS Clinical Cleansing Complex & SkinCeuticals Gentle Cleanser & Olaplex
- Step 2 – Enzyme Exfoliation (2-3 mornings/week): Dermalogica Daily Microfoliant
- Step 3 – Antioxidant Serum: SkinCeuticals
- Step 4 – Peptides: Neocutis Bio Serum
- Step 5 – Hyaluronic Acid: SkinCeuticals & Vichy Minéral 89
- Step 6 – Niacinamide
- Step 7 – Eye Cream: SkinCeuticals & Estée Lauder & La Roche-Posay
- Step 8 – Sunscreen: La Roche-Posay, ISDIN, SkinCeuticals
- Step 9 – Makeup, foundation, concealer, etc. (Dior, Estée Lauder, Lancome, Vichy, and Mac Cosmetics)
Talk about a good morning. And here it’s worth adding one of her previous answers:
“One positive change that came with entrepreneurship is having more control over my mornings. I can now dedicate a little extra time to my skincare, haircare, and overall appearance before starting the day. Looking professional has become an important part of my business because I represent my own company, and first impressions matter. When clients trust you with their business and finances, presenting yourself with confidence and professionalism is part of building that trust.“
And then I asked: What’s your evening/nighttime skincare routine? And she said:
- Step 1 – Double Cleanse… for makeup first: Clinique, Elemis, then another cleanser IS Clinical Cleansing Complex, or enzyme washing as in the mornings.
- Step 2 – Toner (sometimes): SkinCeuticals
- Step 3 – Retinoid: SkinCeuticals Retinol
- Step 4 – night cream & eye cream (40+): Elemis, Vichy, Estee Lauder
And now I have to say: I love it. And I love it even more, because I found this in one of her answers:
“I also have to admit that I’ve been fortunate when it comes to genetics. Even after 20 years in the UAE, working in demanding careers, experiencing stress, pregnancy, motherhood, and everything else life has brought, I believe my skin has aged remarkably well compared to many people my age. Of course, today’s routine is much more sophisticated than it was in my twenties, but I’m grateful that good genetics gave me such a strong starting point.“
Maria says she has two shopping personalities. When she has time, she likes wandering Sephora at Mirdif City Centre, or the MAC and Dior counters, testing textures and enjoying the whole experience of it. In real life, she’s an online shopper. Living near a large Carrefour means products can land within a couple of hours, and she leans on Amazon Prime and online pharmacies for anything dermatologist-recommended.
But what I like about her is that she reads ingredient lists, compares formulations, and judges a product by results rather than by whoever’s calling it a “must-have” that week.
Like me, she does not trust influencers; she trusts her younger sister in Romania, who’s far more into beauty and “has a wonderful network of friends who own hair salons and beauty businesses in Romania.”
Maria still remembers her sister driving “nearly 200 kilometers to collect a professional haircare range from a supplier who sold exclusively to salons and beauty professionals, simply to make sure I could try it.”
What she takes for herself after twenty years living in the UAE
Towards the end of the questionnaire, I love to know about lessons learned, advice, tough decisions, plans, anything I could take away and use.
I asked Maria, what about your hair, is it healthier, worse, or just different now? Today, she knows what her scalp tolerates, when her hair needs moisture, when it needs repair, and when it just needs to be left alone.
In her own words: “I don’t think that would be a fair comparison. Nearly twenty years have passed. I’m not the same age, my body has changed, and naturally my hair has changed too.
Today, I have more grey hair than I did back then; I manage two small psoriatic patches on my scalp, and my fine dark blonde hair is still challenged by heat, humidity, desalinated water, and everyday styling. Those realities don’t disappear simply because you find good products.
What has improved is not necessarily the condition of my hair, but the way I care for it. I understand it much better now. I know which products help, which ingredients my scalp tolerates, when my hair needs hydration, when it needs repair, and when it simply needs a break from heat styling.”
Her biggest lesson started with hair, and it’s one I wish more women arriving here heard on day one. “Stop trying to copy someone else’s routine.” She spent her early years watching local women with thick, glossy, heat-proof hair and quietly asking what she was doing wrong. The answer was nothing. Genetics, hair type, and biology were doing far more of the work than any product could. Once she stopped comparing and started working with what she actually has, everything got simpler and a lot less frustrating.
If a woman moved here tomorrow from Romania, or anywhere with a similar climate, Maria would start with the hair care, because that’s what caught her off guard. In her own words:
“First, don’t underestimate the water. It took me years to realise how much the water affected my natural hair.
Second, remember that your hair needs sun protection too. We all talk about protecting our skin from UV rays, but hair is exposed to the same intense sunshine. I now use UV-protective hair products whenever I know I’ll be spending time outdoors, especially at the beach or pool.
Finally, don’t expect one miracle product to solve everything. Healthy hair is the result of many small habits.
For me, the biggest mistake was assuming that the same routine that worked perfectly in Romania would continue to work in the UAE. It didn’t …“
On skin, her shortlist includes:
“Don’t expect your skin to behave the way it did back home. Give it time to adapt before buying dozens of new products.
Invest in protection before correction. Daily sun protection, gentle cleansing, and maintaining your skin barrier are far more important than constantly searching for miracle products. Prevention is easier than trying to reverse pigmentation or repair damaged skin later.
Be patient … Living in the UAE introduced me to women with incredibly beautiful skin and hair, but over the years I’ve realized that we’re all working with different genetics, lifestyles, and environments.”
There is no performance in Maria’s UAE beauty story. No sponsorships, no filters, no pretending a bottle changed her life.
The whole haircare routine in Dubai she built comes down to attention rather than product: twenty years of paying attention, adjusting, and refusing to be sold to.
If you’ve just arrived and your hair feels like it’s betrayed you, take it from someone two Emirates and two decades in: it hasn’t. You’re just somewhere new, and you’ll learn it.
Maria did.
SAND SKINCARE TALKS
From previous interviews:
Juhi Sagar, marketing specialist
A series featuring real women, real routines, and real talk about skincare and haircare in the UAE.
Sand Skincare Talks is an ongoing series on routine11.com. Every episode features a real expat woman sharing her honest beauty journey in the UAE, no sponsorships, no sponsored mentions, no filters.
Contact us if you want to share your story.
Disclosure: We received no compensation for this article. This content is solely based on an open and personal interview with Maria Galben.
