Its -35 degrees outside where I live, but that won’t stop me from taking care of my hair. During the winter months, nothing is more important than protecting my ends and retaining moisture. So what do I do, I wear protective styles.
What is protective styling?
A protective style is a style that protects the ends of your hair, helping to decrease tangling, shedding and breakage. For most of us, when we think of a protective style, we think of putting our hair in braids; however, there are many different types of protectives styles such as: buns, pinned up two stand twist, wigs and weaves. Basically, any style to your ends are tucked away.
How to do it correctly.
The first thing to do is to evaluate your hair to see if it is currently damaged, shredding or breaking. If any of these conditions are present, deal with the issues before proceeding to your selected style, as it may get worse after a protective style, especially if you get braids.
Secondly, choose an experience stylist if you’re not doing it yourself. I can’t stress how important this point is because you get what you pay for. What you pay for might be damage hair and edge loss. So, do your research and do not chose a stylist base on price.
Thirdly, do not do it too tight. Installing styles too tight will pull out your natural hair and can lead to alopecia.
Maintaining
Just as important as it is to prep your hair and choosing the right stylist, maintaining you own natural hair while wearing a protective style is just as important. So, how do you maintain you natural hair why protective styling? You must still wash (especially your scalp), condition and moisturize your hair while wearing a protective styling.
Ensure that you clean your scalp regularly. To do this, apply shampoo to the scalp and gently massage the shampoo then rinse out the foam and let the foam water run down the rest of your protective style.
Condition the hair and not the scalp. Add conditioner to hair and massage it in then rinse.
Do not ever put conditioner on your scalp.
After shampooing and conditioning, you will want to seal in the moisture. You can use things such as our Moisture Retention Butter or castor oil or raw shea butter.
In conclusion, whatever protective style you chose, ensure that you maintain it properly to ensure you reap the benefits of protective styling. Remember, do not keep your protective styling in longer than suggested by your stylist. Also have some fun with it, as its going be a long cold winter.
Our next blog will be about winterizing your hair care regime. If there is any topic that you would like us to cover feel free to email us at customercare@mellohair.ca