Trimming Your Hair at Home
I posted about the importance of trimming and all the mixed feelings that usually come with it forever ago in The Dreaded T Word. But what I didn’t mention in that post was how I trim my hair at home. There are many different methods for trimming at home, but a lot of them require time and a whole lot of patience, especially if your hair is cut into a particular shape. I’ve discovered a pretty much fool-proof way to trim my hair at home that is quick, ensures you won’t accidentally ruin shape, AND has a built in hairstyle! So let’s get right into it.
This process can get pretty tedious, but I don’t mind doing more work up front if that means the actual trimming part will be easy. So I wash and condition my hair in the evening and put it in about 8 braids so that it can dry overnight. The next morning, I blow dry my hair. This is one of the more time consuming parts of the process, and the good thing is you can skip it! Sometimes I blow dry my hair, sometimes I don’t. This trimming method works on both blow dried and freshly washed hair. This time, I knew I wanted elongated twists afterwards so I went ahead and blow dried my hair.
Although I don’t put heat on my hair very often and my hair is pretty resilient when it comes to heat styling, I always take extra precautions to avoid heat damage. I use the It’s A 10 Miracle Leave-In Conditioner Spray Productand the Tresemme Thermal Creations Protective Spray Heat Tamer. The It’s A 10 product isformulated to repair damaged hair, add shine and promote silkiness, detangle, control frizz, protect color, prevent split ends and breakage, enhance body, and even works as a thermal protector, providing both UV protection and heat protection. It also helps to make my hair manageable during the detangling process and adds a healthy shine without making it feel heavy. I then follow up with the Tresemme product, which I’ve also used on weaves and wigs when heat styling them. That product is formulated with a moisture-locking vitamin complex, and guards against heat and friction.
Anyway, back to the morning after: I go through my hair, one braid at a time, using the tension method. The tension method involves holding the ends of your hair with one hand and blow drying down the shaft of the hair with the other. This allows me to get my hair “straight enough”, initially, without having to rake a brush through my hair and encourage tangling. After I do the tension method and I believe my hair is straight enough, I follow up with a paddle brush, pinning my hair between the paddle brush and the blow dryer. I’m not going for bone straight, just straight enough to see the ends clearly.
I got my hair cut back in April (read more about that here!) and as you can see, it’s still holding the shape pretty well. Because I don’t trust myself to trim my hair without altering the shape, I’m going to twist my hair and trim the twists!
IMPORTANT NOTE: Please use shears, not just any old pair of scissors! They don’t have to be expensive, I think I paid about $10 for mine from my local beauty supply store. Regular scissors can increase split ends, so unless you want to trim more frequently and damage your hair in the process, use shears
I usually wait 24-48 hours after twisting to trim so that my hair can really settle into the style and shrink where it may. I then split my twists into 4 sections, inspect each twist to see where it’s reasonable to cut, and cut. That’s it.
These mini twists took me about 3 hours to do (I’ve detailed how I do them here), and I have done them much smaller before but didn’t think that was necessary this go round. I like to trim my hair in mini twists for two reasons:
1: It allows me to trim my hair microscopically (because the twists are so small) and ensures that I won’t ruin my shape
2: My hair is styled and ready to go by the time everything is said and done.
That’s pretty much it! If you’ve ever tried this before (or if you try this after reading this post), let me know what you think! How often do you trim your hair and what methods do you prefer?