Tips On Hair Styling

Providing hair styling tips is a difficult challenge. There are so many different textures, colors, lengths, shapes, and thicknesses of hair that it's almost impossible to make blanket statements about what we all should or should not do with our hair. Ultimately, it comes down to you looking at yourself in the mirror and making decisions about how you want to treat and style your own hair. But, that being said, if you want some points at least to think about as starting points, here are some hair styling tips that I've found useful.

1. Hair goes through phases: When it comes to hair, have you noticed that techniques that work one week often don't work the next week? This is due to lots of things, including the season, the weather, your stress level, your diet and exercise habits, the length of your hair, and how you've treated your hair over the past weeks and months.

This is why it's always a mistake to mindlessly do the same thing over and over again. You have to keep an eye on your hair, monitor its conditions and its changes, and adjust accordingly. That's right: Hair styling methods don't just vary between different people; they also vary between the present you, the past you, and the future you. No wonder these things make us a little crazy sometimes.

2. Find a dirty/clean balance: Hair that looks too clean is bad, and hair that looks too dirty is bad. Are we agreed? If so, then we can also agree that the key to beautiful hair is striking a balance between the two poles.

If your hair is very oily, it's okay to shampoo often. Just lay off the blow-dryer and the heating products that make clean hair look super-clean. Then, after you shampoo your hair, you can "dirty it up" in perfectly natural ways such as rubbing a little bit of lotion through it or sprinkling in some baby powder. Your hair will technically be clean, but it will also be manageable.

3. Style in stages: Resist the urge to try to make your hair look finished when it's still wet, as further drying will always change its shape and texture. After getting out of the shower, leave the brush aside for a little while. Feel free to run your hands through your hair to undo any knots, but don't worry if it looks big and unstyled in the early stages. Then, once it has dried a little, start working it toward its final form, but leave a little bit of messiness. What looks like messiness in the early stages will turn into body later on. Only when your hair feels like it's almost dry should you work it into the style you're going for. This strategy holds for both air drying and blow-drying; blow-drying just speeds up the process.

4. Don't stop cutting: Even if you decide to grow your hair long, it needs regular scissor maintenance to keep it manageable and not too thick and frayed. Instead of trying to grow your hair as quickly as possible, pace yourself. Spread your haircuts out longer than normal, and cut less off-but don't stop cutting. Regular trims will prevent your style from being hidden behind mountains of hair.