Until recently, black people have been conditioned to believe that our hair won’t grow past a short afro. That it is unmanageable and rough. That waist-length hair on a black person is nothing but a myth. This rhetoric has been passed down across generations to the point that many women didn’t even try to get to know their hair, know what it needs and give it what it needs. The natural hair movement on YouTube and Instagram however has shifted this narrative and proved that our mentality was just limiting our hair’s potential. You can reach your personal hair length goals by following the 8 simple steps detailed in this blog post.
The Principle
The following steps will detail methods to retain your hair length. Many people believe that their hair does not grow when in reality they are just not retaining length. This means that your hair is breaking at the same or faster rate than it is growing. Everyone’s hair grows and it grows all the time (excluding those with medical conditions or undergoing certain treatments), which means the problem is in your routine.
You’ll be very glad to hear that these 8 steps are very simple and attainable to anyone.
Contrary to popular belief, growing long natural hair is not a convoluted science or just destined in your genetics. The secret to growing long, healthy, natural hair fast is in the habits that you build.
Just like everything else in life, to achieve a large, overall goal you must incorporate little habits into your lifestyle. For example, say your goal is to lose weight. To achieve this you don’t just say you want to lose weight and then continue eating junk food often without exercising and then complain that you’re not losing weight. Instead, you would incorporate healthy habits into your lifestyle such as swapping unhealthy snacks for fruits and getting regular exercise.
To achieve long, healthy natural hair you must do the same; incorporate habits into your routine that will help you achieve your hair goals. The following 8 steps are habits that will guarantee you reach your hair goals.
1. Keep your hair moisturised
Natural hair is strongest when it is properly moisturised, so ensuring that your hair is moisturised is crucial for the health of your natural hair, and healthy hair grows and retains length. This is because hair that is properly moisturised constantly will not experience as much breakage as it’s not constantly dry and brittle.
If you want to know in more detail how to keep your moisturised read my blog posts on how to maximise moisture during wash day and how to find the right products to keep your hair moisturised.
However, in short, the true moisture that your hair needs is water. Not conditioner, not oils and butter, but water.
The main way that water enters your hair is when you wash it. Shampoos have a higher pH than that of your hair, so they raise your hair cuticles when applied to allow water deep into your hair shaft. Conditioners have a pH that is lower than that of your hair so they close your cuticles back down to seal in water and the other nourishing ingredients found in your products. This is how you moisturise your hair and it’s effective for all hair porosities.
How not to moisturise your natural hair:
Other products that claim to be moisturising like leave-in conditioners, creams and oils don’t do this. Haven’t you ever noticed that when you go a couple of weeks without actually washing your hair but “moisturise” it weekly using leave-ins, creams and oils your hair goes back to feeling dry after one or two days, but as soon as you wash it your hair goes back to being a soft and truly moisturised, luscious mane?
This is because like I said before the only way to sufficiently moisturise your hair is by washing it.
Products like leave-ins and creams have ingredients that help to slow down the loss of water from your hair shaft such as oils, ingredients that help to draw in small amounts such as humectants (click here for a list of film-forming humectants) and ingredients that condition the hair (i.e. coat the hair and give it that soft feeling that we naturals love so much).
Understanding how products work as a tool to keep natural hair moisturised is sooo important so this is just another reminder to read my posts on how to choose the right hair products for YOUR hair.
2. Oils and butters
Oils and butters are substances made of a molecule of glycerol attached to molecules of fatty acids. There are two types of fatty acids and these give oils different properties.
Monounsaturated fatty acids have linear branches and so can easily penetrate the hair. Such oils include olive oil, coconut oil and avocado oil. These oils penetrate the hair cuticle and help reduce the amount of water that can enter the hair cuticle which supposedly (emphasis on supposedly) can help reduce the effects of hygral fatigue. However, this does reduce the amount of moisture that can enter your hair cuticle.
What you want to add to your hair strands are Polyunsaturated fatty acids. These molecules are too big to penetrate the hair shaft so they instead form a protective film around your hair eg Castor oil, sunflower, safflower, and grapeseed. They also act as a lubricant and reduce the surface friction of the hair to help your hair strands glide past each other and reduce tangling and reduce breakage.
Oils and butters also help to slow down the rate of water loss from your hair cuticle, keeping your hair moisturised for longer.
Disclaimer:
If you keep up with the latest tea in the natural hair community you know that in this day and age, I can’t talk about oils and butters without addressing the “no oils and butters” movement that sprung up recently in natural hair jargon.
The principle of this movement is that oils and butters prevent water from entering your hair because they are hydrophobic (repel water) and hence constant use of them without proper cleansing leaves your hair chronically dry as it forms a film around your hair shaft that repels water.
The issue is not that oils and butters are bad for your hair, but that they are not used correctly and not properly cleansed out.
Adding oils to your routine is not a must but is most definitely a helpful step when used correctly. Always ensure you properly and frequently cleanse and condition every 5-14 days and use oils and butters sparingly. Always remember that with oils and butters, a little goes a long way!
3. Keep your hair stretched
Have you ever tried a wash-n-go? Did you notice how whenever you wear your hair in a wash-n-go or another unstretched style you find more tangles and single-strand knots than normal?
This is definitely not true for everyone but I know a lot of kinky, curly naturals will relate to this. Although these unstretched styles are absolutely beautiful, they permit your hair to shrink and curl up into each other to form knots. This is especially true for undefined styles where your strands are not really in clumps but move free individually. Wearing your hair stretched will reduce the formation of tangles and single-strand knots and just make your hair easier to detangle in general.
Stretched styles include twist outs, braid outs, stretched wash-n-gos, blowouts, Bantu knot outs etc.
This is an underrated step and is not necessary for everyone. This tip is more of a suggestion and not a must-do rule. However, if you do continue wearing unstretched styles I recommend that you wash and detangle your hair more frequently to save yourself stress and hair on wash days. Because the longer you elongate wash day (which should be “wash few hours” if you read my blog post), the drier your hair gets, so the more tangled it gets, so the more breakage you are likely to get and I don’t about you but that just sounds very long, very stressful and easily preventable.
Below are some tools that you can use to stretch your hair!
4. Protective hairstyles
Protective styles are styles where your ends are tucked neatly away, safe from manhandling, the environment and whatever else loves to cause dryness, breakage, tangles and damage to our hair.
Depending on the type of protective style, these can stay in your hair for 1-8 weeks. For these styles to actually be protective it is important to still maintain proper hair care techniques such as moisturising the hair and scalp and perhaps using your trusted hair oil on your scalp.
There is a wide variety of styles to choose from, ranging from mini twists to box braids, from buns to locs, and from wigs to flat twists. There are so many to choose from to match everyone’s taste and lifestyle!
Below are some examples of protective styles you can try with and without extentions. The choices are endless so have fun with it!
5. Low manipulation hairstyles
Low manipulation styles are styles that don’t require you to touch your hair every day. For anyone suffering from the hands-in-hair syndrome, this may be a hard step to follow but the purpose of this is to keep the manipulation of your hair to a minimum, saving yourself from the formation of knots, dryness and breakage.
Low manipulation styles include wash-n-gos, twist-outs, braid-outs, etc. To be honest, anything can be a low-manipulation style as long as it doesn’t place too much tension too your roots and doesn’t require you to touch your hair every day (or just not style it every day).
Below are some examples 🙂
6. Being gentle
This is another underrated step that seems so basic and yet so many people fail to do this. Treating my hair gently when handling it has been a major contributor to my own length retention journey.
Being gentle with your hair includes not ripping through knots with a comb and instead having the patience to carefully untangle it, safely installing protective styles such as box braids and wigs, using a heat protectant when applying direct heat to your hair and so many other things.
We don’t work so hard to grow our hair for us to break it by mishandling it!
7. Sleep with a bonnet
Keeping your hair protected at night is another overlooked step. All that tossing and turning on a cotton pillowcase causes friction on your hair, which over time wears away your hair cuticle leading to damage and split ends. Cotton also sucks up all that moisture you worked so hard to put into your hair to leave your hair dry
There are many options to protect your hair at night, but all have a common denominator…silk/satin.
Silk and satin are very smooth fabric materials that minimise the surface friction acting on your hair.
Do yourself a favour and get yourself a silk/satin scarf or bonnet or pillowcase to sleep with so you don’t wake up in the morning with dry, matted curls and find your pillow decorated with breakage from your hair 🙂
Below are some links to get your own silk/satin bonnet, scarf and pillowcase!
8. Trims
Trimming your hair is crucial for the length retention of natural hair. This may seem like an oxymoron since this is a post discussing methods on how to keep your hair length instead of removing it, however, trimming away split and/or damaged ends is one of the most important rules listed here.
The purpose of trimming your natural hair is to remove the split ends and any other damage to your ends before it has a further detrimental effect on the rest of your hair shaft. In the case of split ends, what happens is that your hair cuticle split and if you don’t trim it on time the split can ride further up the hair shaft until it reaches the root. This evidently leads to thinning ends and hair, which will be brittle and break easily.
Hence, if you are holding onto split ends in the name of retaining length sis…. 👏🏽cut 👏🏽it 👏🏽off. As you can see you are actually causing the opposite of what you want to happen.
How often you should trim your hair depends on various factors such as hair density, hair thickness, how often you use heat, whether or not your hair is coloured or relaxed etc, your overall hair care etc.
Hairstylists recommend you get hair trimmed every 6-12 weeks. I recommend speaking to professional natural hair stylists to figure out your trim schedule, however, this is not possible for everyone so my best advice is to discern your trim schedule from how you treat your hair based on the things I’ve mentioned above.
Look out for signs that tell you your hair needs trimming such as visible split ends, many single strand knots and excessive breakage.
Please, don’t go and use any random scissors that you find in your house. You must only use hairdressing shears as they are made specifically for cutting hair.
You’ll be doing more harm than good so make sure to listen to me!
Hair shears are incredibly sharp, which ensures that your hair remains still and can be cut with one clean slice.
On the other hand, regular scissors are not sharp enough, so when you try to cut your hair with them, your hair moves and shifts around as the bottom blade is blunt. This consequently causes split ends and uneven trims.
Below is a link where you can find grab your own pair of hairdressing scissors!
Final words
In summary, it’s the simple and little habits that you incorporate into your routine that will help you to reach this bigger goal… just like with everything else in life.
Growing long natural hair fast is very simple indeed and doesn’t require you to come up with complex hair growth formulas or keep it hidden for six months at a time.
Your natural hair journey is versatile and freeing. So enjoy it as you grow and care for it 😉