As a person who has struggled with unruly, frizzy hair for pretty much her entire life, I’ve picked up on quite a few tips to keeping my mane tamed. My hair has gone through many stages throughout my life, when I was younger (elementary to middle school), my parents never allowed me to cut my hair, so it was quite long with – most likely – plenty of split ends since I never cared to wash or brush my hair much. The washing part was because I was lazy, the brushing part was because my hair was curly and it would only make my hair more frizzy. Even then, I never bothered to at least finger comb my hair or do anything to it– quite frankly, I didn’t care.
However, as I grew older and reached my high school years, I didn’t exactly care as much as I do now, but I definitely began to care a lot more for it than I did in middle school. Although I didn’t practice the tips I will be giving in this article, I did try to tackle the beast that I call my hair. I did this by first making a big chop (one that I don’t regret a single bit to this day), then I cut myself bangs (that, I did regret). The bangs made styling my hair so much harder and even more difficult to just tie up and try to hide the frizz (and the bangs). After the big chop and the sad bangs that resulted, I resorted to having my hair in ponytails or going for half-up/half-down hairstyles. They were all lazy and boring in my opinion but it was better than leaving it as a frizzy mess of brown on the top of my head. While I did get into the habit of actually washing my hair, I didn’t practice any safe washing techniques or buying certain shampoos that would help the frizz.
Soon enough though, I got my hair bleached. This was definitely the best thing I could have ever done to my hair. Of course, bleaching damages the hair, but ever since I bleached it, I’ve actually started putting in the effort to keep it healthy-looking and keeping the frizz away. This was because having frizzy normal genetic-brown hair was one thing, but paying so much money to get it bleached to end up letting it stay frizzy and horrendous-looking was a completely other thing.
I began by using sulfate-free shampoo, an absolute must for people with frizzy and/or curly hair. This shampoo doesn’t dry out your hair the way a normal shampoo would, it keeps your moisture locked in and lets you enjoy a more frizz-free look. I could never go back to using sulfate shampoo again– frizzy, bleached hair is an absolute no!
Before I would even use my shampoo, however, I always make sure to saturate my hair with coconut oil for at least 8 hours before washing it out in the shower– but this is mainly due to the fact that my hair is bleached, so it’s more important to do this on damaged hair like mine in order to keep the hair (especially the ends!) soft.
When you’re showering however, I like to use warm/hot water when washing my hair, but right at the end when I’m done rinsing, I like to rinse my whole head of hair once more but with cold water instead. This helps to close up the “pores” of your scalp, the hair follicles, and helps your hair to dry less frizzy.
After doing the whole washing-my-hair process, I use a product that I ordered off of amazon called “Regis Designline Weightless Thermal Primer.” I just spray it through my hair, finger brush it through, and let it dry. It smells great, can be used as a heat protector, and helps keep the frizz away!
(Photo via Amazon)
When drying your hair with a towel, it’s really important that you don’t just rub the towel throughout your head. The easiest way to towel-dry, at least for me, is to bend over and let your hair fall down in front of you, place the towel below your hair that is in front of you, and scrunch the hair up with your towel all the way to your scalp. Rubbing your hair together with the towel ends up with more frizz when it’s done drying, but by scrunching the hair with the towel, you refrain from messing up your curl pattern and keeping everything intact and frizz-free.
Now, typically, I like to braid my hair after it’s done drying. This is mainly to give my hair some type of volume and pattern since the bleach has changed my curl pattern, but it can also help the frizziness since you’re keeping everything compact and in a specific pattern.
Going off of that, it’s so important that you tie your hair up in some type of way every night before going to bed. I used to always just sleep with my hair down and this caused me to wake up with a frizzy bed-head look. But if you tie it up in some way (a bun, braids, using a headscarf), then you are able to prevent waking up with bedhead, or at least a less-messy bedhead from before.
(Photo by Mstudio via Pexels)
In the mornings when styling my hair, if I notice that my hair is still a bit frizzy, I like to resort to a product called “Paul Mitchell Super Skinny Serum.” It’s a serum that has seriously saved my life on the days when my hair really needed it. It acts as a gel but doesn’t cause your hair to get all scrunchy the way normal gels do. It keeps your hair soft, helps get rid of frizz, and smells nice as well!
(Photo via Paul Mitchell)
Overall, when it comes to tackling frizz, there are many ways to combat it, and these are just a few of the many techniques you can use!