How to Make Your Braids Last
Protect Your Hair at Night
To protect your hair, always wear a scarf when you go to bed made out of silk or satin. This is important whether you have braids or not.
The smooth texture will prevent your braids from frizzing and keep your edges looking healthy and fresh. This also protects your roots from drying out when you sleep. Once braids develop frizz, it’ll be difficult to make them look completely neat again without re-doing them.
To avoid frizz, wrap your hair with a secure silk or satin scarf at night. If you don’t prefer using satin or silk headscarves, then place a satin pillowcase over your pillow for a similar type of protection and reduce frizz.
Keep Your Scalp Moist
Use a leave-in conditioner at least two to three times a week. This will help prevent your hair from drying out and eventually breaking. It also keeps your hair soft and shiny.
Water is the best thing for your hair, so make sure to spritz your hair every morning with a water-based solution with natural oils such as coconut oil or almond oil. It reduces flakes and soothes the scalp without risking the natural hair frizzing up by washing it.
There are also an array of braid sprays available; however, only look for one without mineral oil, which can cause build-up.
Wash Your Braids
The build-up of sweat and products used can be damaging to your hair. It’s important to gently wash your braids at once every two weeks. However, you don’t need to douse your braids in water if you don’t want to. Instead, use a root rinse or treatment to cleanse your scalp.
You can also use dry shampoo or dry-wash your hair by dampening a washcloth with warm water and shampoo. You’ll part your hair and wipe your scalp down in sections.
Extend Your Style Time by Redoing Your Edges
Often, after a few weeks, your roots have grown out, and it’s time to freshen up your braids. Rather than rebraid your entire hair, just reinstall the braids along your hairline. After you take out the braids along your edges, gently detangle and deep condition before reinstalling your braids again.
Rebraiding lengthens your style and will make your braids look practically brand new again. This can add another week or two to your braids. Avoid other maintenance shortcuts, like re-twisting your roots, which are ultimately damaging to the hair.
Don’t Leave Your Braids in for Too Long
Protective styling is meant to be short-term. While it’s tempting to put your hair in braids and forget about it, this can cause tangling, dryness, and breakage if you don’t switch up the style.
You should never keep braids for longer than eight weeks. Any longer than that, your new growth will stretch and damage and eventually break, causing significant damage to your hair. Keeping your braids for longer than eight weeks will likely leave you with hair loss.
Style With Care
There is nothing like being able to style your braids into a ponytail, look fantastic and go on about your day. But just like your natural hair can experience damage, so can your braids.
If you are rough with them, that can create frizz. Or, if some of your hair is on the shorter side, you could end up pulling them and sometimes your own hair out.
That’s why, even if you do have extensions, it’s important to style them with extreme care. Make sure that all bobby pins and ponytail holders have a protective coating on them. And always use your fingers to style. Styling tools will just pull the braids apart, making them look unpolished and harder to detangle later on.
Klassi-La’Chiq Beauty Essentials
Klass-La’Chiq Beauty Essentials is a beauty supply retail store and fashion boutique located in Asheville, NC. We offer a wide variety of extensions, braiding hair, human hair, and synthetic blends in addition to other stylist supplies. Our all-natural beauty products and head-turning fashion boutique outfits will keep you looking and feeling your best.
If you have any questions, you can give us a call at 828-676-2422 or visit our store on Hendersonville Road in Arden.