How To Care For Your Natural Hair While Adorning A Protective Style

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Dianne Austin

Dianne is the co-founder of Natural Haircare News and Coils To Locs.com. She's been blogging about natural hair ever since she made the decision to break free of the creamy crack in 2012.

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The reason naturalistas wear protective hair styles is to protect their natural hair from any disturbances, may these be physical, chemical or environmental. The protective styles also offer some protection against breakage that can slow down hair growth.

If wearing a protective style, make sure that it is actually protecting your hair and not harming it by installing it properly and maintaining it correctly.

Some naturalistas are not aware that protective styles must be installed correctly to be effective in preventing damage to their already fragile natural hair. They are also unaware of the importance of proper hair care while wearing the style.

This article from Natural Hair Rules share six tips that will help you avoid hair damage due to incorrectly installed and poorly maintained protective hair styles.

From: 6 Tips to Avoid Damaged Hair While in Protective Styles

When Installing the Protective Style

There are three aspects of installing a protective style to consider the Tightness, Tools, and Products.

Tightness: Whether you are going to a hairstylist or doing your hair yourself, make sure to stress that you do not want the style to be too tight. If you cannot scrunch your face without your hair pulling your face back, then the style is too tight. This is also very important around your edges. The edges of your hair are fragile because there is less hair around it to support the tightness of some styles.
Tools: Hairstyles that require the use of combs, brushes, tangle teezers, and other tools that cause your hair to break is a sign that if you want to wear that style you will need to look for another tool that works better with your hair. By using tools that usually do not work well with your hair, you run the risk of causing breakage and that breakage may never get addressed while your hair is in a protective style.
Products: Since the products you use are going to sit on your hair for the duration of your style look for products that maintain moisture and avoid products that easily cause build up.

While Wearing the Style

Maintaining the cuteness of your hairstyle is important, but be careful not to sacrifice the health of your hair for looks alone. It is important to listen to your hair even if it may affect the fresh look of your style.

Wash/Condition When Necessary: It is so easy to put off washing your hair when it is in a protective style because you want your style to stay fresh. But the health of your scalp is important in order to grow your hair. If your scalp starts to flake and feels itchy, then wash your hair. The same applies to your strands. If you know you applied many heavy products that can coat your hair, then cleansing your strands is a necessity to avoid the adverse effect of product build-up. Product coating the strands also blocks the hair from receiving moisture, and since moisture retention is an issue many naturals face, you want your strands to always be able to receive moisture.
Deep Treatments. For prolonged styles, if you struggle with dry hair then it is vital that you continue to deep condition your hair even while it’s in the style. This gives your hair the intense benefits that deep treatments provide your hair.
Protect at Night: Just because your hair is in a protective style does not mean it is invincible. It is still important to protect your hair at night using a satin bonnet, scarf, or satin pillowcase to avoid moisture loss and even tangles from rubbing against a cotton pillowcase.

Author: Pamela

“Changing attitudes about natural hair” is what we do at Natural Haircare News. Through informative articles, podcasts and videos, we go beyond just sharing the latest advice and tips on kinky, curly, wavy haircare – We shake things up and focus on the realities of wearing our hair natural.