Beauty Tip Series: Curly Hair Perfection

When I was a kid I had stick straight hair. Gradually as I've gotten older my hair has become more wavy. Which is actually the best of both worlds. Having wavy hair makes it easy for me to go straight or curly depending on my mood.

For years my curly hair success days had been a bit hit-or-miss. The good days my hair looked evenly curled and not too frizzy. On bad days my hair would be flat on top and have loose, frizzy looking waves. No big deal... a messy bun always fixed that. But, I wanted a more reliable way to get beautiful, soft, defined curls every time. Lucky for me I stumbled across the Curly Girl method and I can't believe the difference a couple of tweaks in my hair routine have made in the outcome of my curls. Now, some of these processes are more crucial than others. Some are a bonus if you can work them in. I'll let you know the importance of each as I walk you through the process. And of course feel free to check out the Naturally Curly website for more info on your specific hair type. I'm just going to generalize the process and tell you what works well for me.

Before: Frizzy and flat

AFTER! Curly & defined!

Before you step in the shower to wash your hair, make sure you have the following at the ready (in addition to your shampoo & conditioner):

1. Wide Tooth Comb (essential)
2. Product for your curls (essential)
3. Microfiber towel (bonus)

After cleansing your hair, apply conditioner and comb it through to evenly distribute and detangle hair. This will be the only time you comb your hair as anything after this will make your hair frizzy. Rinse out the conditioner and grab your hair product. I really like Suave Professionals Captivating Curls Whipped Cream Mousse because it creates nice curls without being crunchy. Plus it's cheap & easy to find.

Readily available and only about $2

With your hair soaking wet, flip your hair upside-down and squeeze out the excess water. Shake your hair at the roots with your fingers to separate the curls naturally. Using a generous amount of product (I use a palm-ful of mousse), emulsify it between your palms and lift your hair up to your scalp and then scrunch. Repeat over all the hair.

With your hair still flipped over, use a microfiber towel (microfiber doesn't cause hair to frizz as much as regular towels but I haven't seen a huge difference here) to lift hair up to the scalp and scrunch. Repeat to remove excess water from hair. Do not wrap your hair in the towel or rub the towel over your hair. Only use it to lift the hair up to your scalp and scrunch. This is a key technique.

At this point your can flip your hair back over but don't touch it. You're technically supposed to let your hair air dry at this point but my hair doesn't turn out very well this way. I typically let mine air dry a bit then finish it off with a diffuser. If you want to use a diffuser, carefully pile curls onto the diffuser head, put it up to your scalp, and allow it to sit there and dry on low-- moving the hair dryer to different sections until it's dry (or nearly dry). Try to move/touch hair as little as possible because the more you touch it, the more frizz it creates.

That's basically it. I've found that adding product to super wet hair and using the scrunching technique have had the most influence on how my curls turn out. I went from fuzzy-ish waves to more defined corkscrew type curls by following this method. What do you think? Try it out for yourself and let me know!