growing your hair long: a few tips

Heather asked what I'd learned about growing out your hair, so I'm writing up the list here. Please note, most of this is stuff I learned puttering around the forums on this site; I'm not an expert at all, so, as always, do your own research first. There's some disagreement about some of this (e.g., are silicone-containing shampoos good or bad?), but this is what I've settled on.

1) Don't cut your hair. As I mentioned in this post, it seems obvious, but it's often overlooked. Most hair-stylists recommend a trim every six weeks or so, but that advice is really for people who want to keep up their current style; six weeks is about how long it takes for a short haircut to lose its shape. If you want long hair, you really don't want to cut it often - you'll cut off all of your growth! (If I'm remembering correctly, an average rate of growth is about six inches a year.) If you're starting without split ends, you can probably get away with trimming about twice a year, and then only a little bit. (If you're starting with split ends, there are other methods.)

2) Change how often you wash your hair. Taking a shower every day is fine, but don't wash your hair every day. It doesn't need the detergents of the shampoo stripping it of its oils all the time. About every three days is good a good balance between getting rid of dirt and keeping your hair from getting too dry.

3) Change how you wash your hair. Some people like to go no-poo, but I like the simplicity of the condition-wash-condition method. The idea behind it is that you really need to wash the hair close to your scalp (that's where all the dead skin gunk is going to be), but the hair that falls past the bottom of your ears doesn't really need to be washed (this is, stripped with detergent). So after you get your hair wet, coat the hair lower than the bottom of your ears with conditioner. Then wash all the hair on your head with shampoo. Then rinse off shampoo and conditioner, and condition all your hair. Let sit and then rinse as normal.

4) Oil your hair. Doesn't that just sound like something out of the Old Testament? Coconut oil is popular, and I ended up finding a little jar of it in the small alternative medicine section of CVS (a section I didn't even know CVS had!) for about a buck fifty. You only need a teeny-tiny amount - about the scrape of a fingernail if you have air-conditioning and about a dip of the fingertip if you don't. Rub it between your palms (your palms will only barely be shiny if you have the right amount) and then palm it gently onto your hair, stroking down. Only put it on the hair past your ears; your scalp hair will get oily enough on it's own! This is basically for moisture; you don't really want enough to show, although it will make your hair a bit shinier, which is nice. Do this when your hair is dry, btw. (Again, some people think oiling makes things worse - do your own research and experiments. What works seems to depend on your hair type.)

5) Treat your hair gently. By the time it gets down to your waist, your hair is four or five years old, probably. It's fragile. Don't always pull it up in the same hairdo, stressing the same spots over and over. Don't tear things out of your hair: pull rubberbands out gently (and make them those nice, fabric-coated, no-seam rubberbands) and separate the tines of your bobby-pins before you pull them out, so you don't rip your hair while you're doing it. If possible, find a wood or horn detangling comb for detangling your hair; plastic combs all have sharp little seams up the edges of the teeth from the molds they were made it, and combing these through your hair is kind of like running curling ribbon over the edge of a scissors blade. Many people will advise not using bobby pins or rubberbands at all, and just going with hairsticks, but I like having my hair up in braids too much to do that.


Speaking of braids, check out this post to see what's possible with shoulder-length hair! I love, love, love my hair this way, and since I can do it both directions, it's not getting stressed the same way every day.

I hope this helps. There is seriously lots, lots, lots more over on the boards I linked to at the top of this post, including advice for folks once their hair is longer than mine is now, but I'm not including that because I have no experience with it yet!

To end on a hopeful note: most folks over there seem to think that just about everyone can grow long hair. Some people have special genes so that their individual hairs don't fall out after six or seven years, and they're the ones who can walk around with hair down to their ankles. But most people have a growth rate that will let their hair get down about to the bottom of their bottoms, if it's well-cared for. I'm really curious to see if this is true, because my prior experience is that my hair would grow to my mid-back and then stop. But it was full of split ends when it was that long, so I can see how it'd be possible that it could get longer if I can keep it undamaged.

Anyway, Heather, there's your list! Thanks for asking, it was fun to write.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell