Stop dyeing your hair, or choose a hair color that fades easily
If you can’t or won’t stop dyeing your hair, choose either an ombre color or use semi/demi-permanent hair colors so it fades nicely and looks nice as it grows out.
Get your haircut every 6-8 weeks. If you cut your split ends as soon as they happen your hair will be in such better shape than if you let them continue to split.
Stop The Heat!
Use heat protectants in every step of your hair styling. Use a heat protectant before you blow dry, and then use another heat protectant before you use a hot tool like a flat iron or curling iron. The more your hair is protected from the heat you are inflicting it with, the healthier your hair will be and will require less maintenance.
Embrace the natural texture of your hair so you use less heat styling tools. Everyone who has curly hair wants straight hair and vice-versa. If you can find a way to embrace your natural hair texture, or use products instead of hot tools, you can save your hair from a lot of damage.
Do heat-less curls if you have straight hair. You can either braid your hair overnight to get waves or use hair rollers. This is also a way that you can avoid using your blow dryer because you want your hair to be damp when you set it for heatless waves.
Protect your Hair with Silk
Changing your pillowcase to a silk pillowcase is an easy switch that can really help your hair every night. I like the look of the slip silk pillowcases, but they are out of my price range so I bought a knock-off one on Amazon. I feel like it works just fine for my needs, but if you have extra sensitive hair you might want to spring for the real deal. A slip pillowcase would be a great thing to ask for during Christmas or a birthday.
Also, I like to use a silk scrunchie when putting up my hair to keep it from being pulled too tight and getting a crease. You can tell when people put up their hair everyday because there is often a line of breakage where the hair tie sits.
Stretch Out Your Salon Products
Don’t stop using salon products all together; just get strategic about how you use them. If you want to save money on products, the number 1 product you should purchase is your conditioner. If you have a good conditioner, you can mostly make up the damage a bad shampoo will do. But if you have a bad conditioner, they are filled with silicone and other oils that don’t repair your hair. Bad conditioner will just coat your hair strands so it becomes greasier faster and is difficult to style properly.
One way to stretch out your salon products is to use them every other time; switching in a drugstore product.
Choose your drugstore products carefully. Read the ingredients and make sure you are getting the best quality products you can for what you can afford. Good hair product ingredients include Keratin, Shea, anything labeled as “protein”, seed oils, Panthenol, and Aloe. Bad hair product ingredients include all variants of Silicone (anything ending in “cone” is probably a silicone), Parabens, Alcohol, some Chlorides. If will be very hard to find products that don’t have all the “bad” ingredients, so if they are lower on the ingredient list it is likely you have a higher quality product.
Focus Attention Away from Your Hair
I definitely “hide” behind my hair and feature it as my favorite part of me. I would rather go out with styled hair and sweatpants than a cocktail dress and my hair not done. If you need to take your hair out of the limelight for a while, then you might want to accentuate other parts of your body to distract from it.
There are so many things you can do to make your life easier, like making your hair lower maintenance. If you do one of these things, please let me know, I would love to hear about it!