Washing Natural Curly Hair

 

Washing natural curly hair can be a challenge especially when you have recently transitioned from relaxed hair.  I have a few tips that should help make it a little easier and keep your hair healthy.

 

Various Ways to Cleanse Your Hair

• Cleansing with Shampoo:
• Shampoo your hair less often than you think you should.  Once week is more than enough
• Always use a mild shampoo.  Try looking for shampoos in natural food stores. These typically don't have the same harsh ingredients that drugstore brands do.
• Only apply shampoo to the scalp.  During rinsing, the length will get clean
• Cleansing with Conditioner
• In between shampooing, you can use conditioner to cleanse your hair.
• Simply pretend the conditioner is shampoo and treat it the same way.

 

Before you get started

• If your hair has been straightened, then you'll want to detangle your hair with a denman brush or paddle brush.  These are gentle on your hair and will help detangle as well as remove shedded hairs to inhibit tangling during washing and conditioning.
• If you have been wearing your hair in a curly hairstyle, do not attempt to detangle it.
• Get your tools ready to take in the shower with you:  a shower comb, a few duckbill chips or butterfly clips, shampoo, and conditioner.

 

Cleansing Your Natural Curly Hair

• The first thing you want to do is thoroughly rinse your hair.  This could take as long as 5 minutes.  Just make sure to do it and do it thoroughly.  This initial step will help to get rid of a lot of product build up.  If your hair was straightened, it may take a long rinsing before the curls begin to appear again.
• Once you're done rinsing, you'll want to separate your hair into 2-4 sections.  Clip up the sections with your duckbill clips.
• After separating, you will work with one section at a time.  Apply the shampoo (or conditioner) and gently massage with your fingers.  Do not use your fingernails.  After finishing one section, move on to the next one until you're done with all sections.
• Now starting back with the first section, rinse your hair with warm water.

 

Conditioning Your Hair

• Apply the conditioner to your hair in the way that you did the shampoo - section by section.
• Once conditioner has been applied to all of the section, go back to the first section and unpin it.  Take your shower comb and gently detangle that section working from the ends upwards to the roots.  Be patient and gentle
• Now you can choose to deep condition your hair by sitting under a hooded dryer or heated cap for 15-30 minutes

 

Finishing Up

• Hop back in the shower, and rinse your hair once again according to the sections that you already created.
• If you find some of the sections still a little tangly, rinse while at the same time combing through your hair.

You're now all ready to begin styling your natural curly hair.