5 Protective Styling Mistakes That Will Ruin Your Hair
Since protective hairstyles should ideally keep your hair from getting damaged, having them ruin your hair sounds somewhat counterintuitive. However, regardless of how it sounds, you won’t find a shortage of complaints from people about how they lose hair from protective hairstyles.
Most people who wear protective hairstyles are ignoring your regular haircare routine after styling your hair. Also, using an inexperienced stylist will likely lead to a ton of protective styling mistakes, which will eventually lead to problems with your hair.
You shouldn’t allow your hair suffer damage after dedicating your time to getting a protective hairstyle. This article will explain the styling mistakes from protective hairstyles that may cause considerable damage and how to avoid them. You’ll also get ideas on how to reverse the damages that may have happened to your hair.
What is Protective Styling?
The idea of protective styling is simple: it’s the process of wearing protective hairstyles for the associated benefits. Protective hairstyles are a category of hairstyles that protects your hair from manipulation by tucking or pinning the ends away.
This hairstyle category is common among ladies with Afro-textured hair and generally women seeking to keep a natural hairstyle. Since most hairstyles help to maintain the curl on their hair, it make sense to try them on from time to time.
Depending on what hairstyle you’re getting, protective hairstyles should generally protect your hair, they might actually damage your hair. If you keep implementing too many protective styling mistakes, you’ll end up with a hairstyle that does more harm than good.
To identify these mistakes so you don’t have to make them, the following section will list some of the most popular protective styling mistakes to help you avoid them.
Protective Styling Mistakes That Will Ruin Your Hair
Hairstyling mistakes only perform one function: they ruin your hair. Since the reason you went as far as wearing a protective hairstyle is to prevent damage to your hair, you shouldn’t have to suffer any damage to it.
However, preventing damage to your hair will only be successful if you’re willing to go out of your way to avoid the common protective styling mistakes that will ruin your hair. If you have no idea what they are, here are some of those mistakes and how they affect your hair.
1. Excessive tension to your follicles
When making your hair, you should avoid pulling it back too tightly, as that could cause considerable damage to your hair follicles. Tensile stress is what occurs as a result of overly tight braids, and the effects are almost too numerous to mention.
If your hairdresser seems to make your hair too tight, you may want to consider telling them about it or changing your hairstylist altogether. When making your hair yourself, you should be self-aware and only pull mildly to avoid damage to your hair over the long run.
2. Ignoring regular hair care routine
The name “protective style” has successfully fooled many into thinking they can simply ignore all of their haircare routine just because the hairstyle is already doing the job of protecting the hair for them. Nothing could be further from the truth.
As the introduction clarifies, a protective hairstyle only prevents manipulation by tucking the ends of your hair away, it doesn’t remove dirt, dust, or slime automatically. You still have to wash your hair periodically and protect your hair at night to ensure it stays perfect at all times.
3. Leaving your hair unprotected at night
Most people have the impression that protective hairstyles are low maintenance, which is correct, but at the same time, low maintenance doesn’t equal no maintenance. There are specific maintenance procedures necessary for all hairstyles that you shouldn’t ignore.
One crucial example that quickly comes to mind is protecting your hair when you go to sleep. One of the best protective measures involve wearing a silk or satin scarf when going to bed, and you can also consider changing your pillowcase to a silk or satin one. That way, you can counter the frizz that results from the “unfriendly” fabric on your pillowcase, thereby protecting your hair.
4. Your hairstyles last way too long
Most protective hairstyles are low-maintenance, but they’re not designed to stay on your hair for too long. When your hair starts to look bad, you should consider taking it apart and installing another hairstyle quickly.
If you tend to keep your hair for long enough that it starts to intertwine, it may break when you eventually try to take it apart. The breakage and frizz will likely cause hair loss, which is the opposite of what you’re expecting by settling for a protective style.
5. You’re not using an experienced hairstylist
Your hair can only be as good as your hairstylist. If you’re using an inexperienced stylist who doesn’t know of every recommendation I’ve made in this article, you should consider a change. And yes, you should consider a change even if that hairdresser is you.
While the feeling of making your own hair is good and all, it can also be damaging if you’re doing it the wrong way. Unless you (or your hairdresser) learns all the dos and don’ts of protective styling, you should try to use a more experienced hairstylist.
Protective Styling Tips for Hair Growth
If most of the protective styling mistakes mentioned earlier apply to you, you may have to focus on trying to right your wrongs. A good way to start is by replacing those mistakes with some protective styling tips from professional hairstylists.
With that said, there are a few protective styling tips to help your hair grow quicker and longer without causing considerable or any noticeable damage in the long run.
One of them is always ensuring your hair is always done by a professional, unless you’re trying to install the most simplistic hairstyles. While some professionals are terrible at their craft, you’re a lot less likely to find a competent amateur than an incompetent professional.
After getting your hair done by an expert, you shouldn’t ignore the necessary haircare tips to maintain your hair. Wash your hair periodically and ensure you’re using a silk or satin scarf and pillowcase and you should be able to maintain your hair for much longer.
Conclusion
It’s pretty easy to ruin your hair, even if you wear protective styles constantly. All you need to do is to make some mistakes and you’ll be battling with so much frizz and breakage. This article has shown you what those mistakes are, how to avoid making them, and some tips for getting your hair to grow faster.
