While we'd all love to have perfect hair everyday, bad hair days can and will happen to everyone. It is possible to avoid them completely, however, and all it involves is following 3 very simple hair care rules…
Hair Care Rule #1: Understanding Your Hair Type and Condition
Knowing your hair type, texture and condition will go a very, very long way to ensuring that you can manage your hair as effortlessly as possible and may just be the only thing most people need to do to get a handle on bad hair days!
Find out, either through your own research or with the help of your hairstylist, the following:
- Your hair type (fine, medium, coarse).
- Your hair texture (straight, wavy, curly).
- Your hair density (thin, medium, thick).
- Your hair condition (normal, oily, dry, damaged).
- Any other hair factors that may have an impact on your hair (such as dandruff or excessive hair loss etc).
Once you know these things you can then have your hair cut, styled, colored and cared for with hair products that will suit your exact hair profile.
A clear understanding in regards to your hair, its needs and a hair care routine that uses the right hair products to work with your locks will give you and your hair greater manageability and results - which in turn leads to great hair! It's that simple.
Hair Care Rule #2: Eliminating Common Hair Mistakes
When it comes to hair mistakes that will leave you with locks that you just can't do anything with, the most common have to do with how you wash your hair and what you do to your hair before trying to style it.
While it might seem impossible that having clean hair can contribute to a bad hair day, the fact is that over-washing or washing your hair incorrectly does cause issues. Just remember the following:
- Too much washing will strip all the natural oils from your hair which will interrupt the delicate balance of your hair and actually make your hair oilier or drier so try to wash your hair only when absolutely necessary.
- If you feel the need to wash everyday then try just wetting your hair instead or diluting your shampoo with water so you're not getting a full strength wash all the time.
- Using too much shampoo or conditioner and the wrong type for your hair is the perfect recipe for limp, dry, hair frizz filled locks.
- Roughly washing or incorrectly washing your hair will do more harm than good. Avoid just dumping shampoo on top of your head and rubbing away, instead, apply a small amount to your palms, rub your palms together until you get suds and then gently massage the suds into your scalp.
- Shampoo is best applied to your scalp and will clean the rest of your hair when you rinse.
- Not rinsing your hair enough can also cause issues as the leftover shampoo and conditioner residue will play havoc with your hair strands.
- When it comes to rinsing right, pay attention to the temperature of your water. Rinsing your hair with any temperature other than luke-warm will mean too much heat and steam, which will dry out your strands and can even speed up hair color fade.
The next biggest bad hair day concern compared to poorly washed locks is overloaded locks.
How many times have you taken your perfectly cleaned locks and then ruined them when trying to create a great looking style by adding way too much styling product?
It's unfortunately very easy to do but can be avoided if you make sure to...
- Always add the smallest amount possible and then only add more if you need it.
While it's tempting to grab a glob of product and run it through your hair in the hope of saving styling time, it's more likely you'll end up with weighed down, oily looking locks that won't style and are far from decent looking.
Hair Care Rule #3: Keeping Your Hair Expectations in Check
Our final bad hair day banishing rule is to keep your hair expectations in check!
If your hair is naturally thick and wavy then you're never going to have silky smooth salon straight strands without spending hours on your hair. And if you only have twenty minutes to style your hair in the morning before work then any straightening attempt is only going to leave you with bad, half styled hair. Do yourself and your locks a favor and stick to...
- Hairstyles for your hair type that are achievable.
- Looks that are on your level of styling expertise.
- Hairdos that can easily be done in the styling time that you have available to you.
By working with these 3 simple rules you should be able to get your hair in the type of condition where it looks healthy and is easy to style without a lot of fuss and effort. This will then give you good hair days instead of bad ones, and great hair all the time!