10 Random Hair Tips

There are a lot of little things that you can do to improve your hair. Here are a few random hair tips. Enjoy! 

1. Rinse your hair with cold water. After washing and conditioning your hair, do a final rinse with cold water. This will help seal your cuticle and keep the moisture in your hair. It will also give your hair extra shine. Remember, warm water opens the cuticle (when washing) and cold water closes it.
2. Condition with honey! Honey is a great way to condition the hair naturally. Try adding honey to your conditioner after washing, or if you're brave try it alone.
   
   
3. Pre-Treat your hair before washing. The night before washing your hair, try pre-treating it. Apply either conditioner or oil to your hair and cover with a plastic scarf. Then sleep on it! The net day shampoo and condition your hair as you would regularly. You will notice the difference! ***You may any oil or any conditioner of your choice  to pretreat the hair. It doesn't have to be anything fancy!
   
   
4. Check the ingredients to your products. This is probably the best hair tip I can suggest. Believe it or not, a lot of hair care products contain ingredients that may harm your hair. Get better aquanted with your products by checking the ingredients and doing research. You will learn a lot and your hair will thank you in the end!
5. Always wrap your hair at night. I can't stress this enough! It is important to wrap your hair at night, especially if you are an African-American woman. Covering your hair at night can help to keep it moisturized, stop breakage, and maintain your hairstyle. Use a satin scarf. Materials like cotton only absorb the moisture in your hair leaving it dry.
6. Always seal in moisture.  Applying a moisturizer alone is not enough. You need to "seal" in your moisture. Your hair gets dry when all the moisture has evaporated from the strand. If you coat your hair with a small amount of oil after moisturizing, it will prevent the moisture from evaporating too quickly. Olive oil is great! ***Remember, oil is NOT a moisturizer. This is a common misconception in the African-American community. Water moisturizes, so make sure your leave-in conditioner is water-based (check the ingredients). 
7.  Baby those ends! Protect your ends, they are the most fragile part of your hair and also where most breakage takes place. Coat your ends with oil to prevent split ends (castor oil is great for this). You can even wear your hair in portective styles to protect your ends if you wish.
8. Use sulfate-free shampoos. Sulfates are an ingredient found in a lot of shampoos. Sulfates cause the "bubbles" or "suds" when washing your hair and are completely useless otherwise. Infact, they can be very drying. Give your hair a break and purchase shampoos without sulfates (check the ingredients). ***If your hair feels very dry after washing consider trying a different shampoo. the water isn't causing your hair to be dry, it's the shampoo. So if your hair is feeling dry after a wash, you're hair and shampoo may not be getting along.
9. Wash with conditioner. Is your hair in need of some moisture? Are you in between washes? If you answered yes to both of these questions, you may want to consider restoring your moisture by washing with conditioner. That's right, I said washing with conditioner. Skip the shampoo and wash your hair with your conditioner. Your hair will be packed with moisture without having to wash too frequently.
10. Pin-Curl your hair. Pin curl your hair at night. This will give you awesome curls and prevent you from using heat! So put down the curling iron and pick up the hair pins.
    

For more hair tips (and basics) check out Tips for Hair Growth (Vol. 1)