So this morning, it was definitely time to wash my braids again. After being at the beach and outside in 90 degree weather, my scalp was screaming at me no matter how many times I sprayed it with refresher.
I don’t think it’s hard to wash braids, but here’s what it looked like. I squeezed all of the products into the length of my hair to help it reach my hair that’s on the inside of my braids and always smoothed down to not encourage frizz.
Read more below!
A lot of people ask me what my wash day is like, and although I have it outlined for different activities in my Current Regimen, I thought a step-by-step account would be helpful. Please note, I am not listing the products I used because I am testing some new products and they are not my holy grails (besides my coconut oil!). Also, I do not always do my hair like this – this is just an example of a way I do my hair. As stated before, I do things to my hair as needed rather than having a concrete list of things I think I NEED to do. Anywho, here it goes!
The night before:
1. Slather dry hair (6 or 7 day old hair, I can’t remember if I did it on Sunday or Monday, lol) with Nutiva Coconut Oil, paying extra attention to my ends and the nape of my neck (I baby my nape a little more b/c it takes so much abuse due to jewelry).
2. Put hair in a low bun and place a plastic cap on top to keep the oil from getting on my pillow. I also put a scarf on over the cap to keep it from slipping off.
———-SLEEP———-
Wash DAY!
3. Take down bun and separate hair into four sections (two in the front, two in the back).
4. Pin up each section using a rust-resistant duckbill clip. (You can buy these at several beauty stores, I got mine from AveYOU)
———-HOP IN SHOWER———- (While in the shower, I do each of these steps on each section of hair, and clip them back up before moving to the next section.)
5. Wet hair/rinse oil, squeezing water into my hair in order to saturate it. My hair is lower porosity, so if my hair has a week’s worth of dirt/oil PLUS low porosity, it can be difficult to get my hair wet.
6. Apply a conditioner with cleansing agents to each section, smoothing it down my strands and adding extra conditioner to the ends. Massage scalp while applying product to loosen any build up or gunk.
7. Leave conditioner on my hair while I apply to other sections.
8. Rinse conditioner thoroughly, lightly finger detangling as I go along.
9. After rinsing each section, I applied my leave-in conditioner and clipped my hair back up. (I like applying my leave-in in the shower now, it’s just quicker.)
———-EXIT SHOWER———-
10. Apply gel to my hair in eight sections, smoothing the product on. I may do a little more finger detangling BEFORE applying gel since the sections in the shower have been halved. This is the same method I have used for wash and goes for over two years.
11. Apply another dollop of gel on the top of my hair to smooth frizzies.
12. Seal with a butter-heavy moisturizer on the lower half of my hair, twisting my hair (not in two strand twists) to help distribute the product to my ends.
13. Diffuse hair until drippies go away (I don’t know how long this took.).
And I’m done! The whole process takes about an hour and I let my hair air dry the rest of the way. I’m not particularly loving how my hair came out with the gel I used (the product may be too light), but we’ll see how it feels when it dries.
For more in depth information about my regimen, please visit my Current Regimen page.
xoxo
