How to Use Curly Products
First please honor your curls with a paraben, sulfate and silicon free regimen. On wash days use warm water to emulsify your shampoo. If opposed to a product that suds proceed with manufactures instructions. Follow with either a daily conditioner or deep conditioner. Rinse thoroughly with warm water to prepare hair to receive hair care regimen.
In general, for medium to high porosity hair, apply products to your curls in the shower with your head upside down and hair dripping wet. Using ‘prayer hands’ scrunch the product from the ends of your curls to the scalp. Squish out the extra water from your hair. Unfortunately, this leads to some product waste. This is the ‘Curly Method’ in short hand.
Be firm with your scrunching, go slow and allow the extra water and product to drip from each section with patience. You can use a microfiber towel or a t-shirt towards the end of the extra water being squished out. At this time, you can wrap your head up with the microfiber towel or t-shirt to plop. Plopping is a method of incubating body heat into your hair care while drying the hair by syphoning out the residual water.
A similar process can be used for low porosity hair. However, each layer of product benefits from a curl comb or wet brush that forces your product regimen into your hair strands. Moving section by section, parting with large clips is best for managing thick, long, low porosity curls.
The order of product application varies from one line to the next. Generally, mousse is best applied first at the roots for lift and volume. After mousse, I like to layer leave-in conditioner, followed by styling cream and then gel for definition and control.
A humectant is to seal in the moisture from the hair care and attract the moisture from the environment. Product that seals out the moisture from the environment is anti-humectant. Anti-humectants are designed to defend against humidity while humectants are used during the dry season to maintain moisture. That’s why seasonal forecasting is important.
A good trick for anti-humidity effect is to spray a ‘casting’ of a flexible hold hairspray from roots to ends. Hold the bottle or can about ten inches from the shape of your hairstyle. The hairspray acts as a shield from humidity trapping in the goodness of your regimen and sealing out the environment. I like the Flexible Hold Hairspray from DevaCurl and Surface Curls Finishing Spray. This step also aids in reducing drying time with or without heat.
DevaCurl also has introduced a product called FASTDRY, which further reduces drying time by up to 66%, with or without heat. It seriously works but it makes me cough when I spray it. I have to put the diffuser on my blow-dryer and run it at low air on my station’s tray to get the air to be breathable. Also, it really only seems to work with the DevaCurl line. I don’t know why, but it did not pair well when cocktailing into a style when I had used more organic products.
To refresh hair, you can use PH balanced water in an 8oz bottle and ten drops of essential lavender oil to revitalize the hair on no-wash and co-wash days. DevaCurl has a DEVAFRESH Mist, Surface has Awaken Mist and Taliah Waajid has Moisture Clenz. All of these products minimize unwanted aroma and fluff up the hair reactivating curl patterns for up to 24 hours after an initial wash day.
By day four or five it’s probably time to consider washing your hair with your full wash-day routine. But the timing may differ depending on your hair’s individual needs.
Natural and organic lines pair well with each other. Likewise synthetic lines pair well with each other. When something organic touches something synthetic it doesn’t always work out to be the best combination. Some people are sensitive and allergic to plants. Some people are allergic to specific ingredients in either synthetic or organic lines.
There is a market for a variety of combinations of ingredients. If there wasn’t growth and development in the area of cosmetics, I’d have probably left the industry a long time ago.
