How often should you cut your hair?

One aspect about my hair that I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with is cutting and trimming. In the days before knowing anything about growing healthy hair, I didn’t have any qualms about cutting off quite big portions to achieve a cute new style, whether it was straight or curly. However, the problem would emerge when I’d try to grow out the style and achieve some form of length below my shoulders. Unfortunately it never came. So I would get bored and chop it all off again. This is how the cycle continued for years.

In hindsight, if I had only just trimmed  the hair at some form of a regular interval, I’m sure I could have achieved much longer lengths as I am now. The main problem I used to have was when hairdressers would say to me that trimming would make the hair grow faster and longer. To me this always sounded like complete non-sense, which it is. What does the hair at my roots have to do with my ends? Nothing right?

It all comes down to your ends being the oldest part of your hair. Because they’ve been around the longest out of all the hair on your head, they often appear thinner than the roots as they’ve been subjected to more washing, styling, brushing, heat styling and generally more manipulation than the rest of the hair. This is due to the cuticle having been stripped away gradually.

Trimming does however help the hair to remain as healthy as possible while keeping the thinning ends in check. It also removes any damaged and split ends. Remember, split ends tend to travel up the shaft of the hair and can literally cause a split further up, which can actually damage a completely healthy area of the strand.

So always keep in mind that  trimming split ends will help to make the hair healthier, which means there are no damaged and breaking ends. This will in turn allow the strands to retain the length. With that said, how often should you cut your hair?  If you want to keep your hair at the same length, I’d say a trim every  6-8 weeks should do the trick. But if you’re aiming to grow your hair longer to let’s say bra-strap or mid-back length, I’d recommend only cutting it when it needs it. If it’s still healthy 6 months after your last trim, just leave it be. Otherwise you’ll only be cutting off perfectly healthy hair that you’ve been been putting so much effort into maintaining.

So how do you know when you need a trim/cut?

• If the ends are dry and split.
• If you are getting more single strand knots than you usually do.
• If your hair is heat damaged.
• If you increasingly have to apply more product than usual to achieve your desired look and feel.
• If no matter how much you moisturise your hair remains dry.

What ever you do, just don’t make the mistake of not ever getting a trim. Long term this can only lead to uneven, see-through, scraggly and yes, damaged ends, which can ultimately hamper any girl’s plans to achieve happy, healthy hair.

As always, love your curls.

xxx

How often do you trim your hair?