There is a lot of controversy over how often people should get their haircut and how much should be trimmed off. I am here to straighten all that out for you and give you direct answers on the truth about haircuts.
We are taught in beauty school that most people need their hair trimmed, on average about every six weeks. But every head of hair is as different as every person who sits down in that chair and every hair on your head can be different too. Depending on your type of hair, your diet, your environment, your shampoos, conditioners, styling aids and on and on, there are so many factors that your right trim time depends on, it is hard to say in one article. But I will try to shorten it up for you so to speak.
I need to get you up to speed on the topic of hair growth real quick so that you will understand some statements. The better you understand your own hair the easier it is for you to get what you want and for your stylist to help you. I am sure you hear all kinds of numbers on how fast hair grows but again that depends on you. The basic idea is a healthy person with average hair growth gets about a ½ to and inch a month of new growth. That can change with diet, age, the amount of styling and the amount of shampooing and conditioning. Hopefully your stylist can help you determine the amount of average growth for you, it may be more or less than average. I did write an article on how to grow your hair long, you can check the internet for my article or this site. If you have questions or need help you can comment below.
Knowing what a split looks like will also help you. The hair shaft is wound sort of wound together like a rope would be. So when you look at the hair shaft and it has two ends instead of one, most people would already know this, but that is a split. Some of the problem is though that it can split farther up the shaft. You can grab a small chunk of hair and look at the ends but you may not be seeing all the splits that could be there. I mention below about twisting the hair shaft and trimming. You can twist small chunks of hair up and then run your fingers backwards toward your scalp and see what pops out, sometimes this helps you determine if there are splits somewhere farther up, and I repeat, sometimes.
To start with the tips let me tell you what I tell my clients on a regular basis. As far as your particular hair type, that will have to be determined and talked about later. But for now lets start with the most common statements and if you have been keeping up with my other beauty articles you will know that I am going to tell you that you have to judge for yourself. Here are some signs you can watch for.
1. When the ends start to thin. If you have long hair it is easier to see because when you first get your hair cut you have this nice line at the ends of your hair, or rather, you should. When that line becomes undefined or thinner then you are starting to split and maybe already have some breakage, definitely see your stylist. Or find a new one if the line is very defined in the first place. The only time that line is undefined right after a haircut is if you get a razor cut, and I am not talking about clipper, I am talking about a straight edge razor. If they use thinner shears, and that would be a whole other article on that topic, there are proper ways to use them and improper ways. Or if you haven't had enough taken off, the line may still be thin and you can talk to the stylist before you leave the salon. If they tell you to come back in six weeks, call them out and say baloney. If you haven't had enough taken off then you should either have more taken or it should be a minimum of 4 weeks later. Remember the average hair growth. I sometimes give clients tips to keep up their hair if they are trying to grow it out or there is damage or breakage farther up the head of hair that should be watched or taken care. If the client doesn't want their hair that short than usually I have them twist small sections on their own at home and show them how to trim those splits that are farther up themselves. It can take hours sometimes and to do something like that I would have to charge tremendous amounts of money per hour and I don't feel right taking that kind of money from people for something they can do themselves.
