Ending up with tangles and knots in your hair is always causing for a moment of panic. Of course there’s always that frustration element that comes into play, too. To be honest with you there are a few do’s and don’ts when it comes to properly detangling your hair. You can do a lot of damage to your hair when you begin working on getting tangles out of your hair using improper methods. We want to help you keep your hair as healthy as possible so we want you to remember these tips before you detangle:
Start at the Bottom
This one tends to get people tripped up but it may be the most important tip. Instead of detangling your hair by starting at your scalp, you need to start doing the exact opposite. Yep, this means that you need to begin to start detangling at the ends of your hair and work your way UP your hair. It sounds odd, but it’s a way to keep your hair from becoming too damaged from the detangling process. When we start at our scalp there’s a much higher risk of ripping your hair and the tangles right out of your hair instead of slowly managing the tangles.
Be Gentle
We realize that when you have tangles and knots in your hair your first reaction is to get a little more aggressive with your hair when trying to remove them. The problem is when we’re too rough on our hair, especially with detangling, it can cause a LOT of damage and breakage to be caused on our hair. Instead, we want you to get into the habit of being as gentle as possible. When you start at the ends of your hair and work your way up it’s much easier to be gentle but also keep yourself in the habit of being gentle on the tangles. You should be gentle on all of your hair when detangling but especially as you get closer to the scalp of your hair as you can begin to actually pull the hair strands out of your scalp if you’re too harsh. In addition to being gentle with your hand, always ALWAYS make sure that you’re using a wide toothed comb when you’re detangling your hair. Never use a brush when removing tangles, they’re much too harsh on your hair for this type of process.
Add Product to your Hair, First
Before you begin anything related to detangling your hair it’s essential that you add product to your hair. When you try to detangle your hair when it’s completely dry, you’re only going to end up with damage and brittle hair. Applying a conditioning product to your hair (leave in if you’re not in the shower/just out of the shower) is the best option to add essential conditioning to your hair and make the tangles come out much smoother. Our hair needs conditioning, especially when it’s running the risk of damage from tangles so adding a nice boost before getting the tangles out helps a lot.