Wavy hair techniques Archives

How To Take Care Of Fine Wavy Hair

September 12, 2021 by Emily Evert 4 Comments

A couple months ago I got a devacut on my wavy hair. It didn’t turn out like I had hoped…but I still benefitted from the experience. One of the best parts of the experience was that my stylist told me that I have fine hair. I didn’t know this! I had previously believed that I had normal to thick hair strands, as that’s what results I got from a microscopic hair analysis test I did a couple of years ago.

While I would typically be inclined to believe the microscopic analysis over the stylist, when I thought about it, it made SO MUCH sense that my hair is fine rather than normal to thick. I had always thought that my hair didn’t behave the way that my hair type ‘should’. It makes way more sense that I just had my hair type wrong.

I often see others in wavy/curly communities recommend to newbies that they determine their hair type before they try to determine a hair routine that will work for them. I understand the logic behind this, but I also have found that it can be tricky to determine your hair type, which is why I don’t often give that advice myself. So first, I’ll share how to tell if you have fine hair and then I’ll go into what techniques or practices may work best for you if you have fine wavy hair.

How To Determine If Your Hair Is Fine

Take a single hair and place it between your thumb and index finger. When you look away from your hands, ask yourself if you can feel that hair. If you can’t really feel the hair, then your hair is fine!

I had heard about this test early on, and had initially thought my hair was fine. However, microscopic hair analysis told me that my hairs ranged from average to thick thickness, so I believed that for a long time. I now believe the hair analysis was incorrect, and the “finger test” and my hairstylist were correct.

How To Care For Fine Wavy Hair

How To Diffuse Wavy Hair 4 Ways: Step By Step With Pictures

April 4, 2021 by Emily Evert 12 Comments

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How To Diffuse Wavy Hair

I diffuse my hair every single wash day. For me, air-drying just isn’t practical because it literally would take all day. Diffusing is a way of blow drying your hair without disrupting your curls, and without heat damage. Diffuser attachments for blow dryers basically just disperse the air so that it comes out from several smaller sources rather than the entire barrel of the end of a blow dryer.

For many people, diffusing can help your curls to dry in a tighter pattern, by drying your hair quicker, before it has a chance for the water in your hair to weigh down your pattern.

I have a whole post on air drying vs diffusing wavy hair already. So I’ll cut to just talking about diffusing!

How do you diffuse wavy hair? Well, there are multiple techniques. I’ve prepared to cover four of the ways that I’ve seen discussed most often. The first diffusing tutorial I ever watched was pixie diffusing so that became my default and it’s what I usually do, still. I did find benefits to some other diffusing techniques though, so I may change it up in the future!

For those who may be curious, my blow dryer is the Revlon Pro Collection IONIC Hair Dryer (available through Walmart) and my diffuser attachment is the Xtava black orchid from Amazon. I bought both of them nearly 3 years ago and they’ve held up great. The diffuser comes with a ring in the base that you can remove to make the opening slightly wider. You have to do that to get the diffuser to fit on the dryer I have, but it’s a perfect fit once you take out that removable ring.Continue Reading

How Long To Scrunch Wavy Hair

March 27, 2021 by Emily Evert Leave a Comment

Early on when attempting the curly girl method, I felt like scrunching my hair much at all would make my hair more frizzy, and would break up my curl clumps quite a bit.

At the same time, I did recognize that scrunching my hair right at the end of my shower helped my hair to separate from one big blob into clumps. I also recognized that if I walked around after my shower for quite a while, my roots would start to fall flat, and that scrunching again could help revive some waves to the top of my strands.

For about 2.5 years, my goal was to scrunch enough to form clumps but not so much as to cause my clumps to break up or get frizz. I would just scrunch a couple of times at the very end of my shower, scrunch each section of my hair once after applying my mousse, and then if my roots were really falling flat before I was done diffusing, I’d sometimes scrunch with a shirt (aka microplop – click for my microplopping tutorial) an additional time to avoid those flat/straight roots.

I still don’t think that was a bad technique. It worked. I’ve learned a few things, and realized a couple things about my own hair, in the last couple of months that have changed my technique. I now scrunch a lot more than I used to. I’ll get to why later – and I did one wash day where I di da little scrunching, and one wash day where I did a lot of scrunching, so I could compare for you all. Let me get a bit more into the details first though!

Uneven Curl Pattern | How I Tighten My Straighter Section

February 1, 2021 by Emily Evert 4 Comments

There’s a category of questions that I see posted on Wavy/curl groups and forums that I would classify as uneven curl pattern problems. I have an uneven curl pattern myself. I still have days where my hair is quite uneven, but when I take the time to focus on balancing out my pattern, I feel like I am fairly successful. So, I thought my tips and tricks may help some others out there!

This was a few months after I started the curly girl method. Thankfully, days like this where my curl pattern is super uneven are more rare now that I’ve learned tips and tricks to help prevent it!