How and When to Trim Natural Hair at Home

It may seem very complicated but it's pretty simple. We mainly trim for two reasons:

1. The Health of your Hair  Split ends will eventually split all the way up your hair shaft or tear off. This makes your hair weaker. This is why we tend to remove split ends by trimming.
2. The Look of your Hair  Split ends and knots usually don't look as nice as clean, knotless ends... especially if you flat iron or do very stretched styles. 

Some people cut single strand knots (fairy knots). Others aren't bothered by them at all. There isn't really anything wrong with holding on to single strand knot. But you always need to remove split ends. They cannot be repaired and will continue to split up the hair shaft if left unattended. 

When to Trim

Trimming only needs to be done when necessary. This is all dependent on hair care. You may need to trim once a month or perhaps only once or twice a year.  I suggest that you examine your hair ends once a week to determine the health of your hair ends and trim your hair ends as needed. 

Three Ways of Trimming Natural Hair

• Search and Destroy •

This process, which can be done on straight, wet or curly hair, involves inspecting your entire head of hair, strand by strand, and clipping away at those strands with single strand knots (also called fairy knots) or split ends.  This method is the most time-consuming but length rewarding since you are not cutting every strand and do will retain more length, only cutting away damages ends. This works best on slightly longer hair.

The main disadvantage to this method is that you will eventually end up with thin ends overall since your hair will not be all one length. This is especially evident when hair is straightened or stretched. However, this is easily taken care of by doing the twist and clip or straighten and clip method which hill keep your ends looking thick and luscious. See the video below of HairCrush who uses the Search and Destroy Method of cutting away damaged hair.

• Twist and Clip •

Perfect for women who wear their hair curly, twisting up your hair then clipping off straggly or split ends is easy and practical. Your hair won't unravel due to blunt in the ends.

The disadvantage with this method is that you will end up with uneven lengths. If you plan to flip between straight and kinky/curly styles, your straight style won't be as precise and you will likely end up with slightly uneven lengths.

An excellent video on twisting and clipping is available here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxOY-jm_Txw&feature=plcp)  or you can watch the video below.

• Straighten/Stretch and Trim •

This is probably the most accurate way of getting rid of bad ends evenly. You can do this on stretched or straightened hair. PrettyDimples01 on YouTube has an excellent video where she does this method here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhKUT7zsNOg). Of course, she is a hairstylist, so this should be no surprise. Her technique is perfect and this will be how I trim my hair every 6-12 months depending on need.

The disadvantage to this method is that you will end up with very blunt ends. Blunt ends do not like to stay twisted or plaited and maintaining your style will become challenging as your ends may frequently unravel. As such, I suggest doing this on stretched hair (not flat-ironed) so that your hair will be quite even if straightened but won't be a sharp cut  as it would be with flat-ironed hair.

Tip!

Always use a sharp scissors created for hair cutting. Never use a dull scissor as this can cause split ends.   If you are unsure about your scissor, go to the beauty supply store and buy a new pair.