4 Things to Consider When Choosing Locs or Relaxers
Our hair is the only accessory that’s front and center in everything we do. As an accessory, it’s our prerogative to dress it up or down as much as we desire. We are not necessarily advocates of natural hair as much as we are advocates of you deciding how you want to show up in the world whether it’s rocking locs, a relaxer, wigs/weaves, etc. We also want you to keep healthy hair care habits at the top of mind when choosing how you want to show up.
Although locs and relaxers are out of our wheelhouse, we recently sat down with two licensed professionals: Camille Janae, Loc Educator + Cut It Kinky Alumni Stylist and Roni Jones, Curl Specialist + Cut It Kinky Mentor Stylist to get the scoop on what exactly it takes when considering these options.
#1: Locs and Relaxers Do Not Require Less Maintenance than Natural Hair
Yep, you heard us correctly! When it comes to locs, according to Camille, it’s not necessarily less maintenance it’s just different maintenance. When a client of hers first starts their locs, within the first year, a client will be expected to be in the salon every 4 weeks in order to properly cultivate the locs along the way to ensure they’re not bumpy, lumpy, and that they’re locing consistently.
As far as relaxed hair maintenance, according to Roni, shampooing your hair once a week is the best way to maintain the overall health of the hair. Retouches to your relaxer happen depending on how fast your hair grows, your density and the length of your hair. If you have a short pixie cut, it could be anywhere between every 4-6 weeks and with longer hair, you could stretch it a little longer.
With tight curl + natural clients, your maintenance appointments will also depend on your density and the length of your hair. For short taper clients, your salon visits could be anywhere between every 4-6 weeks and for longer hair clients it could be anywhere between 10-16 weeks.
Each option is still sounding like consistent salon visits, right?
#2: Locs Will Require You to Be Patient
When you first start out on your loc journey, especially the traditional way, it can sometimes take up to 1 to 2 years for the hair to fully loc and be mature. This is very similar to the new tight curl + natural hair client that comes to the salon after doing all the things to their hair such as heavily using raw oils, butters, putting food, clay, etc in the hair and also trying to grow out holes and baby crowns in the hair. It can also take up to this length of time for tight curlies + naturals to get a good place with their hair as far as growing out your hair through regular maintenance cuts and re-establishing hydration with healthy hair care practices.
#3: Locs Will Require You to Embrace the Frizz
A lot of our tight curl + natural hair clients both in the salon and digitally despise the five letter word: frizz. Unfortunately in very humid climates and with life happening, it is what it is. According to Camille, frizz is still very much present in locs. They look neat on Instagram, but that’s right after your salon appointment. They do not look like that 90% of the time, so you must be ready to embrace that part of the look too.
#4: Locs and Relaxers Require You to Partner with a Professional
Without receiving proper maintenance from a licensed professional, you can experience breakage and ultimately damaged hair with any of these hair options. Each style still requires proper care and for you to partner with a licensed professional to ensure you are getting the maintenance required on time and that it’s being done properly.
Want to learn more about healthy loc and relaxer hair care? Be sure to subscribe to our Youtube channel to be the first one to know when our new videos drop!
Are you a tight curly + natural that is tired of struggling with your hair care routine? Check out our digital education platform, The SeeSomeCurls Visual Library.
