Is anyone else tired of endless products to use for curly hair routines? End up using 4 different products, only for your curls to last only for 1 maybe 2 days before you have to style it again. When washing your hair, chunks of hair falling out because you haven’t combed your hair for over 3 to 4 days? By your 4th day, you hair is lifeless and feels super weighed down by the products you’ve put. Or having to restyle your hair after 2 days by blow drying it again to reactivate your products.
The curly hair routine, for those who can manage such a routine, can look beautiful, but for me the curly hair routine is to difficult to maintain.
Benefits
There are many positives to having a curly hair routine versus using heat and a straightener on your hair most days. Wouldn’t be fair to at least list a few of them for those of us interested 😊
💧 1. Moisture Retention
Curly hair is naturally drier because oils have a harder time traveling down the bends of the hair shaft. A routine focused on hydration (like deep conditioning, or leave-in treatments) helps lock in moisture and prevent breakage.
🌀 2. Defined, Frizz-Free Curls
A consistent routine with products like curl creams, gels, or mousses helps define your curl pattern and reduce frizz
Although after day 2 for me, my hair would start to puff up and the curls would get deformed
🎯 3. Boosts Confidence
Healthy, defined curls can be a major confidence booster. Embracing your natural texture and learning to care for it can help you feel more comfortable and authentic. Putting more effort towards styling my natural curls did make me feel like I was embracing myself more for what I have versus forcing a hairstyle that wasn’t natural.
🧴 4. Customizable for Your Hair Type
Curly routines can be tailored for your specific curl type (2A–4C), porosity, and density, giving you a more personalized approach to hair care.
Grievances
Although there are no doubt many benefits to having a curly hair routine. I personally feel many of the benefits above can be achieved even if you don’t follow a curly hair routine. If using heat correctly and maintaining your scalp’s health is accomplished, then even using heat on a regular basis can result in healthy, frizz free hair.
A few of the issues I had with the curly hair routine
💨 1. Blow drying with a diffuser takes forever
I tend to shower at night usually and I have dark, heavy, curly hair that falls to my waist. Blow drying my hair with a diffuser would take at least an hour, maybe and hour and a half even after letting my hair air dry for at least 15 to 30 minutes. Totally unpractical for a weekday when I have work the next day and need to sleep early.
🪨 2. Heavy feeling hair
Maybe I just never found the right curly hair products, but whatever I ended up trying to use a gel, curl cream, moose, heat protectant, leave-in-conditioner, anything! All of it felt way to heavy on my hair after 2 days. Right after blowdrying, sure it felt great! Hair felt moisturized and frizz free. But after a few days or on some occasions the next day, my hair would be so greasy and weighed down. Washing my hair every 2 days was not practical with my volume of hair nor did I genuinely feel like my hair actually required it. Due to all these products I was slathering on, it felt oily and gross.
🐪 3. Reactivating hair care products = dry scalp
After a few days, your curly hair would start to get more frizzy and tangled up. Brushing your curly hair on a day to day basis is a no bueno idea since your curls would end up loosened and your hair will grow to a lion sized shape.
Having long hair didn’t help since I could literally take chunks out of my head on daily basis since I didn’t brush my hair 😞
Usually you are supposed to dampen your hair with a spray bottle to reactivate the products you already have in your hair, brush/detangle your hair, then blow dry with a diffuser. Aside for the fact blow drying would take a long time, my scalp ended up dry and flaky. Not necessarily dandruff but just a dry scalp. Not great when wearing a dark shirt for sure.
❤️🔥 4. Mini heart attack washing my hair
Clumps of giant hair balls would fall out of my head during hair washing day. I do think because I didn’t comb my hair everyday a lot of it was just natural fall out… BUT putting so many products, I felt added some weight to the hair that didn’t help. Like dunking my head in oil and thinking my hair wouldn’t snap. So all those built up days of accumulated hair shedding would finally release from my head. Seeing that was concerning since I thought I was balding lol.
Conclusion
There are many benefits and points of contention regarding the curly hair routine. For people who can maintain such a routine and have found products that work great for their hair, thats awesome! I wish I was able to keep up with this routine, but the amount of time and dedication to it just isn’t practical for me and might be the same for others.
