Winter Hair Care Advice: Choose a style compatible with the needs of the weather.

In the winter months, select a hairstyle that you can wear and still be able to keep yourself warm. A full-volume curly style may not be the best choice if you live in a part of the world where you need a hat to stay warm when you’re outside. Winter may not be the best season for a super-short gamine cut.

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Las Vegas Hair Design Blog

How to Get Rid of Split Ends: Dry Hair

The only real solution for split ends is simply avoiding them. Some people's hair will be splitting a lot faster than other's. It is a fact that dry hair will split faster. It is however not only your hair type that makes you vulnerable for split ends. Also how you take care of your hair is very important.

Over brushing will cause split ends and exaggerated backcombing will also make the hair split since it is disturbing the cuticle. Brushing hair when it is still wet is one of the most important causes for split ends because wet hair stretches by as much as 25%.

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Tips for Untangling and Avoiding Tangles: Drying the Hair

One of the biggest hassles of having long hair, especially if it's thick (dense) is that it takes forever to dry on its own, and blow-drying is a necessary part of our daily routine. So, after you've finished your shower (and remembered to use your conditioner) be gentle with your hair. Don't rub the towel across your head or in your hair. Instead, wrap the towel around the ends of your hair and squeeze the excess water from your hair working your way to the scalp where you pat the head and blot up the water there. Try using two towels (most long-haired women find this necessary anyway) and wrap your hair up in your "hair towel" to form a turban and leave it there while you finish drying your body.

Continue wearing the "turban" while you dress and apply your make-up. This gives your towel the chance to continue soaking the excess moisture from your hair. When you're ready to take your turban down, be sure to spray on your leave-in conditioner and massage it through your hair with your fingers. You can blot up any excess (to avoid dripping) with your towel.

If you can let your hair "air dry", do so. Otherwise, if you must use a blow-dryer, use the dryer on the lowest heat setting, regardless of the fan speed you choose to use. The heat will only cause the damp hair's cuticle to swell which is what allows the dryer to force the moisture out of the hair. In addition, always direct the flow of hair in the direction your hair grows; in other words, away from your head. This prevents the cuticle from being roughed up by the warm airflow, and has the benefit of keeping the hair shiny and smooth.

As you begin drying, start out by using your fingers to comb through the hair, then switch to a wide toothed comb, and then a vented brush as the hair gets progressively drier. As the hair gets drier, you also want to lower the airflow speed on the dryer (or better still use your diffuser attachment) to prevent the ends of the hair from being buffeted against one another. The key in all these drying tips is to encourage you to be gentle with your hair. Without realizing it, many women are really hard on their hair when there is no reason to be.

Unless you need to use other heat methods to style your hair, you should stop blow-drying the hair while it is still slightly damp. At the very least, leave the areas of the hair that don't need further styling steps to remain a little damp and let them finish drying naturally.

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Las Vegas Hair Design Blog

The 1-2-3s for Great Hair of Any Hair Type: Damaged Hair

Bleaching, coloring, perms, straightening, blow-drying, heat styling, sun, wind, sea water, pool water, and rough treatment can all result in damage to your hair. If your hair has been mistreated by any of these (or other) factors, you should give the following tips a try:

1. Let your hair air dry as often as you possibly can, to give it a break from
further stress caused by heat styling.
2. When you have to use a hair dryer, use a diffusing attachment to “soften the
flow” and keep the heat to a minimum. In addition, try to direct the airflow
from the hair dryer away from the scalp along the hair shaft to prevent
roughing up the cuticle layer of the hair.
3. Give yourself deep conditioning treatments to build elasticity in damaged
tresses and to restore moisture. You should select conditioners rich in
proteins and moisture building agents for the best results.

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Quick Fixes for Common Hair Problems: Static and Fly-Aways

This is especially a problem in winter, when the air is heated and dry, and we stroll along on carpeted floors, generating our own electrical charges. This can result in statically charged, fly-away hair. Fortunately, the quick-fix for this is to simply spray your hairbrush with hairspray and run the brush through your hair, or lightly mist the hair with spray and use your fingers to brush the hair down. The polymers in the hairspray act as a coating to insulate the hair and remove the static charge.

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Modern Myth: “Over-processing the Haircolor during a Make-over”

Most of us love a good make-over show. The everyday plain-Jane or overworked mommy gets swept away by a team of do-good professionals and is given a hip, new look. And in nearly every episode of many of these shows, the “victim” is taken from the salon with her hair in foils or a color cap to go shopping for her new outfit, but the host is concerned because they can’t be gone too long or the haircolor will “over-process”.

This makes for dramatic watching unless you know that haircolor mixtures that deposit color (even if they lighten the base color) only have an active lifespan of about 30 minutes before they stop working. They only work because of the chemical reaction between the ingredients. It’s like mixing baking soda and vinegar in a bowl. It’s going to react and bubble up, but eventually the chemical reaction will use up all the components that react to one another and will stop fizzing.

As the color mixture processes (the chemicals react to one another) the color of the product develops and the mix grows darker. The faster the stylist is at getting the color mixture applied once it’s mixed, the better the color results will be. So, you see, it’s actually MORE likely for a stylist to “under-process” the hair in a color service.

The only time you run the risk of really “over-processing” the color of the hair is in bleaching the hair to lighten it. And in a lightening process, you generally use heat to speed the lightening, and it has to be closely watched and monitored. You’d never let a client leave your salon with bleach on her hair. Most salons won’t even let a client go to the bathroom during a lightening process.

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Wash Your Hair Carefully

It’s a lifelong commitment this chemical treatment. Be prepared girl! Arming yourself with the right shampoo and conditioner isn’t good enough. You need to wash your hair carefully too. First of all, never wash your for at least 24 hours after any chemical treatment. This is because during the treatment your hair shafts have been chemically adjusted. Your tresses need to get used to it and if you wash it before 24 hours, you’ll only be ruining the effectiveness of the chemical treatment.

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