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How to Style Men's Hair

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The average man tends to lack general hair styling knowledge, since it isn’t plainly or cohesively explained very often. This manuscript serves as a simple, comprehensive guide for the average man to consistently, quickly, and easily have salon-quality hair on a daily basis. This guide is organized into three subcategories for your convenience.

• Disclaimer: For whatever reasons, some guys seem to think it’s gay or effeminate to condition and maintain your hair. It’s not.

SHOWER

The distinctive qualities of stylish hair are the form and texture. Showering with the right products provides the base for a good style.

1 Use volumizing or thickening shampoos

• Look for shampoos that contain biotin or collagen. Most reliable products contain these ingredients because they are responsible for providing cell structure, which for our purposes means thick, dense, and healthy hair.
• Don’t use shampoo every day. Shampoos by design are meant to strip oils, grime, dirt, and other impurities from the scalp. But hair is meant to have certain healthy oils to keep the follicle and shaft lubricated, hydrated, and nourished. Overuse of shampoo dries out the scalp, starving it of these essential components. Use shampoo only when your hair appears greasy or if you haven’t used it a handful of days.

2 Conditioner is optional

• Use a conditioner if your hair is dry. Conditioners by design are meant to hydrate hair, providing sheen with a soft, luscious quality.
• Don’t use a conditioner if your hair is fine, thin, limp, or oily. Conditioners will make greasy hair greasier. Most conditioners are heavy in a sense that they weigh down hair. This makes limp hair appear even more flat. Hair that’s heavy from conditioners is also hard to style effectively.
• Look for a weightless and volumizing conditioner if you decide to use one. Use a small amount of conditioner, about a dime sized amount. Apply conditioner to the shaft of the hair, but not the roots. This helps prevent weighing hair down.
• Conditioner affects your hair aesthetically in different ways depending on how much you use and the quality of your hair. So experiment with it to find the best results, which could come from using none at all.

DRYING

The most vital factor to having excellent salon-quality hair that keeps its hold is how you dry it. The key to ALL salon-quality hairstyles is a combination of heat, water, and direction. Hair will stay in the direction it's dried if you comb it as you dry it. The heat from a blow dryer will perforate the shaft of the hair, making the filaments expand and the pores expand. This makes the hair retain the direction it’s combed and provides volume. Also, some people use a pre-styler before they dry their hair to give their hair distinctive features.

1 Towel dry your hair until it’s damp but not dry.

2 Pre-styler (optional)

• Sea salt spray: Adds a distinct texture, due to the salts property of retaining moisture
• Argan oil: Provides a rich, deep, coppery shine and protects against heat from the dryer
• Coconut oil: hydrates, shines, and has a coconut scent
• Moroccan oil: hydrates, shines, and softens hair, as well as adding shine. Rich in vitamins and antioxidants

3 Comb your hair.

• Preferably, using a wide-tooth comb at first, then a fine tooth comb. Using a fine tooth comb first on wet hair before its general shape has been established can slightly damage hair due to the yanking motion from moving the heavy, wet hair so forcefully.
• Comb the top part of your hair back (slick back), to the side (comb-over), or a combination of these two. This creates volume, which is a very desirable feature in good hair.
• Comb the sides behind your ears or straight down against your head. Don’t generate volume on the sides.
• Comb the back flat against your head. Don’t generate volume in the back.

4 Use a hair dryer and a comb (or a hair styler) to dry your hair. Comb it and dry it at the same time in the same direction.

• Use medium heat
• Dry it in the direction that you combed it.
• Comb it as you dry it. (the most vital step)
• Dry your hair abiding by this technique until it is about 90% or 100% dry.

5 Dry and comb your hair again with the cool setting.

• The cool air contracts the pores. This “locks” your hair in place.

PRODUCT

If your hair has been dried correctly, your hair should have a definite shape with lots of volume on top. The hair should keep its hold reasonably well. Adding product is the final step to preserve how long your hair remains in this state. Products also exemplify your hair’s texture, shine, and shape.

1 Select a product

• Creams: flexible, looser substances that provide a more natural, loose, and messy hold without adding much shine.
• Gels: Keeps your hair stiff and shiny, but doesn’t add too much volume. Adding too much will make your hair crunchy
• Pomades: appears as either a heavy white cream based or hard, clear gel based. Pomades possess a higher hold that adds volume and often adds high shine
• Clays: Heavy, white, hard substance that adds volume with a matte finish

2 Emulsify the product

• In Layman’s terms that just means take a small amount and rub it into your hands until you can’t see it anymore
• This ensures even distribution and prevents clumps
• Use a dime or quarter sized amount

3 Apply product to hair

• Focus on the roots and sections with distinct partings. For example, if you have a comb over, focus most of the product on the actual part where the hair flips over
• Add some under your bangs and go up
• Emulsify more and repeat for each section of your hair
• Don’t put much on the sides and back. Wipe off excess products there instead.
• Push the sides and back flat against your head with the product

4 Comb the hair again after the product is in your hair

• Use your hands if you want a more natural look

In conclusion, these are the fundamentals of styling men’s hair that works with the vast majority of haircuts. Ideally, your haircut should be longer on the top, with layers, and thinned out, tapered, or faded at the back and sides to keep it proportional. Consult with your barber or stylist for the best looks. Also, although these steps may seem long and tedious, with practice you can achieve consistent, remarkable style in less than 10 minutes.

• An even quicker, more compact version of these methods is to just wet your hair, dry it using proper techniques, then add product.
• Check out Alex Costa, Alpha M, Weston Boucher, and Blu Maan for excellent live examples to follow.

Top Comment:

basically i get out of bed and if it isnt messy the right way i mess with it until it gets the right type of messy

October 4, 2020 | Forum: r/malehairadvice