There are some questions and concerns about hair extensions causing hair loss. This is a real concern, but one that can be addressed by looking at three simple features of your extensions, and one habit you should avoid.
1) How strong is your hair?
Different people have different hair. This is based on your ethnicity, age, gender, and how well you care of yourself and your hair. Obviously we cannot tell you what type of hair you have in this blog and to give you all the combinations of those factors would produce a dizzying list. Instead, make sure you are going to a stylist who understands that if you have thinner or lighter hair, you’ll both need to be more careful because it is easier to damage. In a broad stroke, some factors that may contribute to more easily damaged hair are: being caucasian, being older, and using lots of damaging chemicals on your hair.
2) Weight
You may think putting in 20 hair extensions at a time is a good idea but you need to be thinking about weight, not just how many you can cram in. The more weight you have pulling on your hair, the more likely you are to seriously damage the roots of your hair. Let us explain how this works. Take your hand and grab your hair. Now pull on your hair and keep the tension on there. That is what you are doing for weeks on end. As you can imagine, this is hard on your skin, roots and scalp and can cause tension alopecia. This is especially bad with hair weaves, and single extension ponytails. And it doesn’t matter what type of extension you use.
Clip in extensions put chunks of weighty metal or plastic on your hair, plus the weft. You may not think clips have that much weight, but your hair can definitely feel it.
Weaves pull your hair super tight then add the wefts, so imagine pulling your hair like above and then adding the weight of the hair.
Even tape-in extensions if installed incorrectly can add too much weight because the tape allows you to add in as much hair as you like. A dangerous benefit if used unreasonably. For instance, don’t sandwich two 1 ½ inch extensions together into one spot.
So what can you do? Here are some things to consider.
How many extensions do you actually need? Most likely the answer is fewer than you think. Quality of the install is more important than quantity of the wefts. Placing the extensions in the right place and for the right reason is important. More is not better. Are you going for length or body? If you want length, go for fewer longer and narrower wefts. Body is going to be shorter wefts placed more strategically.
How wide do the extensions need to be? Yes, we sell tape for extensions but this isn’t about us trying to make tape sound better than it is. Tape just gives you an option other attachments don’t. You can cut the tape to any length you want. That means you can make the extensions narrower, meaning they will weigh less and can be placed more strategically. This may not be a concern for you. If it is, you can cut down the weight of your tape in extensions by 50% if done correctly.
3) Break
Give your hair a break! Seriously. If you are like most women, you cut, and perm and spray and wash and add chemicals and curl and apply heat and flatten and basically torture your hair on a regular basis. If your hair could speak it would be crying out in pain most of the time. Luckily for us, hair is pretty resilient and we are always making more. That said, you need to give your hair a break at times. This serves two purposes.
- You will let your hair and head recover some.
- It will stop you from adding more and more extensions per install because you have been desensitizing yourself to how your hair looks naturally without extensions.
What To Avoid
4) Stress On Your Hair
Don’t relax your hair and use extensions at the same time. Relaxing is more commonly known as a perm or chemically straightening your hair. Putting all of that pressure on your hair at the same time can has tragic results.
Did these tips help you? Let us know!
Click here to see how to install tape in hair extensions
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future posts, feel free to leave them in the comment section down below! Or you can contact us at [email protected].
