Lets face it, stretching your relaxer is one of the key ways you can guarantee healthy maintenance of your relaxed hair. A nice long stretch (longer than 8 weeks) helps you to avoid over processing which as you know, leads to your hair breaking off rapidly.
With that said, maintaining two textures isn’t easy especially when it comes to styling without the use of heat. To help with this many relaxed women resort to styles that try to match both textures of hair therefore blending the textures to create uniformity.
These styles include twist outs, bantu knots, heatless curls using curlformers* and braid outs which is the main focus of this post.
In the below video, Babillon Kay demonstrates how she does her braid out on a relaxer stretch. She is about two weeks post which is not very long, but its a great style that you can fall back on whether you are 2 or 22 weeks post. We like it because it is easy, and does not take much effort at all.
Here are our tips for a great braid out on relaxed hair
1. Moisturize and seal your relaxed hair well
Yes relaxed hair gets very dry because even though it is straight, it was still afro textured hair originally which tends to be naturally dry. Use a water based product and an oil or butter to seal. The LOC method works very well for relaxed hair too.
2. Detangle your hair every time you add product
Use a wide tooth comb* to detangle after you add your moisture based product and then again after you add your sealant. Doing this helps to spread the product evenly throughout your strands for a great set.
3. Get Creative
Use perm rods*, flexirods* or anything that will add some uniformity to your ends and roots and give your braid out a little flair. Babilon Kay did not add perm rods* or anything to her ends as you will notice in her video however it probably would helped the ends have a more even finish if they were rolled.
Check out Babilon Kay‘s video below:
Brittny Roberts WorknProgress says
I want to try this when I take my braids out
Krista Kinchen says
Alise Thompson
Tanya says
Inspiring and informative.
the-renaissance-of-inner-fashion.blogspot.co.uk
Madison says
Can you do a braid out on hair that hasn’t been washed?