11 Hairstyles That Are Damaging Your Hair Without You Knowing
byLuisa Colón
Hair, hair, hair, hair. Whether you’re embracing what you were born with, or wielding a flat iron in an epic battle against nature, chances are that you think about your tresses a lot. And no one starts out by imagining their hair as a nest of over-processed, straw-like flyaways. Unfortunately, though, it’s what some of us end up with even if we’re forgoing the heat styling and just innocently experimenting with different styles. Because hairstyles that damage the hair are sneakier than you may have thought. You might suspect that all that bleaching and coloring wasn’t the best idea ever, but did you know that a simple ponytail can have its dangers, too?
Luckily, there are more antidotes than ever to the common mistakes we make in search of our dream hair (or this month’s fantasy of our dream hair.) First off, you have to know where the dangers lie. “If you're going to be consistently wearing damaging hairstyles, the number one most important thing to consider is otherwise taking care of your hair,” says Brooke Jordan Hunt, owner and head stylist of The Bird House studio in Gowanus, Brooklyn, New York. Are you using protection in the form of high quality products, oils, and deep conditioning? If so, then give yourself a pat on the back and go for those braids, darn it! But if not, know what measures you can take to ease the damage you’re doing when you do up your locks in one of these 11 potentially hair-ruining styles.