4 tips for making fine, limp hair beautiful

Fine hair does not have to be limp and lifeless. Follow these four steps to put body and beauty back into your fine hair.

Usually if a person’s hair is limp and lifeless, you can blame it on genetics because this hair problem is usually a result of the person having fine individual hair strands (not to be confused with thin or thinning hair). But even if genetics has dealt you a bad hand in the hair department, you don’t have to put up with it. It is possible to transform lifeless hair into full bodied voluminous hair. Here’s how:

1) Choose your shampoos and conditioners carefully. Any product that claims to add moisture is probably the wrong product for you. You don’t need a product that leaves behind a heavy residue because these will only make limp locks look more flat. Look for lightweight or clean rinsing shampoos and conditioners and use them everyday to wash away excess naturally occurring scalp oil. Your hair could also benefit from the use of a conditioner that contains proteins which will help thicken up fine hair.

2) While you style, add in a product that is formulated to thicken or volumize hair and a texturizing product. The volumizing product should be applied at the root to give hair instant lift. When hair doesn’t lay so flat on the scalp, it gives more body and lift to your hair. The texturizing product helps roughen up the naturally soft and smooth texture of your hair to help the hair take and hold styling attempts better. This is useful if, after heat-styling, your hair looks completely flat by mid-morning.

3) Adding body no longer means teasing. Teasing is sloppy and causes tangling so don’t do it just for the sake of body. If your hair is naturally pretty smooth, you can wrap damp hair around Velcro rollers and either let it air dry or, for a speedier approach, blow dry it around the rollers. If you’d rather not mess with rollers for fear of tangling, use a wide barreled curling iron to get the same look. Using an iron will also give your hair a smoother look that it might have if allowed to air dry. We all thought crimping was a thing of the past, but actually that old crimping iron has a use. Separate your top layers of hair from the very bottom. Twist the top layers up on top of your head and fasten them out of the way. On the bottom-most layer of your hair, the ones that no one will be able to see, crimp the first couple of inches of your hair nearest to the scalp and you now have a quick, tease-free way to plump up your locks.

4) A long hair cut with long layers makes limp hair too heavy. For instant lift, make an appointment with your hair stylist and ask for a shorter, layered ‘do. Choose a style that sits at or above the shoulders because fine hair that is any longer than shoulder length will be too weighted down and unable to swing, move and bounce around the way hair with body should be able to.

Written by Angela McKendree - © 2002 Pagewise