Protective Styling

When it comes to protective styling, I alternate between a few styles. I like to keep them for a full week whenever possible, box braids stay for longer of course, about a month. I find that the longer my hair gets, the more options I have; roll, tuck, and pin styles are my favourite, second only to amagoda. Why protective style you ask? Here are some of the reasons.

Length retention

The name 'protective style' already suggests your hair is getting some form of protection. What you’re protecting mostly is the ends of your hair (oldest and most fragile). By keeping your hair tucked away you protect it from environmental damage and the biggest enemy of all, manipulation. The more you manipulate your hair the more prone to mechanical damage it becomes, which leads to breakage. Hence the myth that our hair doesn’t grow. It does; it’s just more prone to breakage than other hair types. And if the rate of growth is almost equal to and in some cases less than the rate of breakage it makes it appear as though the hair is not growing.

Convenience

Styling natural hair every morning can be time consuming. Mind you, some of these styles need to be prepped the night before. Even worse, your prep flops and you’re stuck with a shrunken mess the next morning. Not to mention, the time you spend getting ready in the morning is directly proportional to the amount of time you have to snooze your alarm. If I don’t have to do my hair in the morning, then I get an extra 20 minutes of sleep, yippee!

I usually do my protective style on Sunday after washing my hair ( see washday routine here), and all I have to do in the morning is take off my doek and voila! At night I spritz the hair and put on my doek; easy-peasy. Here are some of my protective styles.

Amagoda – part the hair into four sections; plait each section and tuck the ends.

Bun/Roll tuck and pin – brush the hair upwards to prepare for a bun. Use an elastic band - if you're fancy like that, I use an old pantihose 👀 - starting from the perimeter of the hair and roll it upwards to the position you want the bun to be. Split the bun into seven small sections – one in the middle and six around it. Pin each section down using hair pins.

Box braids – I do my own braids at home, I have a phobia of saloons lol. They tend to tug, pull and straighten carelessly, at least in my experience. I decorate the braids with beads, some are hair beads, but most of them are from one of my necklaces :)

Igoda – this one is real easy. Tie a top knot with your hair; attach the single braid the same way you would box braids. Using a thinner braided extension, wrap around the base of your igoda to decorate and hide any imperfections.

There! Two styles with my natural hair and two with extensions.

Yimina ozithobayo,

Snothando