Growing my curls long has always been one of my dreams. Maybe because my hair was always quite short when I was younger (my curls just didn’t want to grow properly). To make sure it’s a dream come true, you need to give your long curly hair the extra care it needs!

When growing your curls keep the following in mind:

1. Keep your ends well moisturized! Because your hair’s length it’s harder for your conditioner to reach the ends of your curls! If you’re not already additionally covering your ends with some leave-in conditioner, I strongly suggest you to start doing this: Rinse your conditioner after finger-combing your curls and then re-add some leave-in to (only) your ends. This will reduce frizz, keep them bundled in clumps and make them shiny. In case it doesn’t: Don’t use a leave-in, but use a normal conditioner!
2. Avoid the triangle by layering your curls. You still need to get your hair cut every now and then while growing it, because if you’re waiting for too long in between haircuts your layers will grow out. I’m the best example for this – take a look at the two above photos, they show very well how my haircut is growing out (I definitely need to see my hairdresser soon!)
3. Keep up the volume… Ok, it’s safe to say I’m obsessed with voluminous curls – I seriously dislike having a flat top! I’m still clipping my curls after drying them like I have before. However, keeping up my curls’ volume has gotten difficult, which is why I started to not only diffuse my curls until they’re about 90% dry, but up until they’re 100% dry. If you’re using a good styler  (it shouldn’t be too light) frizz won’t be an issue.
4. Getting great second day hair saves you a lot of time! The longer your curls grow, the longer it takes to wash and dry them… Try to only wash your curls about every 3-4 days to save you precious time. Make sure your curls can’t get too tangled while you’re sleeping (I recommend the pineapple method) and refresh them in the morning with a water-conditioner mix. If you still don’t like your curls, try my latest tip on reviving second day curls or put them into a nice hairstyle!
5. Use the «right» hair accessories. If you’re using any hair accessories with metal parts in them I strongly suggest you to reconsider using them, because they can cause your curls to break. Because long curly hair is heavier it is prone to breakage caused by using the «wrong» hair accessories.

Long curly hair – a dream come true?

Let me get back to the beginning of this post and talk about why having longer curly hair than I do right now isn’t actually a dream come true for me (even though I love the different hairstyles you can do with longer curly hair!): It’s typical for type 3a curls to turn curlier the longer they get, which actually is one of the effects I love about having long hair. The above pictures clearly show how my curl pattern is different with short and long hair.

Unfortunately having curlier hair isn’t the only consequence of long curly hair. In the two pictures you can also see how I’m about to get the dreaded triangle, because my layers are growing out and are now lying too low. My hair’s weight causes my top to be really flat when at the same time my ends are curlier and therefore more voluminous. Although I’m now blow-drying my until they’re 100% dry, I just can’t anymore achieve the volume I like. Which is why I’m about to schedule an appointment at my hairdresser’s (but only to get my layer back to where they belong and to cut my ends just at bit)!