Ideas for haircut - change needed from long non-style

[Spikeinhiscoat]

Any advice gratefully received. I want to change my hair, but I'm boring, lazy and fussy and don't know where to start.

I'm mid-thirties, with straight, dark brown hair (greying, so started home colouring, still trying to find the right shade for me), currently about four inches below my shoulders, and for years, and years, and years, have had variations of a bob.

I tend to get my hair cut to around chin length or a bit longer, really like it, then between work, life and childcare, don't get back to the hairdressers for about 6 months, by which time my hair has grown past my shoulders. I wear it up in a ponytail most of the time (also to stop ds2 from grabbing it), and am bored of it.

My hair is dead straight, grows quite quickly and is not particularly fine or thick (I've previously been told that the hair itself is fine but there is a lot of it). I like the idea of keeping it longer for versatility, but the reality is that I don't do much with it. It's really slippery and doesn't hold. I've tried using spin pins, as I heard they were great for messy buns and really held well, but even with setting lotion and hairspray, they don't stay in for more than about an hour.

I like pixie cuts like Ginnifer Goodwin from Once Upon a Time, but with my inability to get my haircut regularly (plus the expense of going to the hairdresser every month or so), it would probably end up being a mess. I think I have an oval face, but I wear glasses, so styles with a sweeping fringe would just get stuck on the frames and annoy me. I haven't had a fringe for years, and don't know if it would make my forehead greasy? I also don't have great skin around my jawline, so I don't know if a short haircut would make that more noticeable?

Ideally I'd like something as low maintenance as possible, as between young children and work, I don't have much time to spend on it (I leave the house at 7 in the morning, so really don't fancy getting up half an hour earlier to style my hair).

Am I chasing the impossible? I've looked on various websites for ideas, but each time I find something that I like the look of, it's for hair with a natural wave or movement, and mine just hangs. I've been thinking about changing it for a while, but just get stuck when trying to think what to change it to (or get up the courage to do something different).

It sounds like we're hair twins! mine is a nightmare to get to stay up and dropped a perm in 24 hours (was a teenager at the time and consider it a lucky escape!). Am also a glasses wearer with an oval face.

When the DC were wee and I had no time for such things I had layers and a fringe, not blunt or side sweepy just a bit choppy. Dead easy to deal with and looks better up in a ponytail with the layers cut in and the fringe makes it look like a style rather than a CBA cop out.

If your hair will reliably hold a ponytail you can have a messy bun, but only if you have layers - our hair needs help to do messy IME. I used to do a bun by making a ponytail an using old school hairpins (not hairgrips) to hold it up, nothing else (apart from using a second hair bobble to tie the ponytail into a semblance of a bun) ever worked.

These days I have a sharp graduated bob with a short blunt fringe. The ting is with fine, straigt hair the cut needs to be top notch or it just wont look nice. I love it but it does need cutting regularly (went from feb to last week recently due to my hairdresser being ill and it looked utterly shit. Athough it falls perfectly with no styling for the first 3 weeks or so after a cut it does need some work in the mornings after that, not much but I'd not have hacked it with young DC and needing to be out early.

fringe was like this, also here

hairpins thus. There are long ones and shorter ones - you need the long.

We must be twins. I also had a disastrous teenage perm, which dropped out really quickly (although I think I made it to about 3 weeks). I've since come to the conclusion that volume is not meant to be for my hair.
The long fringe looks nice, but I don't know how it would work with glasses, how did it work for you? I can imagine only having a couple of weeks after a cut before it started catching.
The graduated bob with sharp fringe does sound good, but I think it's too high maintenance for me at moment.

Oh no, no possibility of volume here. Women spend a fortune on straighteners / Brazilian blowdrys / products to get sleek, perfectly straight hair - this is important to remember - is best to work with your hair type than against it.

It's a very easy going fringe indeed I found - used to have the it cut to just above eyebrow level and let it a tiny bit longer than in those photos before cutting it. Was good at all lengths TBH and not a problem with the hinges on my glasses because it's longer at the sides - blending into layers at jaw length (ish). My hair grows pretty quickly but it needed cutting a lot less regularly than my current fringe, probably 4 - 6 weekly as opposed to two weekly. Most hairdressers do free fringe trims, or you could get a home hairdresser in for the fringe trims and colouring and use a good one for proper haircuts and fringe resets(IYSWIM). TBH I used to do my fringe myself between hairdressers visits (which were probably 4 - 8 monthly), again, have long layered hair means the style doesn't bugger up between cuts like a shorter hairstyle will.

If you google Charlotte Gainsbourg and have a root about in images you can see the same fringe at various lengths.

Ok, thanks for all the information, I'll have a look at that.