What can I do with my thin, fine almost wavy hair?

[Eggletina]

I’m at the end of my tether. My hair has always looked rubbish apart from when cut pretty short. I’d love to grow it for a change (at the moment it’s approaching chin length) but I really don’t know how to improve its texture or what products to use.
My hair is basically very fine and soft with a gentle kink to it (I’m currently entertaining the notion that it might actually be wavy and not just badly behaved straight hair as I’ve always thought). It falls really flat to my head then starts kinking out into a wave around the top of my ears. It feels very soft to touch but no matter what I do always just looks messy and unmaintained. I’d love to transition this into beach waves but I’m not sure it’s possible. If I scrunch dry it looks nice and wavy for about an hour before starting to look like uncombed rats tails. I’ve just started using sulphate & silicon free shampoo / conditioner so maybe this will help. Up til now I’ve never used conditioner though as my hair is so fine and thin. Oh and I definitely need to wash it every day as it’s greasy by evening. Any tips / thoughts? Anyone else share my pain ?

Sounds like we have similar hair Eggle.

I've found natural henna wax treatment the best conditioner I've ever tried (it's extremely cheap and not a colourant), could you experiment a bit with clips etc to style it differently whilst it's growing out?

Have you tried/read about the end the curly girl method? You might have curly hair! (jealous!)

Op Ihave the same hair, with a massive cow lick whatever they are calked at the front by my natural parting so lucky me gets a fan of hair a la dynesty 80s style bouffanting off myface.

I've wasted minths growing it to jaw length, might be better getting it all chopped off!

I used to have hair like that, then I'm had three kids, I now have thick wavy hair, getting wavier by the month (apart from when DGS pulls handfuls out ). However I realise that this a bit extreme and can't be guaranteed 😁

Use a mousse whilst it's still wet. Its fine to leave to air dry but you'll have more volume if you can blow dry it also. It creates great volume and doesn't make your hair crispy or go flat when you brush it through. If you're sls/sulfate free you'll need a clarifying shampoo once a week/fortnight to rid the build up and I would certainly still use a conditioner to help keep the shine when using a mousse and it's worth noting not all silicones are bad for fine hair. Cyclomethicone evaporates and doesn't cling to hair mostly used in leave-in conditioners and Dimethicone copolyol is water soluble and is also easy to remove.

Try putting Boots curl cream in it when it's still quite wet, a bit of salt spray and just let it air dry while scrunching it with your fingers from time to time. If there's enough of a wave for it to be worth treating it as curly, it should show up after that. That's how I dry mine when I've got lots of time (I'd call mine curly but it's not that curly, and I wish it was!)