Best products for curly hair

[WaxOnFeckOff]

We are curly hair virgins in our house but DS (16) has now found himself with a curly mop!

He was a wavy haired toddler and has had silky straight hair with a little bit of a wave all his life whether it was short or longer. He grew his hair really long but got it cut recently to about collar length. Now it's really curly and it's going frizzy and unmanageable and looks a mess other than when it's just washed and still wet.

Help please!

I'm a huge fan of trepadora products.

Curly girl method! Their Facebook page is great.

Really good conditioner. Only comb it when it’s wet. Use ogx curl cremé and leave to either dry naturally or diffuse. Get frizzease secret agent cremé for tackling any unruly frizzy ends.

this is a brilliant curly girl method blog

Cantu products feom superdrug are great - the shampoo and conditioner are fab, and a bit of the curl defining custard scrunched through after will sort his frizz. You don’t have to spend loads. Well done on helping your ds love his curls :)

Thanks both, we thought we'd cracked it while we were on holiday, wash, comb, leave to dry and then just run fingers through it, it seemed to improve with the salty sea water and almost looked surfery. We've come home to our soft water area and he's also brushed it and blow dried it and it's gone wild and fluffy. The rest of us have straight hair with not even a hint of curl so it's all a bit of a learning curve.

We'll look into your suggestions :)

Oh, more answers, brilliant! Thank you all so much, looking forward to experimenting over the holidays so he's happy when he goes back to school.

I've hidden his brush.

I'll only ever use cantu

It sounds like the key is to get his hair clumping. So stuff with polymers like the curl custard, get that on, and let it dry. NO TOUCHING. It will set with a cast, whoch he can either scrunch out once it’s dried, or just leave and enjoy his nice clumped curls. The beauty of curly hair is, the less you do to it, the better it looks. Genius. Get a spray bottle with water and maybe a tsp of conditioner in to damp it down in the morning and refresh his curls. He can add aloe vera gel and/or epsom salts for more hold or salt spray-ness if he’s feeling fancy. Epsom salts are less drying than normal salt. But really, as long as he’s keeping his curls nice and hydrated and leaving them alone he can’t really go wrong.

Thank you. he washes his hair every day, I take it that wouldn't be ideal?

At this point he is just regretting getting it cut and missing the long hair although it's not short. When the hairdresser cut it and dried it it looked lovely but as soon as he washed it we've been in a bit of a nightmare.

This was it long and also a photo of it left wet while short. Today it's a frizzball that he won't have photographed so you'll have to take my word for it. It's very curly at the back and more curly on one side than the other...

Do the curly girl method , it will be fab!

You can touch it while it's wet; unless I comb mine a few times as it's drying it doesn't dry.

But as you know, it has to be a comb or fingers, not a brush, used with consideration rather than rushing, and only blow-dry as a last resort.

The things that have made the biggest difference to me are

1. Jane Carter SLS-free shampoo - not the cheapest up-front but it lathers so well you don't need much. Plus, it halves the number of times I need to wash my hair because it cleans it properly. It's got a herbal rather than floral smell, so should be suitable for anyone other than people who need a lack of any fragrance.

1. Never drying with a towel, only with a t-shirt.

1. Getting a hair dryer with a diffuser to get the air into the lower layers without the hair blowing everywhere. And only using it at all to catch the very last stubborn bit of moisture after air-drying.

Best of luck! I hope he finds a method that works for him.

Lush Fairly Traded Honey shampoo and their American Cream conditioner. I've tried everything over the years for my very curly and frizzy hair but nothing stopped it frizzing up at the slightest hint of humidity.

These two products weigh the hair down slightly and keep the hair lovely and soft with no frizz. The only time it frizzes now is if it actually gets soaked in the rain and dries naturally.

Thanks again for all the tips. I'll go over them with him tonight, in the meantime I hid his brush and the hairdrier before I left this morning.

Another vote for Cantu. We are a house of curly/wavys and it works great on all of us, even my anomalous DS2 who has poker straight hair. No curls for him but it does leave his hair nice and shiny with no fluffiness.

The leave in conditioner is really light but gives nice defined curls. I still get a bit of frizz but no longer look like a walking dandelion.

I’ll stop proselytizing now.

Try using a silicone free conditioner instead of shampoo.

The Superdrug extracts coconut and almond conditioner always worked well for me when I was doing the curly girl method, and it's super cheap. He needs to really massage it into the scalp to remove dirt as it won't lather like a sulfate-based shampoo.

With short hair I wouldn't go near it with a comb either, especially once dry. Just a little bit of curl creme or gel on the hands and detangle with fingers, then leave to dry.

ahh what handsome young chap!

second what everyone says about silicones/sls

and it would be worth looking around for a hairdresser who will cut it dry - if it curls differently round both sides of his head (and most ppl have this, curls are all different even on the same head) it is going to end up looking lopsided if it's cut wet.

thanks again everyone :)

yes, the cutting (if he ever gets it cut again) will need to be better managed next time. The guy who cut it is very good, it's at the same salon I go to and i've watched him and seen his results so had talked it up to DS a bit and it did look good when he cut it and styled it but i don't think that he or anyone else was aware it was going to be curly and yes it curls differently on both sides. I'm trying to say he'd be better with it completely cropped but he has bad scarring on his cheeks which you can't see in the photograph and also his "friends" have made fun of his ears as they are on the smaller side. He has quite delicate features in general for a big lad, so the short haircut is a no go he says.

Once he gets used to the curls he may even want to get his hair cut shorter. But give them some time to settle first - hair takes a while to adjust to a new curl pattern after such a drastic cut. I think a shorter/curlier style would really suit him.