How do I change from candy floss fluff to defined curls WITHOUT styling products?

[Gilly]

Hi,

My hair is really fine, blonde (with grey) and I just cannot get any definition to my curls.

I DON"T want to use styling products as literally everyone I have tried makes my fine hair sticky and nasty no matter how little I use.

I have tried using oils (again in tiny amounts) but just end up with hair that looks dirty and greasy. I only apply to the ends but nothing really helps.

I do have to use my blowdryer on it in the mornings as soggy hair is not acceptable in the office and as I already get up at 4am I won't be getting up any earlier, I only use it to get the bulk of moisture out of it, only on cool and arms length.

Can anyone suggest anything that I can use that will enable me to get definition without the gunky feeling?

Sorry if I have baffled anyone, I am just fed up with the fluff!

[Arctic]

When you blowdry, do you use a diffuser? If not, that might help.

I'm sure you already tried these too, but aloe vera gel and home made flax seed gel are supposed to work on curls too.

[meteor]

Have you tried Conditioner-Only styling? Teri LaFlesh of the Tightly Curly Method (http://www.tightlycurly.com/welcome) uses that.
I think conditioner-only styling provides nice roller-set results: touchably smooth and bouncy, not hard or sticky.

Just dilute a bit of rinse-out conditioner or leave-in conditioner of your choice with some water if the product isn't runny enough, apply it to wet hair like a normal leave-in conditioner and then start roller-setting or braiding or bunning hair - depending on the shape of curls/waves you are going for. It's important to wait until the roller-set is completely dry before you remove it, to avoid any frizz of fuzzy shapes.

[Arctic]

I suspect conditioner-styling is too heavy for F/i hair. I tried that method when my waves were stronger years ago, and got few sad, oily looking tentacles :D, and my hair wasn't F and was the thickest of my life (mid ii). Much probably depends of the conditioner itself and individual hairtype, so maybe it's worth a try anyway.

[lapushka]

The LOC or LCO method for styling is really nice. I'd try and use only fingertip levels worth of product, and see what that does. The link is in my siggie.

[meteor]

I do have to use my blowdryer on it in the mornings as soggy hair is not acceptable in the office and as I already get up at 4am I won't be getting up any earlier, I only use it to get the bulk of moisture out of it, only on cool and arms length.

I forgot to add: can you wash your hair at night? So you can damp-set it in something like a soft (foam) roller-set overnight? I find that this provides pretty good results compared to a blow-dryer... a lot less frizz and more definition.

[kjirstiben]

Have you considered washing at night and using a heatless method to set your curls? I've got a similar texture to yours, and I have had no luck with my natural curl pattern on wash day (it turns into a cloud of frizzy independent strands), but if I damp-bun or pin-curl or use a t-shirt halo (headband curls might be better at a shorter length), I tend to have better luck. It would mean a little more prepwork in the evening, but it might free up some of your mornings.

[butter52]

Soak it before getting out of the shower so it clumps, and then gently scrunch it and plop it with a tshirt or towel trying not to disturb the clumps.
If you need to comb it do that before the soaking. If you need to blow dry use a difuser.

Hope it works!

[Asha]

Maybe plop overnight if you can. It'll still be wet if you go to bed with wet hair so you may still need to diffuse in the am anyways. And you may have some wonky curls in a few spots so try it on a day you don't work the next morning. Learned that the hard way.

[spidermom]

Wet your hands first. Try a small dab of styling gel or aloe vera gel spread over and between several of your wet fingers. Twirl the fluffy hair around fingers as a last step in your styling process. Too much gel and they'll be a little stiff, but other people usually can't tell.

[proo]

There was a thread some time back about someone with your hairtype using a lemon rinse with good clumping results.

[beabees]

Is your hair fluffy due to damage? If so, I've heard that people have had great success restoring their curls with Olaplex treatments. It is supposed to reform the bonds which are broken in the hair due to damage and change the natural curl pattern. It did restore some of my curls, but it wasn't as dramatic as some other results I have seen online. I would also suggest a coconut oil soak overnight; that seems to help me.

[beabees]

Also, after letting my hair completely air-dry I twist my hair into a faux-bun and put my satin sleep cap on. When I wake up my hair is silky and wavy. That might be worth a try! I always shower a few hours before bed, because if I don't, I'm fighting frizz until my next wash.

[Anje]

There are a few keys to getting curly or even wavy hair to form clumps. This is the real basics, so feel free to skip this if you know it already.

Biggest one is moisture, IMO. Better-moisturized curly hair will curl better and tends to frizz less. I'm an SMT-aficionado, so I'll suggest that as a possible treatment. Caramel treatment always sounded too fussy and oily for me to try, but it also gets a lot of love. Any sort of moisturizing conditioner or mask, left in for maybe 30 minutes, especially if it's warm, should make a difference in your curls even if you rinse it out completely. Along these same lines, for day to day washing you'll do better to only shampoo the roots (or CO wash, if your hair and scalp are cool with it) and only shampoo the length when your hair seems like it's got buildup.

Next big one is handling. Use T-shirts instead of terrycloth towels and wide-tooth combs instead of brushes, so your hair stays in bigger clumps instead of separating into little pieces. Breaking up the clumps means frizz. If you're going to dry it with a tee/towel, fold the hair in it (or put the thing on a bed and lower your hair on it so that it makes ringlets and compresses them -- called plopping) and squeeze a little rather than scrubbing it or twisting violently. That goes for all hair, frankly. If you're using a blowdryer, get one with a diffuser with some spikes in it and dry your hair on a not-hot setting. Pile your hair into it and let it dry in there with minimal manipulation, kinda like the person is doing here. (https://youtu.be/QjFioni0uCM?t=51s)

Those things, you can do without ANY product in your hair to reduce frizz. If you want something (and it might help), the least gunky options are leave-in conditioners and not completely rinsing all the conditioner out when you're in the shower. After that you have things like mousse, oils, and gels that you apply to the hair afterward, but I think that most of them make my hair feel weird, so I skip most of them. I do like a drop or two of oil smoothed over my still-wet hair, because it seems to help the detangling process and keeps the ends feeling nicer for a few days, but YMMV.

Hope that helps someone. :)

[spidermom]

Fine, short hair dries pretty fast in my experience, so I'm wondering why you can't blot the excess water by wrapping your hair in something like a Tshirt or flannel pillowcase or even a towel while you get ready for work, then take it out, comb with a wide-tooth comb, then finger comb a small amount of gel through it for hold and frizz control. And you're done. It won't be soggy, maybe damp, but it will dry quickly. For me, the key to using gel is to make sure my fingers are wet before rubbing gel among them. Otherwise you're right, it goes on kind of gunky. With the water, it won't.

Alternatively, get a diffuser for that blow dryer and view some YouTube videos on using one.

[Gilly]

Hi,

Some great ideas, thank you so much:flowers:

There are some things that I will not be doing though, washing at night and air drying before bed is great but in the morning I look like I have had a really bad shock with hair sticking out everywhere! It will only return to sanity with a wash, either CO or normal.

Any type of rollers, sleep caps worn overnight, I am married and Hubby scares easy! :agape:

I have tried Aloe gel and it resulted in nasty gunky hair.

I am going to try the leave-in with conditioner but will add it to a spray bottle as I figure the less I smoosh it the better.

Thanks again :grouphug:

[dauphin]

Your hair sounds very similar in texture to mine. I use Deva Curl shampoo and conditioner, wrap my wet hair (never rub!), and will use Deva Curl styling cream (a tiny amount, like, a very small pea for my just above shoulder length hair). I will scrunch the cream into the curls, and in winter I don't like going out into the cold with a wet head so I will use a diffuser. This helps a lot with frizzies and I get much better definition. I will say that with the styling cream, I will get a bit of crunchy hair going on if I don't diffuse, so I just scrunch my hair when dry, and the crunchyness goes away. Also, I only use a comb on my wet hair.

[chen bao jun]

flax seed appears to be really gunky when you put it in but when it dries, its not gunky at all, your hair feels like hair, not product

I also hate products and layering products and all of that, and flax seed gel is really not like that

I do have coarse hair but i don't think it would gunk up fine hair

[Gilly]

I did a CO wash this morning with Mane and tail original conditioner then once I had let it air dry a bit I added some more mane and tail to a mister bottle with warm water in it and spritzed it in.
I was very surprised that when it was dry I had some nice waves which were almost curls and it felt thicker which was awesome! I am going to keep misting it as I think that the protein in the conditioner is what my hair is lacking, I spritzed it again when I got home from work, only lightly but it made it whurl again!

I may be onto something here.

I am going to do a SMT with it at the weekend when I have more time.

[LaraAntipova]

Hi Gilly,
I have a bit of a long response for you because I have thought about curls and frizz a lot recently!!
Left to dry naturally my hair is a fluffy cloud of undefined kinks and curls and waves. You can see a picture on my instagram: www.instagram/com/luminousincidents

Until recently I thought that letting hair dry naturally is the best thing we can do for our hair yet for me it always seemed to leave my hair in worse condition vs carefully blowdrying it out with a round brush, like they do in salons. This makes it straight or slightly wavy though.

I think the reason the CO wash with water spritzed has worked for you is because curly hair is actually tamed by being dampened and you should always brush curly hair by dampening it first. You will find it will style much easier. And adding protein to the water is genius! I'm going to try this!

If I'm in a rush I run my hair brush under the water tap for a few seconds then brush through my hair, this stretches out the curls and I style as waves and sometimes even add a tiny bit of oil at this point. If I do this it will dry into much more manageable curls or long waves. At least that has been my experience!

Another tip is to search Youtube for "Afrohair" care tutorials. Curly hair has a logic of its own but I've found anything that works for afro hair seems to be good for curls in general. I think most of the hair care advice out there is catered toward fairly straight hair that probably shouldn't be brushed when wet. Curly hair seems to work differently. It likes being dampened, shouldn't be dried out by heavy chemical products and benefits from deep conditioning treatments. Avoid any products that are sticky.

That your hair is thin probably makes things more bit difficult for you! My hair is quite thick so can handled being weighed down a little, in fact the longer and heavier my hair gets, the easier it is to manage.
I am not sure how long your hair is now, but I find the weighing-down effect doesn't start until MBL. Part of the reason why I am growing out my hair is that it weighs down the curls and waves. For me, longer hair is actually easier to style and manage and requires less product.

So that's one way to style without products: make hair naturally heavy by growing it out, and by using water spritzing and damp brushing. It may just be the weight of the water that curly hair appreciates and allows it to dry in a better shape.
If it's long enough, letting it dry in a plait can also help.

Just some ideas and things that have worked for me. Hope it helps! Best of luck :-)

[LaraAntipova]

Hi Gilly,
I have a bit of a long response for you because I have thought about curls and frizz a lot recently!!
Left to dry naturally my hair is a fluffy cloud of undefined kinks and curls and waves. You can see a picture on my instagram: www.instagram/com/luminousincidents

Until recently I thought that letting hair dry naturally is the best thing we can do for our hair yet for me it always seemed to leave my hair in worse condition vs carefully blowdrying it out with a round brush, like they do in salons. This makes it straight or slightly wavy though.

I think the reason the CO wash with water spritzed has worked for you is because curly hair is actually tamed by being dampened and you should always brush curly hair by dampening it first. You will find it will style much easier. And adding protein to the water is genius! I'm going to try this!

If I'm in a rush I run my hair brush under the water tap for a few seconds then brush through my hair, this stretches out the curls and I style as waves and sometimes even add a tiny bit of oil at this point. If I do this it will dry into much more manageable curls or long waves. At least that has been my experience!

Another tip is to search Youtube for "Afrohair" care tutorials. Curly hair has a logic of its own but I've found anything that works for afro hair seems to be good for curls in general. I think most of the hair care advice out there is catered toward fairly straight hair that probably shouldn't be brushed when wet. Curly hair seems to work differently. It likes being dampened, shouldn't be dried out by heavy chemical products and benefits from deep conditioning treatments. Avoid any products that are sticky.

That your hair is thin probably makes things more bit difficult for you! My hair is quite thick so can handled being weighed down a little, in fact the longer and heavier my hair gets, the easier it is to manage.
I am not sure how long your hair is now, but I find the weighing-down effect doesn't start until MBL. Part of the reason why I am growing out my hair is that it weighs down the curls and waves. For me, longer hair is actually easier to style and manage and requires less product.

So that's one way to style without products: make hair naturally heavy by growing it out, and by using water spritzing and damp brushing. It may just be the weight of the water that curly hair appreciates and allows it to dry in a better shape.
If it's long enough, letting it dry in a plait can also help.

Just some ideas and things that have worked for me. Hope it helps! Best of luck :-)

Oops I meant www.instagram.com/luminousincidents :-)

[spidermom]

My thought is never brush curly hair except just before you're planning to wash it. Brushing breaks up the curl pattern and causes lots of fluff.

[starshade]

Curly hair definitely needs some kind of hold. chen bao jun has already mentioned flaxseed gel and I've found it to be the most effective on my hair as well, especially with a tiny bit of oil added to it. Once dry, it gets my curls to clump well and be soft and defined without weighing them down. My hair is quite fine and thin at the ends right now.

[DollyDagger]

I really dont like the feeling of products either and as such NEVER used them in the past....But having recently discovered what a difference they make and how to use them sparingly and strategically with the right technique..I feel like I short changed myself all these years for never having tried them. Great ideas mentioned so far...I hope you give them a try. I have somewhat fragile curls but they can get very curly looking and defined depending on what I use. In my profile pic I styled with just a touch of conditioner leave-in mixed with a drop or 2 of oil blend. Feels like no product whatsoever once its dry! Goodluck..post back and let us know how its going :)