Hairdresser says something, but I dont know!

[Chamy]

Until december last year i got regular trims every third month. I then decided to stop and se what happened. I do s&d every now and then, but i rarely find any splits. I am now starting to get bored with s&d since i never find anything and i started to think. EVERY time i went to my hairdresser she said that my hair was damaged in the ends and that it was good that i got a trim. But i havent had a trim now for about five months(much longer than i used to go without a trim last year) and i cant even find a split end to cut myself.

Was my hairdresser maybe just saying that my hair was damaged so i would come back or am i just not searching enough when i s&d. It doesnt make sense to me. :rolleyes:

[myotislucifugus]

My hair dresser used to have me feel the length of my hair, and where there was a change in texture, she would tell me it was damage. The thing is, my hair has different textures in it, and towards the end, the hair is a little rougher. It always is, wether it has been freshly trimmed or not. It has a good feel to it, it is just different. I think her training didn't account for longer hair, so differences in texture would feel wrong to her. She thought it was damage, even though it wasn't. Perhaps your hair dresser thought the same thing.

[Honey39]

I think my ends can look a bit 'ratty' withut actually being split. Just dried out and not great, and a trim perks them up. I am a big fan of tiny 1/2 inch trims every three months, because otherwise my hair does seem to get a bit damaged. But like you say, not actually split.

[Chamy]

myotislucifugus - Thats the exact thing that my hairdresser does, she makes me feel my lengths.
The annoying thing is that now i feel like i need to get a cut because it has taken so long since the last time. Its just so strange, i dont even feel any difference on the ends but i still get nervous. =S

[spidermom]

And of course regular customers pay the bills, so your hair dresser may have been influencing you to come back regularly.

[Shermie Girl]

The longer your hair gets, the older your ends are. So, there is bound to be some change in the texture of your hair down the shaft. That change in texture doesn't necessarily mean it is damaged. It is just a little different, due to the natural stresses of your hair's daily life.

Your hairdresser was probably trained to believe that any change in texture means that the hair is damaged. (Please, allow me to be clear, here. I am not bashing hairdressers!) And that damage must be cut away.

If you don't have split ends and white dots, if your hair isn't breaking off at the ends, your hair is not damaged and you don't need to cut it. Or trim it. Only trim, as little as you need to in order to keep damage or splits in check and to maintain your hemline in the shape that you like.

[princess]

The hairdressers feel the need to suggest something for them to get you to do something.

When I go to trim my eyebrows my beautician used to say you eyebrows are too much grown or do you want to wax your upperlips and also there are too much blackheads/whiteheads on my nose.

You are the best judge for yourself.

[Elbereth]

I would take any advice from someone who is interested in your money, with a grain of salt. Some of our members have totally uncut hair and they survive just fine. My impression is that most LHC'rs who do not have a specific reason (like growing out layers or evening color) trim very little compared to what you typically heard recommended.

It may be true that most people benefit from more frequent trims- but an average LHC'er is not one of "most people". Most of us are very gentle with our hair, and that translates to less damage that needs to be cut off. Maybe your haircare routines have changed as well?

Also, most hairdressers regard thinning length as a problem and a sign of damage, though that is not necessarily true. A wispy hair can be healthy, it is just not a look that is considered trendy -maybe because it often develops as one's hair grows to uncommon length.

If your goal is to grow your hair, and you don't see a particular reason to trim (other than that it's been a while), I think you could well postpone the trim. Maybe take it one month at a time and evaluate how you like your hair each month. You can have that trim the moment you feel you need it!

[mellie]

I've never had trims. But I am very gentle with my hair, no hair dryers or curling irons, only gentle washings and air drying and brushing or combing only when dry.

[Chamy]

Thank you for all the answers! =D It is starting to make sense now, of course i should look at my hair and see for myself when i need a trim. My goal is long hair, and i want to not trim for as long as possible.
But when do you know that you absolutely need a trim, is it when the ends tangle and get splits everywhere? Or is that to late and the damage may have traveled up in the hair? Im a bit confused still! =S

[marzipanthecat]

My hair dresser used to have me feel the length of my hair, and where there was a change in texture, she would tell me it was damage. The thing is, my hair has different textures in it, and towards the end, the hair is a little rougher. It always is, wether it has been freshly trimmed or not. It has a good feel to it, it is just different. I think her training didn't account for longer hair, so differences in texture would feel wrong to her. She thought it was damage, even though it wasn't. Perhaps your hair dresser thought the same thing.


I have been told the exact same thing - I had two friends from school who trained as hair dressers, and they were taught that a change in texture is bad, and should be cut. I remember them telling me I had so many split ends and I should get my hair cut quite dramatically, and we all sat down and I got them to actually SEARCH and show me and each other and split ends they found. They didn't find many. I think we all learned some good things from each other there!

I still very much believe people cut their hair when they don't need to, simply because they think it is the "done" thing.

[Fethenwen]

This is actually something I have been wondering too. I almost never get split ends, but they usually may seem a bit dry anyway. Now with them layers that I still got it is really hard to tell if they are dry or just feel damaged because of the hairs being so many different lengths.

Does anyone know what is a certain sign of damaged hair?

[scent_of_a_sin]

I trim my hair when I simply can't get it into shape anymore...

When I had a trim about a week or so, the length of my hair came to almost a half of what it used to be. :( My hairdresser told me that my ends were in terrible condition... I realized that also. But, what I didn't realize is this: it's like my "ends" came up to almost half of my hair! Could it be possible that split ends start to "travel" to your scalp, tearing the hair apart on it's way?

[amaiaisabella]

Could it be possible that split ends start to "travel" to your scalp, tearing the hair apart on it's way?

Yes, this is possible. Over a long period of time, and if the hair is badly damaged (remember, the ends are the oldest and most fragile part of your hair), these splits can travel upwards, breaking the hair shaft and damaging it further. That's why a lot of members here (myself included) do S&D often to cut this off at the pass, so to speak :p If you cut splits while they are still small, you can maintain the overall length of your hair and not have to end up with a drastic chop.

[lapushka]

What does your hair look like?

[jera]

And of course regular customers pay the bills, so your hair dresser may have been influencing you to come back regularly.

Kudos Spidermom. I was thinking th exact same thing but wanted to give the stylist in question the benefit of the doubt and also because my own ends were ratty and required frequent trimming when I first joined.:o

It's a bona fide newbie complaint.

[Chamy]

lapushka - My hair is virgin, dark blond with a blunt hemline, and a outgrowing bang. I dont think it looks unhealthy, and i actually dont know how it looked last time i trimmed, because its just recently that i have been paying attention to my hair in this way! =P I will try to fix a photo ad let you guys see for yourself if you think it looks damaged.

[Carolyn]

You are the best judge of the condition of your hair. Keep in mind that most hairdressers actually know very little about long hair. It's very likely that unless they specialize in long hair, that they will have very few clients with long hair or who are growing their hair longer. Also as others in this thread have mentioned, doing cuts and other hair services such as perms and color is how they make their money. Of course it's in her best interest if she can convince you to come back often. ALWAYS keep that in mind when a stylist tell you that you need to come back every x number of weeks. A lot of their clients probably do need to get a trim that often as they are cutting off damage from heat styling and maintaining a certain length/style.

One time I'd gone 4 months without a trim and I'd S & D'd a lot and knew I didn't have many splits. I wanted to grow longer and went for a trim only because I wanted a straight across hemline and not the natural U/V that my hair grows. Her first comment was about how long it had been since i'd been in and how much my hair had grown. Well duh. Then she commented on "all my splits and damage". I told her I'd been keeping and eye out for splits and couldn't find many. She paused and glared at me and said "well it's about to split!" WTF? :crazyq: She could know that? Here's where it all went bad. She said "so the usual trim?" and I replied yes. I should have specified exactly how much and reminded her I was growing. The wench cut off nearly 4"!!!! :rant: This was before LHC and before I'd learned much about long hair.

So if you don't have splits or white dots I don't see any reason for the trims unless you are maintaining a certain hemline. If you have tangly ends, the first thing you should do is clarify. There are tons of threads on clarifying so I won't take up space going into it here.

[sklent]

Usually my ends look damaged when they're actually just dry..

[Chamy]

So you can go without trims alltogether? My hair has absolutely no damage from heat or colour/dye etc. Maybe i can manage a years with just s&d if im happy with my hemline?

I absolutely love that! :D

[AmandaPanda]

I have seen people on another forum mention that they have a lot of splits and show a close up of their hair and you can't see any splits - the hair has different lengths from not trimming and as a natural result of shedding & regrowing. It can feel kind of rough too, when you run your fingers over the ends

In my opinion, a hairdresser should know the difference between a tapering hemline and split ends...but it's possible that she believes you have splits even though you actually don't

[Curlsgirl]

I only have gotten highlights from my hairdresser and she always comments on how well I take care of my hair and how healthy etc. She said last time how long it was getting. I said yeah I might trim a tiny bit off and the next time I went I hadn't done it. She said why haven't you trimmed a bit off? But if it's healthy why SHOULD I? Doesn't make sense to me so I am not. I used to have the "trim bug" and now I can't bring myself to trim, it changed sometime between BSL and waist LOL. I wasn't GETTING anywhere because of trims. Now I finally am. LOVE IT!

Oh and no, there are NO other long hairs that I have seen in that shop period. They really are hardly ever trained to make decisions about long hair. What I DO love about my hair stylist is that she is careful to do exactly like I say to my hair. That is worth my weight in gold! :love:

[Jessica Trapp]

IMO YOU are the best judge of your own hair. :flower:

[Flynn]

When you feel like you need a trim is when you need a trim.

I happen to like keeping my hair the same thickness and texture all the way down, and trim more off more regularly than a lot of people here to maintain that; that's probably what your hairdresser has been taught to think is "healthy" and desirable.

If you are s&d'ing and finding no splits, I'd say you have no splits, and nothing to worry about.

[Kirin]

So you can go without trims alltogether? My hair has absolutely no damage from heat or colour/dye etc. Maybe i can manage a years with just s&d if im happy with my hemline?

I absolutely love that! :D

That is correct you do not -need- to trim your hair. Many people here never trim, ever. The person who can best judge if a trim is nessesary or in order, is yourself. I actually know quite a few guys growing their hair out, who completely ignore the ends and splits, and to be honest, unless you "pick through the hair a strand at a time" you wouldn't know they had any at all!

The worst that will happen by not trimming is your hair will get longer, ha!

[JamieLeigh]

It's the hairdresser's job to tell you that you're not taking care of your hair properly, so you'll keep coming back and giving them your business. If you're confident that you're doing what's best for your hair, then that's all that matters. And S&D can absolutely be enough for anyone, no trims needed unless you're specifically wanting a blunt hemline or are getting rid of old damage. :flower:

[Darkhorse1]

I think someone else pointed this out, but the ends of your hair are the 'oldest' hair on your head. It will be prone to damage due to exposure to elements etc. Doesn't matter how gentle you are on your hair. I read that even washing hair can damage it--the friction of hair brushing against each other when wet can damage hair.

Hair dressers aren't really out to 'get' people with long hair. You figure a trim to them is not much in regards to cost. I've had hair dressers tell me when my hair was damaged from excess exposure to sun, and they also have told me it's in great condition. Why would they lie? Someone with long hair isn't just going to impulsively 'cut it' all off due to damage.

Like another poster here, my ends can start to look 'unkept'. That's due to the fact hair doesn't grow at the same rate. So, I get trims to keep the ends looking healthy, blunt and tidy.

Everyone has their own preference to their hemline and trims. I just prefer a trim every now and again. Also, I can never find splits when I'm looking, but can sure find them when I'm not looking :)

[Fethenwen]

But, but... are splits now the only thing that indicates your hair is getting damaged?

[Chamy]

But, but... are splits now the only thing that indicates your hair is getting damaged?


Yeah, is it?

I appreciate all the answers btw :), i hope i stop feeling like i must have trims every third month now :p

[BittSweetCherry]

Yeah, is it?

I appreciate all the answers btw :), i hope i stop feeling like i must have trims every third month now :p

No, they're not.

I'm just going to confuse you and say a change of texture IS plausibly damage - but not what LHCers call *DAMAGE*. In other words, the hair is older, drier, the scales have buckled a bit, making the shaft rough (what you can feel) and perhaps even a different (lighter) colour as light reflects off the rough surface differently. And face it: your hair is going to suffer some damage even within the first month of popping our of your scalp, but it's so insignificant that you won't see or feel it.

And as others have mentioned, if you haven't trimmed in many months the hemline hairs will have minor variations in length, which can give a rough feel compared to a fresh chop. That isn't damage, that's just textile phenomena.

SO, what pushes little ol' minor damage into *DAMAGE*-that-must-be-purged!! is fairly subjective, but the general LHC standard is:
a) It has a visible split, or white dot - cut it out (and if there's only a few, just S&D and leave the rest alone!)
b) It feels rough and treatments like leave-ins, oiling, extra conditioner and the like don't improve it
c) It constantly tangles around that point which makes brushing/combing/finger combing a lot harder and will increase mechanical damage
d) It's a visibly different colour and texture - colour change is an alarm bell, particularly if you didn't dye it.

If the damage can be seen, felt and is causing practical problems that are getting in the way of caring for your hair, then you need a trim. If only one or two of these factors is at play, make your own assessment - unlike most of the world, LHCers will almost always put extra length over perfectly blunt ends.

[Darkhorse1]

Damaged hair will have: Splits, dullness, color change (due to sun exposure), possible texture change and dryness. Before I colored my hair and started caring for my ends, my hair was fried from the sun exposure from teaching. I couldn't believe how red it was, and dull.

After that, I learned how to keep it up/covered and use certain conditioners. It won't stop it from getting colored from the sun, but it will reduce the amount of damage.

[Elbereth]

Just wanted to highlight a point that others already told:

Even if your ends do feel dry and there is some damage, you don't always need to run for scissors. Maybe the dryness is just your hair's way of telling it needs more conditioning and if so, increasing conditioning (conditioner, deep treatments, oiling) could help significantly. Reversely: if the issue with your hair is lack of conditioning, scissors are not the cure. In such a case, a trim will help but only temporarily and the new ends will soon become dry as well unless you increase conditioning.

Trim when you feel like it; that is, when you feel like the benefits from trimming outweigh the loss of length. To some people, that means "never" , some trim at specific intervals (that can vary) and others -like me- just trim whenever they feel like it without paying much attention to how long it has or hasn't been since the last time. Trimming is not exact science and there are many things that influence more to wellbeing of your hair.

[Chamy]

Even if your ends do feel dry and there is some damage, you don't always need to run for scissors. Maybe the dryness is just your hair's way of telling it needs more conditioning and if so, increasing conditioning (conditioner, deep treatments, oiling) could help significantly. Reversely: if the issue with your hair is lack of conditioning, scissors are not the cure. In such a case, a trim will help but only temporarily and the new ends will soon become dry as well unless you increase conditioning.




I always thought that was the deal, and whenever i got dry ends i would do a deep treatment. Since my hairdresser always told me different i thought i must be wrong-she´s the professional right? :p

[BittSweetCherry]

I always thought that was the deal, and whenever i got dry ends i would do a deep treatment. Since my hairdresser always told me different i thought i must be wrong-she´s the professional right? :p

She's a professional hairdresser - she was taught the manual skills for how to cut, style, dye and perm. That's not a textiles or a chemistry degree. Of course they've been given summarised verbal information, but I doubt they've ever been shown what rough hair looks like under the microscope or tried running a clinical trial on a treatment.

It's understandable that people look to hairdressers for these matters; the problem is that product recommendation is an add-on to their job, and I doubt even the largest beauty schools would have a chemist in their ranks. They're taught truisms that get passed around in the industry so much that nobody questions them (like inuits having 80 words for snow, or goldfish having three second memories). And to be fair, there's no way individual hairdressers are going to get their heads around formulations and protein structures! Hairdressing as we know it is an artistic workforce, not a science.

[Chamy]

She's a professional hairdresser - she was taught the manual skills for how to cut, style, dye and perm. That's not a textiles or a chemistry degree. Of course they've been given summarised verbal information, but I doubt they've ever been shown what rough hair looks like under the microscope or tried running a clinical trial on a treatment.

It's understandable that people look to hairdressers for these matters; the problem is that product recommendation is an add-on to their job, and I doubt even the largest beauty schools would have a chemist in their ranks. They're taught truisms that get passed around in the industry so much that nobody questions them (like inuits having 80 words for snow, or goldfish having three second memories). And to be fair, there's no way individual hairdressers are going to get their heads around formulations and protein structures! Hairdressing as we know it is an artistic workforce, not a science.

Thats true, thanks, you LHC´ers are so wise! :)

[Sheltie_Momma]

For me - if I get to the point where I'm sitting in meetings at work and I lose track of the meeting topic because I'm staring at split ends in my pony tail - then it's time for a trim! For me that's about every 6 months.

I get truly split ends - as in individual hairs that are broken off into 3 or 4 jagged points or even hairs that are together at the bottom but split higher up the shaft. This is because of heat damage I'm certain, I'm a newbie here so I'm still in the process of changing my habits (I was using the dryer/flat iron/curling iron a couple times each month). I'm going on a full month now of not using any heat - it's hard, I have frizz prone hair and live in Houston where it's very muggy and humid. Being on this site has helped tremendously. In place of the dryer I now add a bit of coconut oil, then softly rope braid and bun it while damp - woila - no friz, shiny, softly wavy hair - eventually. (It takes awhile to dry which I am attributing to better health).

[Tressie]

I used to wear my hair down a lot and the ends would get thin and dry and I know I had some splits. I didn't really have a length goal, so once I got below waist I would go and get the bad bits cut off. I think my hair was more dry than anything, but I didn't really understand at that time that I could improve the condition of my length.

Since joining LHC and deciding to try S&D only, I have gone for almost a year with no trims and I am right at classic length. I still have some dryness issues but as I have been wearing my hair in updos and being more careful in general, most of the time, the condition seems much better to me at least. (o:

[intothemist1999]

I would take any advice from someone who is interested in your money, with a grain of salt.

I use this argument for EVERYTHING -- stuff I listen to on the news...if the argument is between one person/group who have a monetary interest, and those who don't, I always trust those who don't.

[Curlsgirl]

I use this argument for EVERYTHING -- stuff I listen to on the news...if the argument is between one person/group who have a monetary interest, and those who don't, I always trust those who don't.

VERY good advice! Except you can't always trust even the ones who DON'T :)