Clip-in hair extensions? Advice needed!

[Maverick494]

Hey everyone,

This is not about me, but a friend of mine. She's been growing out her hair for two years now, but some health problems and a lot of stress have caused her to shed massively. The shed seems to have stopped and she has a lot of new growth, but the length of her hair has gotten a lot thinner. Basically she doesn't like the way it looks down anymore and it tangles much quicker too. She doesn't want to cut it; she wants to maintain and wait for new growth to catch up, but she doesn't want to wear it up all the time. Lately she's been looking into extensions, especially the clip-in ones.

The companies she's set her sights on get really good reviews, but none of those reviews address the question of a LHC-er :p, namely:
is wearing clip-in extensions damaging for your hair?

I'm not talking about wearing them all day every day, but when she's going out in the weekend or some other occasion when she wants to look extra nice. I have blonde clip-ins that I use in the summer for highlights without using dye, but I use them so sparingly I can't honestly advise her. I have never gotten any damage from them, but I don't know what's it worth.

Share your thoughts please.

[isabelx]

I wore clip in extensions every day for around 2 years and I never saw massive damage from them. The thing about them that gave me the most damage was styling my hair and styling the extensions to match either other (a lot of straightening and curling). But if you don't think she would have this problem say if she always wears her hair straight and wouldn't have to style it much to match them.

They may have thinned my hair a little, since I was putting 5, yes 5! heavy extensions each with 5 clips into the same place in my hair every day, but if you say she won't wear them every day she should be fine.

Also, make sure she keeps the extensions in good condition if she does decide to buy some. One of the mistakes I made was that I never shampoo'd or conditioned them (ew) so after not long they became very tangly easily, and so used to get tangled up with my own hair, which made taking them out difficult, especially as I used to just rip them out!