Happy Sunday!  This is a follow up post from Thursday’s post.  You can find it here if you have read it. In this follow up post, I will share with you HOW I managed to keep my natural out, un-braided and with no heat for a whole year! It’s possible my good people, taxing but possible. Let’s get started!

The first thing to note, type 4 hair is prone to tangling. Because of this, I found that I needed to detangle my hair A LOT. This also depended greatly on my styling options.

Moisturizing

Keep your hair moisturized for as long as possible. Washday moisturizing will last you about 3-4 days. This means you’ll have to re-moisturize your hair mid-week. To do this, you may either spritz hair with water to “reactivate” the leave-in from washday, or you may simply apply a little bit more product to hair.  You can find more details here on how to moisturize your natural hair here.

Styling

This is the big one, isn’t it? A year is a long time, and I tried many styling options; I will now share with you what worked best and recommend what you might want to avoid!

I was avoiding heat so  straight styles like blow-drying, flat ironing and tonging were completely out! Heat will not always damage your hair, and occasionally you may consider a straight style provided you take the necessary precautions.  Below are by top 3 styling options:

1. Braided ponytail

This is just like the ordinary ponytail; the only difference is the front hair is sectioned off into a loose cornrow, flat-twist or braid. The motive for this is to keep tension and damage away from your hairline. Remember, we are avoiding heat and our hair will not be at full length, avoid pulling on your hair in order to force it into a certain style.

The improved ponytail will also last you many days before you have to restyle.

I found a great post and photos on braided ponytails on Nzuri Textures 

Source: Hairstylishe.com

Source: Nzuritextures.com

2. Space buns

This is probably my favorite hairstyle! It works on new hair, old hair, long hair, medium length hair. And it can also be improved for shorter hair by sectioning off and braiding the front! This style will last you many days because you can easily take the buns out and hold them again.

Source: Hairstylishe.com

3. Cornrows and twists

These work best for longer hair, I tried them a few times.

Other styling options to consider are wigs, scarfs, wraps and hats. Wraps and hats may not be favorable for work, but these are all options to try.

To wrap it up, I’ll just mention a few styles that you may only do once on a while. Grab your seat because this will shake you. From my experience, curl definition hairstyles are those you want to do as little as possible. By curl definition hairstyles I mean twist-outs, braid-outs, Bantu knot-outs, finger coils and more.  I will write a detailed post about this next week, but in summary, curl definition hairstyles foster tangles and over manipulation.

If you have any questions about my one year on heat, no braiding, you can leave them in the comments, email or on our social media.