Whether you’re ditching the pixie cut or you want to be more mermaid than mid-length, growing out your hair can be a challenge. While genetics, hair health, and hair type all have an impact on how long hair can get, these tips for hair growth will help you have the best chance of reaching the lengths you’re looking for.
Tips for Accelerating Healthy Hair Growth
Whether you’re ditching the pixie cut or you want to be more mermaid than mid-length, growing out your hair can be a challenge. While genetics, hair health, and hair type all have an impact on how long hair can get, these tips for hair growth will help you have the best chance of reaching the lengths you’re looking for.
Whether you’re ditching the pixie cut or you want to be more mermaid than mid-length, growing out your hair can be a challenge. While genetics, hair health, and hair type all have an impact on how long hair can get, these tips for hair growth will help you have the best chance of reaching the lengths you’re looking for.
Tips for Accelerating Healthy Hair Growth
Whether you’re ditching the pixie cut or you want to be more mermaid than mid-length, growing out your hair can be a challenge. While genetics, hair health, and hair type all have an impact on how long hair can get, these tips for hair growth will help you have the best chance of reaching the lengths you’re looking for.
Four Phases of Hair Growth
Before we get into our growth tips, let’s discuss the science behind hair growth. Each strand is on its own timeline, meaning that you’ll be experiencing all four phases at once.
Anagen: the growing phase. Your strand will spend most of its life in this phase, growing until it reaches the end of its life cycle, or it’s damaged and falls out. This phase can last for years.
Catagen: the transition phase. During this phase your hair slows its growth, and the follicle shrinks to prepare to shed. It lasts only a couple weeks.
Telogen: the resting phase. This is the phase where your hair doesn’t do much of anything. It doesn’t grow, but it doesn’t fall out, either. It usually lasts around 3 months.
Exogen: the shedding phase. This is the phase where your hair falls from your scalp. Most of us have around 50-100 strands a day in the shedding phase, which usually fall out in the shower or on the brush.
While some people have a longer anagen phase, or lose less hair in the exogen phase, we all follow some variation of this cycle.
Hair Growth Tips
So how do we help our strands grow as long as they can while they’re in their growth phase? There are a few key takeaways.
#1: Be Gentle to Your Hair
Everyday activities, like towel drying, overbrushing, and even sleeping on a pillowcase that snags our strands can all cause breakage and slow our ability to grow and retain length. Be conscious of your hair — treat it gently.
#2: Use the Right Hair Products
The products we use can have a major impact on our hair’s health. For example, if you have very dry hair but use a clarifying shampoo, this can cause more dryness and more damage. Or if you have very fine strands but use heavy oils, this can cause build-up that irritates the scalp and makes it hard for hair to grow. If you’re not sure what hair type you have, or what kind of products you should be using, head over to our Hair Quiz to unlock the secrets to caring for your hair!
#3: Get Protective with Your Hair
If you have natural hair, protective styles can have a major impact on your ability to grow and retain your growth. From box braids to Bantu knots, these styles can help protect your strands from damage – plus, they look gorgeous.
#4: Get a Hair Trim
It sounds counterintuitive, but trimming your hair may help it reach the length you desire. Trimming hair gets rid of the unhealthy, broken, and split ends that occur naturally throughout hair’s lifespan, leaving a healthy base that will brealk off less before it reaches its full potential.
Want to know more about what makes your hair, your hair? Learn more about the science behind the strands at our Tips & Tricks.
Take Our Hair Quiz
When you unlock your hair’s secrets, you unlock its full potential. Take the HairCode quiz to learn more about 1b hair, and all hair types.
