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Protective styling can be extremely useful to any natural who wants to have long, thick, and healthy tresses. Some naturals tend to avoid protective styles because they typically take longer to do than other styles, and they require careful planning around the days that you want to wear your hair out or down.

But incorporating the styles as a regular part of your natural hair regimen will serve you well and protect your tresses so that you can have beautiful hair for years to come. If you want longer hair, a routine protective style should be the go-to hairdo for you.

Even if you’re not interested in having long hair, protective styling will make your hair easier to manage, and it will look much healthier when you do decide to take your protective style out.

In this article, we’ll discuss why protective styling is so helpful, and provide you with some style options. If you want to know about protective styling’s many benefits for natural hair, keep reading.

Protecting the Ends

The primary goal with protective styling is to protect the ends of your hair. The ends are the oldest part of the hair, so they are typically the weakest part of the strand.

In fact, many naturals believe their hair doesn’t grow because they see the same length year after year. However, curly hair grows just as fast as straight hair. It’s the ends that suffer.

Naturals lose their ends every year due to friction, mishandling, and lack of protection. Ends are so fragile that they can break through regular, everyday handling if they aren’t protected and fortified with strengthening protein treatments.

Ends usually show up on wash day as tiny ringlets on the shower floor. You’ll know if you’re losing ends by the amount that you see after washing and detangling. Do you see many tiny ringlets or long strands? Several small snapped ringlets indicate breakage. The more broken ringlets you have, the worse the damage is.

However, seeing a minimal number of long strands on wash day is usually a healthy sign. The human head sheds up to 100 hairs per day, so seeing some long ones on wash day is normal.

The best way to protect the ends is to tuck them in. The ideal style for anyone losing their ends is bantu knots and updos such as roll, tuck, pin. These methods require you to tuck in the ends. You’ll be able to grow your hair longer and fuller if you use either of these techniques frequently.

Updos, bantu knots, and wearing wigs are the ultimate ways to guard the ends, but you can still get protection by twisting the ends and sealing them with oil.

Stretching Natural Hair with Protective Styling

One of the top benefits to protective styling is the ability to stretch natural hair. Stretching your mane is a way to loosen the curls so that the hair is easier to manage. Many naturals wear their hair in a protective style for a few days per week and then opt for stretched hair for the rest.

Aim to keep your hair stretched regardless of whether you keep it in the protective style all week. Stretching your hair means that it is easier to detangle and style in between washes. When you can detangle and style quicker, you’ll be less likely to damage and break the strands.

Best protective styles for stretching include twists, braids, bantu knots, and banding.

When Beauty Leads to Baldness

So, now that you know how to protect the ends let’s discuss roots.

Glue weaves, individual braids, and other extensions technically fall under the protective style category, but how protective are they if they’re killing your follicles?

Even sew-in weave users have complained about the weave being too tight and painful. As women, we’re quick to tolerate pain because we grew up with the mantra, beauty is pain.

However, beauty may equal baldness in this case. Styles that require a tight application of glue or extension hair can pull your roots and anger your follicles.

It’s probably not much of an issue when you’re young because your cells regenerate at a rapid pace. Irritated follicles still gain new cells to help it produce hair if you’re under age 45, and you’ll have healthy new growth regardless of how you treat the follicle.

However, as you age, your cells are not replaced so quickly. Abused follicles may not return at all, and they may even completely corrode. This condition is known as alopecia, or balding.

It can be hard to make a comeback from self-induced alopecia, but you can prevent it from occurring by not wearing your protective styles too tight, not choosing glue-on and sew-in styles, or skipping harmful hairdos altogether.

Best Protective Styles for Natural Hair

Many protective styles work to preserve the length of your hair while not pulling at the root. Protective styling is ideal when it covers the weakest part of the hair—the ends. Here are great protective styles to try:

Wigs. This hairstyle is at the top of the list because it is arguably the most protective. It’s like wearing a hat that thoroughly covers all of your hair. It’s easy too. Avoid using glue with your wigs and opt for a wig cap and clips only. Glue will keep the wig in place, but it can very quickly cause baldness. The best thing about wigs is that they’re a quick, easy and stylish way to protect your mane.

Bantu Knots. This style is popular among naturals because it offers complete protection to the ends and most of the strand. To make bantu knots, part your hair into 11-14 sections. Apply Nutress’ protective Foam Wrap Lotion, and twist a section until it curls onto itself. Then tuck the ends. Repeat with all the sections.

Roll, Pin, Tuck. This style is exactly like it sounds. You can roll your ends back from your face and tuck them in to the rest of the hair to make a classy updo. You’ll need several bobby pins for this style to make it easier to do. You can always incorporate twists or braids into the roll to change the look.

Twists and Braids.  Two-strand twists and three-strand braids are ideal protective styles that you can wear around the clock. Twists and braids don’t completely cover the ends, but they are tried and true methods of keeping your length. They partially cover the entire strand and keep the hair stretched and untangled. Twists and braids don’t typically pull the root much, and they are easy to pair with a beautiful scarf or hat. Be sure to dip your ends in our wonderful new Pure Organic Coconut Oil to seal them, and to use Nutress Foam Wrap Lotion. This styling product will keep your twists and braids frizz-free for when you do decide to take them out.

Crochet Extensions. Crochet is probably the least harmful of extensions because you’re keeping your hair braided in a protective corn-row style underneath, and affixing the extension hair onto them, instead of onto the root. Crochet can be done yourself at home, which will give you control over how tight your hair is pulled.

However, washing the scalp is not easy when you have crochet hair on top of cornrows. Going a month without washing is a significant drawback to crochet hair, so it is best avoided if you’re prone to scalp conditions like itching, fungus, and dandruff.

What about you? What style do you like the best, in terms of ease and protectiveness?