Creating a Transitioning Hair Care Regimen

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When beginning to transition to natural hair, one of the first things that you should do is to create a transitioning hair care regimen. What products you choose to use during each step depends on what you personally prefer to use and what your hair needs. (Check out this post to see the type of things to consider when choosing your hair care products during your transition.) In my opinion, there are 5 essential steps to a transitioning hair care regimen.

1.    Pre-Poo

Pre-Pooing is the process of preparing your hair for the shampoo process. This step is essential to transitioning hair because it gives you a chance to remove a lot of your shed hair before getting your hair wet. Removing shed hair prior to shampooing will help prevent excessive knotting. To remove the shed hair, lightly coat your hair with oil or a conditioner, finger comb gently, and you should be able to easily slip the shed hair out. 

2.    Shampoo

There’s nothing really different about shampooing transitioning hair than fully natural or fully relaxed hair. As more new growth came in, I found that shampooing in sections was extremely helpful. Shampooing in sections, similar to pre-pooing, is an additional way to prevent knotting. I section my hair in four (straight down the middle from forehead to neck and from ear to ear) and shampoo each section separately. I keep these sections until its time for styling my hair. At this point, some choose to use a rinse out conditioner and detangle prior to the next step. This is something that I have chosen not to do (I detangle later), but it’s purely personal preference.

3.    Deep Condition

Transitioning hair NEEDS moisture, so weekly moisturizing deep conditioning treatments is a must in order to keep moisture levels high. Liberally coat your hair with a conditioner and ensure that each strand is coated. Put on plastic cap and apply moderate heat for at least 30 minutes before rinsing out. Heat is an important factor for DC. Heat opens the cuticles to the hair, allowing the conditioner to get deep in the hair shaft and work its magic. There is a new trend in the natural hair community of using a steamer to DC. It is claimed that your DC will be more effective with a steamer because the steamer provides both heat and moisture, allowing the conditioner to work better. I personally haven't used a steamer, so I don't have an opinion either way about it. 

4.    Style

Once you have rinsed out your DC, you are ready to style your hair. Since the name of the game is moisture, its good to use a leave in conditioner before styling your hair. (This is the time that I choose to detangle my hair.  No real logic behind it other than I don't want to detangle multiple times lol. When I used a rinse-out conditioner to detangle prior to DC, I found that I still had to detangle again.) Seal the moisture in with Shea butter or oil (whichever you prefer) and style as desired. The leave-in conditioner will leave your hair really soft, so if you do low-manipulation styling (such as a twist-rod set), I suggest using a gel or setting lotion to make sure you get a good hold on your set.  At this point, a lot of people use a bonnet dryer or a blow dryer to dry their hair, I prefer to let my hair airdry overnight. Again, drying methods are all personal preference.

5.    Moisturize

To retain moisture in your hair, ideally you should moisturize it every 2 – 3 days between washing, assuming you intend to wash your hair once a week. Using a penetrating oil as a moisturizer has been beneficial for me. (Using any water based product on my twist-rod set was just the ultimate fail. The relaxed ends went limp and my new growth curled and expanded. Definitely not a good day to day look lol.)  Some use Shea butter, others use a moisturizing lotion and seal with oil, and still others prefer to co-wash every 2 – 3 days instead of applying a moisturizer. Again, this is personal preference as to the method you use to restore moisture to your hair.