Low-Manipulation Styling v. Protective Styling v. Flat Ironing

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One of the first decisions that anyone has to make when beginning to go natural is the type of styling you want to use throughout the transitioning period. There are generally three different categories in which you can choose to style your hair. The type of styling that you choose to use is purely up to you, and you don’t have to stick to just one category the whole time. Below is a compilation of what I perceive about each of the three categories. Hope it helps!

1.    Low Manipulation Styles

Low manipulation styles are those styles that don’t require you to handle your hair too much after washday.  It is a type of styling that attempts to make your relaxed ends curl so that they blend with your new growth.This can be very helpful in keeping the amount of breakage you get during transition to an absolute minimum. You will need to make sure that you at least lightly detangle your hair before shampooing to prevent excessive knotting once you wet your hair. Low-manipulation styles will also assist in preserving the integrity of your natural curl pattern (assuming that you don’t use high heat when drying). This is beneficial if you intend on wearing your hair curly once fully natural. This type of styling is very flexible, allowing for a lot of different looks. Common low-manipulation styles include, twist outs, braid outs, straw sets, rod sets, twist-rod sets, and roller sets. 

2.    Protective styles

Protective styles are those styles that don’t require you to handle your hair at all for an extended period of time, and protect the ends of your hair. Much like low-manipulation styling, this is extremely helpful in preventing breakage at the line of demarcation. Additionally, this type of styling is also good for ensuring that you maintain the integrity of your natural curl pattern, which is beneficial, if you want to wear your hair curly once fully natural. You will need to be sure that you 1) keep your hair moisturized, 2) take your hair down periodically to remove out shed hair and to give your hair a good deep conditioning. Protective styles include braids, full head weaves (with your hair braided underneath), wigs, kinky twists, twists, and buns. Be sure to not pull your hair too tightly when doing this styling otherwise you will run the risk of pulling your hair out from the root. (and we all know how sensitive the edges can be to that sort of thing.)

3.    Flat Ironing

Rather than curling your relaxed ends to make them blend with your new growth, you can straighten your new growth to make it match your relaxed ends. This will allow you to style your hair as you normally would if you were still relaxing. Because of the amount of heat that you will need to apply to your hair to make sure that the textures remain blended (you will probably be flat ironing multiple times a week, even more so if you live in a humid area), be sure to take extra care by moisturizing and sealing your hair daily, doing both a light protein treatment using a deep conditioner that contains proteins(to rebuild the nutrients that leave your hair due to the heat) and a moisturizing deep conditioning (to return moisture into your hair), and using heat protectant. All of the heat that you will be applying to your hair has the ability to permanently alter your curl patter by loosening it to the point of being straight. (Naturals usually call this heat damage). This is not 100% guaranteed to happen but it is quite possible and does happen often. If you intend on primarily wearing your hair straight once fully natural, then this really won’t be a problem for you. But if you intend to your wear hair curly sometimes and straight others, this may affect your ability to do that.