This article is going to be your ultimate guide to waving your shorter hair. If you’ve always struggled with a clam curling iron, you can’t seem to get flatter and curls to work either.
And you’ve just about given up on being able to achieve this style yourself from home. I’m going to teach you not only how to do it, but how to master it today.
When it comes to doing a style like this, the hair needs to be smooth to begin with. To get smoothness, we often turn to our flat iron.
I’m going to challenge you, not to do that anymore. Okay. I know a lot of people are going to be freaked out by this, but I’m going to challenge you.
This is especially true for people with finer hair textures. So when you curl on top of it, it’s much harder to get a fuller, fluffier look, overall.
On my wash days, I always start by using a cocktail of products that will get me the result that I want. I find that people always fall into two hair categories.
They fall into the flat category or the frizzy category. For me, my biggest issue is getting and maintaining volume.
So I fall into the flat category. Because of that.
In the wet stage, I always use volume products. If you fall into the frizzy category, then instead of volume products you should look for smoothing products.
For volume, I use an on the mid shafts and ends and then a volumizing spray on my roots. Then I spray everything with a heat protectant and I comb through from roots to ends to evenly distribute the product.
Now, for me to get tons of volume and smoothness, I always start every single style by blowing my hair out with my hot air brush. I go making sure to smooth that cuticle layer down completely before moving on to the next section.
If my hair is still not smooth yet after a couple of passes, that tells me that this is a mistake that I see a lot of women make. This is a comment that I get a lot as well in any of my blow-dry tutorial videos.
A lot of women ask me, “I can never get my roots dry with a blowout brush or my hair super frizzy with a blow-up brush.” It’s because you do have to work going right from the root, feeling that heat on the root and twisting your hand as you go.
Not only that, a crazy amount of glossiness, smoothness, and movement. It’s an amazing hot tool when you use it properly.
At the very top of my head, I always blow dry the section I don’t personally blow dry apart into my hair because I find that I get more lift at the top and more flexibility in my part if I do it this way.
Doing this way later also allows me to part to the left, part to the right, part in the middle, whatever I feel like. My hair has tons of movement. It’s a different look than if I were to air-dry it and then flatten everything out with a straightener.
Now let’s start waving. Anything from the top of the ear down is going to be gently waved with the straightener.
We’re not going to curl this section because I’m going to show you how to do this. So starting at the first section, you want to clamp your iron down and rock up and down and up and down as you move down the hair shaft. I prefer it when the very ends of my hair are curled out instead of in.
So since my hair length requires three rocking motions, I know that I have to start by waving in and then out and then in to get that shape that I want and to have it end the way that I want it to end.
If you don’t want to do this with a flat iron and you have a mermaid waver, you can use that as well and get a very similar result.
I just find it easier and super quick to use my flat iron.
Once you get around the temples around here, you’re going to grab your curling wand. I’m using if I use a wider barrel than one inch like one and a quarter inch, then I’d get an even softer wave.
The amount of curl you get depends on three things. It depends on the heat. Use the diameter of the barrel and the technique.
When it comes to heat the amount you need is completely dependent on your hair type.
For my hair today, I’m going to set my iron at that’s hot enough to bend the hair for me, but not so hot that it’s going to make it too curly.
I always curl the hair beside my face, away from the face. So what I do is I place my iron behind the section. I lay my root flat, and then I twist my hair as I wrap, leaving the ends out.
Then I hold it for a few seconds. I move the barrel away and I pull on the hair to soften that shape while it’s still hot.
In the second section, I’m going to curl away from my face as well. So I place my foot flat and then I twist my hair as I wrap the rest of it, leaving the very end. So I let it warm up for a second. And then I take that iron and I pull the hair.
Now for this third section, or to give myself more of a tousled look, I’m going to do the same thing, but I’m going to alternate the direction to go towards the face.
To do that, I place the iron in front of the hair this time, and then as I twist around the barrel, I also twist the hair at the same time. Let it warm up, release, and pull.
So now I just have to go around my head doing this same technique over and over again.
I typically curl the first two sections beside my face, moving away from the face, and then I alternate forwards and backward in the other sections.
When I get to the very front where my fringe is, I start taking much smaller sections. If I take sections that are too wide here, sometimes I feel like I get a bit of like a Farah Fawcett vibe where the curl is too intense at the front near the face.
By taking these little tiny sections, I can have it look much pricier and softer on my face overall.
Now for the finishing touches, I want to add a little more volume to the top, but I don’t want to do any backcombing because I don’t want it to look too formal. I do want it to look like a vent hair.
So I’m going to sprinkle in some of the powder that gives the hair what it needs. I personally really like it because it lifts and separates the hair without weighing it down like a wax product or a sea salt spray would.
I even sprinkle it on the mid-troughs of my hair and I work it in that way for even more texture and more separation has a very interesting texture to it.
