If you want to know how to cut curly hair at home, we’ve got you covered! It’s a cool and efficient skill to have as it saves quite a bit of time and money from going to the barber or hairstylists. Plus, a lot of amateur or inexperienced hairstylists aren’t really good at it and may ruin your hair for quite a while.
However, cutting your own curly hair is also tricky because long curly hair presents more challenges than straight or shorter hair. Whether you want to know how to cut bangs on curly hair, how to cut layers in curly hair, or how thinning curly hair works, the main danger is always the same – the curls aren’t even and it’s hard to be certain how much you need to cut and from where.
To mitigate these problems, here are our basic tips for how to cut your own curly hair at home as well and with as little risk as possible:
- Use at least 2 non-handheld mirrors. Control is vital when cutting curly hair so make sure you have perfect vision at all times.
- Cut your hair dry. Some people recommend cutting curls when they are damp so that they are straighter, however, then you risk not knowing how the hair’s going to look when it dries off and curls up again. If you cut your hair when it’s dry, however, what you see is what you’re going to get.
- Cut your hair when it’s at its best. Curly hair can look differently in different days. Wait for a day when your curls flow into each other perfectly and there’s no “shelving effect” (different layers don’t flow into each other well enough).
- Cut a little bit at a time. To mitigate the risk of making a big mistake simply cut a bit at a time – an inch or two at the most. This way you’ll always be able to fix any mistake you might make. If you want to drastically shorten your curly hair, we’d recommend doing so on several short cut sessions.
- Cut individual curls instead of whole sections. Sure, it takes a bit of time but it will almost nullify any risk that comes with cutting entire sections at a time. If you want, you can use hairbands to keep sections steady and manageable so that you can safely cut them together. However, we do prefer the slow and steady approach of cutting one or two curls at a time only.
