A while back I had suggested to someone seeking advice in a wavy or curly hair forum that their hair might be weighed down. They responded by asking me how they could tell if their waves were weighed down or not.
I immediately realized I should use this as a blog post topic. It was a great question, and one that I would have needed help with early on, too. I knew the odds were high that this would be something others would want to know, too.
Signs That Your Wavy Hair Is Weighed Down
- Your roots are flatter than usual
- Your roots look wet or oily
- Your roots feel “producty” or sticky.
- Your waves are limp instead of bouncy.
- Your hair literally feels heavy.
- You have less volume than usual.
- Your waves start lower on your head than usual.
- Your curl pattern is looser/straighter than it used to be.
But..
How Can I Tell If My Hair Is Weighed Down?
To know if your wavy hair is weighed down, you need to know how your hair “normally” looks, feels and acts. Is it flatter, straighter, less voluminous, less bouncy, or heavier feeling than normal? If so, it’s likely weighed down.
You may have noticed that many of these signs require you to compare to your ‘normal’. That’s part of what is tricky when you are new to embracing naturally wavy hair. If you haven’t paid close attention to your hair in the past, you may not really know what your normal is. In my case, I thought my hair was straight until I was 26.
When I started wearing my hair wavy, I had nothing to compare it to. If you scroll back up to the graphic I included above in this post, it’s obvious when comparing that the hair on the right is weighed down, right? But what if you just saw that photo on the right by itself. It wouldn’t be obvious at all, due to having no comparison.
That’s sort of how it is when you’re brand new to embracing your wavy hair, or to paying closer attention to your hair. There isn’t any easy solution to that, unfortunately. However, what you can do is start to be really mindful of how your hair looks, acts and feels. This way, you’ll start to learn what your normal is, and then will be able to do comparisons later on.
I find it very helpful to take pictures of my hair regularly. I didn’t do this when I was new to embracing my wavy hair, but I wish I did. I started it about a year ago, and was surprised at how much more I could learn about my hair by keeping this visual hair diary.
Being able to compare pictures of my hair today to pictures from last week, the month before, and 3 months ago, helps me pick up on subtle changes in my hair. For example, I can easily see how high on my head my waves started at different times by comparing photos.
Taking note of how your hair physically feels is helpful, too. When I was new, if my hair was sticky or something, I would know that, of course. Things like whether my hair felt bouncy or limp, was less obvious to me until I started paying really close attention.
If you’re someone who doesn’t know your norm right now, just start taking pictures and notes of your observations now. In no time, you’ll become more “in tune” with your hair and it will help you greatly with your wavy hair journey.
What Causes Weighed Down Wavy Hair?
There can be many potential causes of weighed down waves. Here are some of the common causes:
- Heavy products.
- Using too many products.
- Product build-up.
- Being over-moisturized and needing protein.
- Water. Yes, water!
How To Fix Weighed Down Wavy Hair
To correct weighed down wavy hair, first pinpoint the cause. If it’s buildup, use a clarifying shampoo. If you’ve used too much product or heavy products, wash your hair and use lighter products or fewer products next time. If your hair is over-moisturized, a protein treatment can correct it.
If water is what weighs you down, changing your techniques will be needed if you want to resist the weigh-down. My hair is easily weighed down by water, so I use a variety of techniques to dry my hair faster while preserving their texture. Diffusing gives me a lot more volume than air-drying, and I have a diffusing tutorial blog post if you need to learn how to diffuse.
I use techniques like plopping, microplopping and dry styling to assist, as well. Several of the techniques discussed in my post 13 ways to get more volume with wavy hair are ways to avoid water weigh down.
Products that are commonly too heavy for wavy hair:
A common problem for people with wavy hair is to assume they can use almost any product designed for textured hair or curly hair. Your hair properties and your curl pattern aren’t directly correlated.
However, there are certain hair properties that are more among in those with wavy hair vs curly. Check out my posts What’s The Difference Between Wavy And Curly Hair and How To Modify The Curly Girl Method For Wavy Hair for more info on this.
Anyway, for most people with wavy hair, they can’t use products that are very heavy. Some curly hair products are made for really dry hair, which is more commonly found in type 3 and type 4 hair than in type 2 hair.
Many people with wavy hair will buy a lot of Shea Moisture or Cantu products because they are for curly hair and readily available in most stores. There are exceptions, but many products from these two brands will be too heavy for most people with wavy hair.
Similarly, cowashing can be too heavy for many people with wavy hair, so many find that using a sulfate free shampoo works best.
I personally don’t use a leave-in conditioner or cream most of the time, as my hair doesn’t need the added moisture and I am easily weighed down by leave-ins. However, even wavies with dry hair that needs moisture, may have to be careful about which leave-ins they use, to avoid being weighed down.
Curious about how to determine if the products you own are ‘heavy’ or ‘light’? Check out my blog post “Why wavy hair sometimes feels heavy” and scroll to the section
Does weighed-down hair matter?
Depending on what is weighing your hair down, it may not be “bad” at all. In my opinion, whether weigh-down is ‘bad’ or not depends on what is causing it.
On this blog I often talk about how I use various techniques to fight back against water weighing my hair down. This is totally a stylistic preference in my view. I like my curl pattern to start higher on my head, and I like more volume, which is why I try to fight being weighed down by water. If I didn’t have those style preferences, then I could let my hair air dry.
To some degree, leaving your hair wet for a long time can impact your moisture-protein balance by making your hair very moisturized. Though I personally would argue that all kinds of people let their hair airdry all the time and it’s not a big deal. I personally wouldn’t worry about water weighing my hair down if it weren’t a stylistic preference.
If you are being weighed down by things other than water, that’s a bit different. There are many benefits to finding products that are the right ‘heaviness’ for you, so I’d recommend trying to solve the problem if your products are too heavy. Plus, using products that are too heavy will likely make your hair feel greasy faster and just won’t feel very good to you physically.
Weigh down from build-up can be problematic longterm. If you have bad enough build-up, water can be blocked from getting into your strands, and your hair can become dehydrated from the inside out and eventually break off. Of course, this would be in rather severe situations, but it can happen. So, it’s definitely best to try to avoid much build-up.
ik this is kinda an old post, and im not gonna post my whole life story lol.
but in february or so i watched a few tiktoks where ppl discovered their straight hair was actually wavy/curly and i noticed their “straight” hair was really similair to mine: mostly just poofy floofy when bruhed (i started wearing it up in public cuz it was embarrassing) and little individual pieces of hair that were curly all over my head ‘-‘. and i remember i liked getting my hair wet in the rain because it would wave/curl. i wouldnt understand why my friends w/ straight hair’s hair would be so nice(not floofy, shiny, sleek) and mine was so… not shiny and puffy. but my whole life except toddlertime my hair was straight and shiny?
anyways i tried doing what 1 of the girls did, shower, scrunch, plop. low and behold i had like, a head of 2B-2Cs???!! i airdryed it then next day every1 asked me if i curled my hair lol. anyways i finally got a diffuser and stuff but i noticed my hair was waving less? like the bottoms are wavy as usual but the tops go to a mostly 2A.
is my hair weighed down or just going back to straight???
Hair can become curlier or straighter over time but it’s based on when the hair grows out of your head, and most people’s hair grows about half an inch per month so only the inch and a half of hair closest to your scalp has grown out since February. So I don’t think your hair is likely to have gone straight since February.
I don’t know why this happens, but there are two ways that curls act regarding drying. Some people’s hair is weighed down by water from their shower, so if they diffuse their hair to help it dry faster, it’ll be curlier. This seems to be the most common experience by quite a bit. However, some smaller group of people find the opposite to be true, that their hair will be curlier if it dries more slowly via air drying. You may just be in that second group that gets tighter results from air drying? You may experiment with air drying again like you did in the beginning and see if that is what makes a difference for you?
Or other people find that their hair reacts well to curly hair products initially, as their hair is dry and benefits from the added moisture that most curly hair products have. Yet sometimes over time, using those same products can become too heavy. You may use a site like isit.cg.com to look up the products you’ve been using to see if proteins are listed in any of them. If your routine is protein-free or mostly protein-free, you may need to do a protein treatment, hair can get straighter if it gets over-moisturized and lacking in protein. Or if you haven’t used a clarifying shampoo since you started, it could be build-up causing weigh down.
oh okay thank you so much! it cleared up a lot of confusion. ive noticed that airdrying made my hair curlier lol. tysm ill do more research 🙂
I have this problem when I first started my wavy hair journey I would use products from shea moisturize to style my hair I loved the results I would get soft waves there was even a point where it looked curly at the ends. but after awhile it became to look really oily it felt oily and weighed down. I noticed that the products weren’t doing the same voluminous effect on my hair. What should I do? what does that mean?
My first guess would be that you have product build up and may need to use a clarifying shampoo to remove it. When hair feels oily especially if it’s shortly after washing, that can be due to product build up.
If you have clarified recently (or you use a clarifying shampoo but it doesn’t help) hen my next guess would be that your hair has changed over time and is now more easily weighed down. Sometimes when people start CGM or similar, heir hair is damaged or dry, and then it gets healthier over time. Sometimes when hair gets healthier, it is weighed down more easily. If that’s the case, you’d need to switch to lighter products.
How do you do a protein treatment?
Also my hair looks wonderful and wavy immediately after plopping for 10ish minutes after a shower with no product. When I try to apply product (I’ve tried cream, mousse, and foam on separate occasions, each followed by gel) I get confused what product to apply and how. I’ve tried various methods but when it dries it is either stringy or the waves fall flat. I don’t know what I am doing wrong. My scalp also gets so itchy and I have red, inflamed flaky spots. Any recommendations there? Thank you!!
Most protein treatments are used after shampooing. You leave them on your hair for a while (how long varies) and then rinse them out.
Stringy results usually means that you let your hair get too dry before you applied your products, so to avoid that you may try adding your gel right after the shower rather than plopping first. I get best results by plopping first but my hair holds onto water like crazy. Other people’s hair starts to dry faster so if they plop at all, their hair will get too dry for gel to behave well.
WAves falling out right away usually means that you didn’t use enough gel (or other product with hold).
I’d recommend trying just gel rather than trying to use multiple products. I think using just one product at first let’s you get a good understanding of how much gel you need to use to get a cast. Then if you want to try using mousse and gel, or foam and gel, you can dial back the amount of gel when using something else as well. But it’s hard to figure out how much of each product your hair needs if you’re using 2+ products.
Scalp wise, that could be a few different things I think? Seborrheic dermatitis is really common and so that’d be my first guess? If you’re prone to oily hair and/or skin that would be a good reason to suspect it could be SD. Or maybe psoriasis, or a fungal infection? All are fairly common and a lot of times people have these issues mildly before CGM but they get worse with CGM due to washing less frequently or washing with gentler shampoos. You may need to use a strong shampoo regularly (rather than following CGM and using really gentle ones). My boyfriend has psoriasis and he has to use strong shampoos regularly or his scalp would get way worse. Another possibility would be some sort of allergy or sensitivity. Some people break out in response to fragrances in hair care products. I’ve seen some people say that their scalp and other parts of their skin are really easily irritated by styling products in particular. So some people find that being really careful with not letting their wet hair touch (or drop on) their skin helps a lot.
Hi, kinda looks like this topic is old, but I want to grasp every chance to get an explanation, I will start with a prologue.
You see, I’m a guy, so I can’t really find any answers on the web, because whenever I search on this, it’s all about hairproducts.
Anyways, so I have a right-sided fringe, which means I have bangs, shorter on the left, but it becomes longer to the right. Once I grew it out, so it was around eye length and the left to mouth on the right and actually my hair is Fine and wavy, but when it came to graduation, my life kinda took an upside-down and I cut it back. I mean REALLY back. (same length everywhere like a short french crop, so I locked myself in my room for 5 months now and cutting it back on the left each month, so I can have the size difference back)
So my hair length is now kinda acceptable, but it is a nightmare evey single morning to take a control over it, at least I have some now because of the length, but somehow my whole hair losing it’s waviness, after touching it too many times it becomes kinda straight and I have to mention that I have a lot of hair even if its type is fine, it’s weighing down to the front, taking up weird shapes sometimes and becomes bulky and I was thinking why. It’s kinda heavy- it does feel heavy when I want to adjust it. It probably has no texture, nor layers due to cutting back to a really short length. Can you somehow help me understand what’s going on with it? Is it because I have way too much hair, or is it still short? Maybe the lack of texture?
(Back to the prologue, I couldn’t force myself to visit a hairdresser, because they always cut it too short and I was affraid if it would happen again by them. I could maintain my hair at home for a year, so this is how I tried a full haircut on myself. :/ )
I am guessing here, but my guess is that you’ve hit a sensitive length. Which is a term I just made up, haha. I don’t know the reasoning behind it, but my own hair acts significantly differently when it is shoulder length vs when it is above or below my shoulders. My partner has really straight hair, but his hair has a sensitive length where it gets really “puffy” or “fluffy” when it’s around half an inch long. I am not sure what causes these sensitive lengths, but it sounds to me like you’ve hit one for the time being. With you saying that your hair loses it’s wave if you touch it, you could combat that by using a product with hold (mousse or gel) if you haven’t already, or using a product with stronger hold if you are using one but still experiencing that.
Thank you for your answer. I guessed it’s because my hair is not enough long too or way too healthy. Still, length does make sense to me too. 😀