There are affiliate links in this post.
I started the curly girl method over 3 years ago now. A couple months after starting, I got a regular, wet haircut. Prior to embracing my waves, my hair was dow to my natural waist. I had grown it as long as possible to help weigh it down. I knew that when my hair was longer, it was less poofy.
After I started embracing my waves, that length was just way too much work, though. So I wanted a decent amount of length cut off. I just went to an affordable salon in my area called Cost Cutters. The cut looked poofy when I was leaving the salon, which worried me a bit.
However, after I washed it and styled it myself (with gel) the poof went away. After this cut, I began to notice how uneven my curl pattern was. Getting the excess length off my hair allowed the hair to the right side of my head to curl up tighter, but the left side didn’t see much change. This left me with visibly curlier hair on my left side.
The left is before the wet cut, the center is after, ad the right is after I washed and styled my new cut myself.
For 3 years after that wet cut, I occasionally cut my own hair using a dry curl cut technique. The first time I cut my hair dry, I thought I was likely to ruin my hair. I had tried cutting my own hair as a teenager when I wore my hair straight, and it was always a disaster. So, I was impressed to find that I could dry-cut my own waves without ruining my hair. Plus, it was free!
So, I stuck with that for 3 years. I cut my own hair 3 times. The collage below shows before and afters of each of those 3 cuts. The “afters” are not immediately after I cut my hair, but were after I washed and re-styled my hair. When I first cut my own hair, it looks pretty straight and poofy until I re-style it again.
Also – sorry for over-exposing my face in these photos and in many others here on my blog. I know the pale-as-a-vampire look isn’t particularly appealing, but if I don’t increase the exposure of my photos, you can’t really see the texture of my hair because it’s so dark!
Anyway. I was pretty happy with the results I got from cutting my own hair each time. But, I also kept seeing experiences of wavy/curly haired people online, talking about professional dry curl cuts. Most of the ones I saw were DevaCuts.