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Your hair used to feel bouncy, but now it feels lifeless and even looks kinda limp, maybe stringy as well. This has happened to most people with wavy curly hair at some point. While it’s unpleasant, it’s not a huge deal, as long as you’re able to determine the cause, and learn the fix.
In this post I’m going to jump cover the various causes of limp curls, and how they can be corrected.
What Causes Limp Waves or Curls?
Limp curls can be caused by damage, moisture-overload, product overload, water weigh-down, uneven ends, a lack of hold in your styling products, product build-up or changes in humidity.
That’s the short answer. Of course, I’ll go more in-depth about each of these so you can determine what the cause is in your case!
Damage. If you’ve dyed, bleached or used high heat on your hair, sometimes this damages hair in a way that makes waves or curls straighter and/or less bouncy.
- How to fix limp waves caused by damage: There are “bond rebuilding” products on the market that claim to be able to repair damage. However, from listening to a podcast on cosmetic chemistry (including hair products) they said these are not scientifically proven (despite one brand having a patent!). So according to them, we do not yet know how to truly repair hair once it has been damaged, we can only make it feel better or lookb better, not actually be better. Which makes sense,a after all, camage is the result of a chemical process occurring in the hair. You can try bond rebuilding products if you’d like, but most likely, you’ll may have to wait on your damaged hair to grow out before you’ll be able to repair your curls fully.