Hair frames your face, indicates your overall health and gives you a chance to express your personality through the style, color and cut you choose. However, keeping your hair in peak condition can be time-consuming – and when you have a family to look after, you won’t be able to spend as much time in the bathroom as you once did getting ready.
If you have ever been tempted to go the full Cara Delevingne and just shave your head to save time, then it’s clear that a change is coming for you. But before you do pick up the clippers, there are a few less extreme options you might like to go for that require minimum upkeep.
The key to having fabulous hair every day is to stick to something simple and easy to maintain; make the most of your natural assets and put them to good use. This way, you won’t have to spend hours in the bathroom juggling curling tongs with hair products, and you will be ready to go in a matter of moments whether you are off out for date night or just nipping to the shops for some milk. As life gets more complicated and time becomes more and more precious, make your beauty regime keep pace and get faster with you.
Here are just a few simple tips to keep your hair in gorgeous condition without having to spend every weekend locked in the bathroom.
Balayage For Less Upkeep
If you like to dye your hair, then you will probably be spending a fortune in both time and money sorting out your roots every few weeks. While dying your hair might seem like an easy way to get a new look and enjoy your hair, there is one word that will make your life a whole lot easier: balayage.
In recent years, balayage, a French method for blending highlights into your hair, has grown in popularity. For a start, as the highlights are blended into your hair just below the roots, you won’t notice your highlights growing out or your roots growing in. The reason that balayage is so popular, though, is that it offers a more natural look to your highlights. Instead of a sudden color change, it looks as though the sun has kissed your hair into a lighter shade evoking long summer nights instead of dull salon days.
Balayage works on all kinds of hairstyles from pixie cuts where the highlights soften the hairstyle and give the impression of a woodland, dappled shadow to longer hairstyles where the thickness of the hair is emphasised in the darker base color. Adding blonde brown and caramel tones also works on pretty much any hair color, creating a natural and beautiful shape and texture. Click here for a few suggestions that can work for anyone.
Go Your Natural Grey
So we’ve discussed the problem with roots, and now we should think about some serious options for those grays. You can, of course, use root color kits to hide your grays and blend them in with your natural hair color, but if you are feeling bold, why not jump on the trend for silver hair?
Metallics have been hot for a while with rose gold being seen everywhere from jewellery to hairstyles in 2017. This year, those subtle greys that were so popular as balayage last year are going a little shinier and coming out as silver in 2018. Not only is this great for women who are starting to worry about losing their hair color, but a lot of fun for other women looking to try something new.
That fashion is finally embracing natural grey hair is also a fantastic triumph we should all be celebrating, and your hairdresser will be able to help you pick out the right tone of grey to help you transition from root to tip. The trend has been embraced by older Hollywood stars such as Judi Dench and Helen Mirren, but this is a fashion for everyone. Natural beauty shouldn’t be reduced to appearing ‘young’ – you are beautiful at any age, no matter what your natural hair color is.
The real beauty of this fashion, though, is that gradually, you won’t have to maintain a specific hair color at all. Your natural gray will have grown in, and you won’t need to continually go to the hairdressers to top it up unless of course, you fancy using balayage to create deeper tones that automatically make your hair appear thicker. Grey hair works well at any length, but if you want to speed the process up, the next look could be just the thing for which you were looking.
The Pixie Cut
For the last few years, long hair has been everywhere, the obvious accompaniment to the hippyish fashions that have swept across the industry. But, in 2018, it’s time for something a little different – alright, a lot different. Enter the pixie cut.
The pixie cut has always been something of a fashion, subverting the notion that feminine beauty requires long hair. Now the pixie is back, and there are so many different ways to style it that you really do need to think carefully before going in for the chop. For example: do you want to have bangs? Are you going to go for a rough cut or a sleek do? How do you want to shape the pixie? Pinterest is full of different looks and styles, and each one is unique.
In Hollywood, pixie cuts have come in and gone out of fashion, but they have always made a splash on the red carpet from Audrey Hepburn chopping off her Princess locks for a night of freedom in A Roman Holiday to Emma Watson’s sudden change after playing Hermione with her long frizzy hair signifying her break from the franchise. The pixie cut has become a sign of freedom from the stereotype, and it still looks fantastic nearly 70 years later.
Love Your Natural Look
One of the most frustrating things about fashion is that by designating one look a trend, other styles don’t feel so appropriate anymore. However, if the fashion cycles over the years have taught us anything, it is that fashion favours the bold.
Your natural hair might not be featured on the front cover of a magazine this month, but if you have the confidence, you should enjoy your hair in its natural state. In particular, you should make the most of your natural volume if you have it and highlight the natural curly texture of your hair. For all that most hair tutorials are about combing, drying, straightening, curling and spraying, sometimes you already have all you need. You just need the confidence to wear it with pride.
Loving your hair is mostly about taking good care of it, trimming the ends, moisturising your scalp and washing regularly (but not too frequently). The key to any no-fuss hairstyle is playing to the natural advantages of your hair type. So if you have thin hair, a balayage will provide you with no fuss volume; if you have African American hair, you can go all out on a pixie cut that will highlight your natural volume and texture. There really is a no-fuss hairstyle for everyone.
