Crotchet braids have become a trending new protective hair style over the past few years. This involves less maintenance of your real hair and focuses more on the weave itself. Women who use this protective method to either transition from relaxed hair to natural hair, or grow their hair either uses synthetic or human hair extensions in the process. Even though this hair style is trendy, people tend to make mistakes when doing this style of braids.
Some mistakes include:
- Not moisturizing their real hair
Fact is your hair needs moisture to prevent breakage. Yet, women sometimes do not moisturize their real hair under the crochet braids, which will lead to dryness and result in breakage. Always use a liquid braid spray or moisturizer to spray your real hair every 2 days. This will prevent your take down from leaving you with broken pieces or hair and damaged ends. Below is a video on how to moisturize your real hair while wearing it in braids under a weave, wig or crochet braids.
- Extensive hair pulling (tightness of cornrows)
We all make mistakes. Some women tend to make mistakes when in the process of doing the braiding patterns and their regimen after the install. Sometimes the cornrows are done too tight, and the extensive pulling of the hair will lead to hair loss/ baldness and scalp damage. Braids should never be done too tightly, especially since the crochet needle needs to slide between the braided hair to install the crochet hair. If the braids are too tight, then the crochet needle will cause damage.
- Not observing the condition of real hair
When doing crotchet braids, you should consider the condition of their real hair before you install any long term protective stylem and make the best decision based on the condition of your real hair. Relaxers can make the hair become weak. So putting braids on top of a fresh relaxer or hair in a weakened state can cause serious damage to the hair. I recommend a two weeks break after a relaxer, before getting any long term protective styles especially crotchet braid.
Crotchet braids are an excellent and trendy protective style; however just like other protective styles they all have their drawbacks. You should consider and identify these mistakes and avoid them in order to grow longer, healthier hair. On that note you can take this opportunity to grow your hair longer and healthier by reading my free hair growth guide.