You are lucky if you’ve been blessed with naturally curly, wavy, coily hair. But if you want to change your look for a day, blowing out your hair with a relaxer can be a good start. You might need some time to get used to using relaxer, it’s totally fine. However, you don’t have to worry and don’t be embarrassed about it, we will show you how to blow out natural hair using a relaxer to help you to get better blowouts.
How to Blow Out Natural with a Relaxer
Step 1. Roughly Detangle Your Hair
Gently detangle your hair with a brush or your finger before we apply the relaxer. This step is to make sure the relaxer can be applied to strands more evenly and it’s also good for the relaxer to penetrate natural hair.
Step 2. Part Your Hair Into Sections
The next step is to section your hair with hand bands or hair clips. Parting hair will help you to apply relaxer easily. You can precisely take of your hair roots and ends when dealing with a small section. Normally, we can part our hair into 4 – 6 sections. But if your hair is pretty thick, you can add more sections accordingly.
Step 3. Apply Protective Gel for Scalp
When your hair is sectioned, it’s easy to apply scalp protective gel since all the hair is tied up. A protective gel is a product that creates a barrier and protects the scalp from getting irritated by chemical hair products. Some people may think it’s optional, but I do recommend you to have one if you want to fully protect your natural hair.
Step 4. Apply Relaxer on Hair
There are multiple ways to apply relaxer on natural hair depends on what hair texture you want to achieve. But there is one thing important: avoid touching your scalp with relaxer as possible even if you had protective gel on it.
For people who want bone straight hair quickly at home, you can apply relaxer with a brush from roots to ends, and rub the relaxer gently with your fingers. (You can wear gloves to protect your skin). Some professional stylists start using relaxer on the middle part of hair first, and apply relaxer on the roots and ends later, saying this complicated technique makes the final result looks like naturally straight.
People who only want to boost roots’ growth and reduce roots’ damage can only apply relaxer on the roots, this method maintains existing hair texture but delivers a more relaxed texture near the top of your head.
After applying the relaxer, don’t comb through your hair as it will break your shafts and hurt your scalp easily. For detangling hair knots and applying relaxer evenly, you can use a soft brush to do the job.
How Long Should You Wait?
There is no standard when it comes to setting the timer. Usually, stylists will wash off the relaxer within 10 minutes but it also depends on people’s hair textures. For example, hard and kinky 4C hair may take longer to absorb the relaxer. And what is interesting is that short natural hair needs more time to fully get straight.
Besides, relaxers from different brands also affect the relaxing time, this is something that you also need to take into account.
Step 5. Shampoo & Condition Hair
Step 6. Blow Dry Your Relaxed Natural Hair
If you have a hooded hair dryer at home, that would be the best option that dries natural hair gently and evenly. But if you don’t or you want to blow dryer your hair faster, a blow dryer and a brush are also good. No matter what hair dryer you are going to use, don’t forget to use a heat protectant before using any hot tools.
To create a more relaxed and straight result, try to use a paddle brush or a round brush to direct your hair to multiple directions while drying your hair, this helps hair to get more volume but still look straight. When each strand of your hair is looking nice and relaxed, you can also lock in the relaxed style with hair sprays after the blow drying process.
Things Help You Get Better Relaxed Natural Hair Results:
1. Choose The Right Relaxer for Your Natural Hair
Buying a trustworthy relaxer is not only good for reducing hair damage and negative chemical effects on your hair and skin, but also gives your hair more moisture, shine, and body. As we mentioned above, different hair relaxers do not have the same relaxing performance. Some relaxers are just not designed to make hair extremely straight, but it does not mean they are low-quality. Always pick the right one for your hair texture.
2. Don’t Let Greasy Hair Product Weigh Down Your Hair
Every time you spend money on a hair product for relaxed natural hair, you should aware that oily hair products can make relaxed hair flat and lose its volume easily, which is something you probably haven’t come across when you have bouncy and unrelaxed natural hair. Thus, when you just had a blowout using relaxer, just don’t put any heavy cream or gel on your hair.
3. Don’t Rush, You Don’t Always Need The Hottest Air
Although natural hair takes a long time to get fully blow dried and hot air can reduce the drying time significantly, it will also burn cuticles and cause frizz and fly ends on relaxed hair. Apart from that, if your hair is too hot while blowing out, then you may not have enough time to shape your strands since your hair is too dry to style. So, remember to protect your hair with medium heat and don’t immediately blow out your hair after using relaxer. Otherwise, the relaxer could be wasted.