How To Preserve Your Stretched Hair Style Overnight

This natural hair life aint easy. It takes time, patience, and dedication to perfect those braid outs, twist outs, bantu knots, and other low manipulation styles that we may see on our favorite bloggers and vloggers. You’ve learned the right products to use, the exact technique, and you go outside and flaunt the style to the world. Then it’s time for bed- now what?

Low manipulation styles will stretch and get bigger over time, and while that’s good, you may still want to preserve some curl definition and keep your hair moisturized.

Here are a few tips to preserve dry stretched hair overnight:

►Skip using water in the LOC method- Instead, opt for a moisturizing leave in conditioner* that lists water as the first ingredient. That way, hair will be a little damp from the product, without being drenched in water. It won’t revert back to its true curly form completely, and you can keep the length in your style.

►Retwist/rebraid- The pineapple method doesn’t work for every curly girl, and sometimes it’s better to redo the style before bed. This way, you will have as much curl definition as possible, and your hair will be soft and bouncy. This does not mean you have to start from scratch and detangle your hair all over again. You can make larger sections in your hair and gently re-install the style. As you can see in the video, she parted her hair in rectangular sections so that her hair would stretch more overnight.

►Curl your ends again- You can use perm or flexi rods* to create uniformity in your curls overnight. This also prevents the hair from wrapping around itself and knotting. If you want to skip those extra styling tools though, you can follow the video and create ‘hanging bantu knots’; little bantu knots at the ends of your style that you can take down the next day.

►Tie and secure with a satin scarf- Adding a satin scarf is always a great move to protect hair at night. It keeps hair wrapped up, prevents frizz, and keeps the style intact until the next day. As you can see in the video, she uses her scarf to stretch her style out more. The hanging bantu knots help the stretched twist or braid stay in place under the scarf.

Using these tips, you can stretch your low manipulation style until your next wash day. Your normal poofy 3rd day hair will have more curl definition, be easier to manage, and can still retain moisture!

How do you preserve your stretched hairstyles overnight?