How To: Wrap Hair

You may or may not know about wrapping hair. I had no clue a few years ago but once you start you never look back. Wrapping is part of our night time care for our hair and must be a core part of every HHJ. What we do to our hair when we sleep is especially important, all our efforts at length retention can go down the drain just because of one simple thing we fail to do.

Unfortunately, our type of hair as black women does not afford us the luxury of just rolling in to bed and falling asleep with our hair all over the show. We will beasking for breakage and boy will we get it! LOTS OF IT!

So what is wrapping?
The name is self-explanatory. Simply put wrapping is brushing hair so that it wraps around your head
 
Why wrap hair?

• To smooth hair and maintain straightness of our hair overnight. eg from relaxers, blow drying or flat ironing
• To retain oil and moisture in our hair overnight
• To protect our ends from breakage while we sleep
   
  Types of wraps I use

1. Doobie wrap or just ‘the wrap’
2. Cross wrap

What you will need when wrapping hair (as shown in photo above)

• Daily moisturizer and sealing oil
• Silk/ satin hair wrap
• A wide tooth comb and soft boars bristle or paddle brush
• Hair clips or bobby pins (optional)
  *can you tell that purple is my favourite colour 🙂 lol

 Doobie wrap/wrap

*This is how I do it. It’s not the exact text book method but it’s close enough

1.  Moisturise and seal hair
2. Using a wide tooth comb gently brush you hair downwards from the centre of your head. Your hair should look be all around your head in your face etc
3. Go to the top of your head where the centre part is and slowly start to brush hair in a circular motion around your head.
4. Continue this process working down your head and hold hair in place with free hand as you do. There should be more hair the lower you go so make sure you are combing from the roots and getting all the hair securely wrapped around. Use your free hand to smooth the hair and secure it by using clips or bobby pins.
5. Hair that is newly relaxed or layered might fall out of place so you will need a few more pins
6. Use your boars bristle brush or paddle brush to smooth hair and get rid of any bumpy areas
7. Get your satin scarf tie it securely on your head. Don’t ruin the wrap and do not cut of blood flow to your head by tying too tight! Finally you can slightly twist your satin cap in the direction of your wrap to stretch the hair a bit more if you feel your wrap is a bit loose.

Removing wrap:

• Remove head scarf and bobby pins if you had not slipped them out before sleeping
• GENTLY loosen the wrap from the end by pulling hair in the opposite direction to which it was wrapped. I usually shake my head a little to further loosen, finger comb slightly and then gently brush my hair into a desired style.
• Your hair should be straight and falling naturally into place
• Same removal method applies to the cross wrap.

 Cross wrap:
This wrap is a lot less involving than the doobie. I do it more especially when I have lots of new growth coming in which makes it hard to comb through my roots. I also just do it to minimalize manipulation of the hair, thus reducing breakage.

Personally I prefer the results of the doobie on my hair more than this type of wrap. However my scalp prefers cross wrapping as all the brushing for doobies tends to aggravate my scalp.

It’s also my go to wrap when feeling lazy 🙂

 How to cross wrap

1. Moisturize and seal hair as usual
2. Part hair down the middle using fingers
3. Securely grab hold of both sides of your as close to the root as possible- hold left side of the hair with your right hand and vice versa and cross the hair over each other
4. Pull hair across to opposite side and up around the side of your head and secure it down where the hair ends using a clip or bobby pin
   Do the same for the other side
5. When both sides are secured cover hair with satin/silk scarf for the night

**I don’t like the indent of bobby pins in my hair and so I slip them out while my scarf is on.
 

Things to note

Wrapping is not for everyone. Some people simply put their hair in a loose bun overnight and wear their satin scarf. The main thing is to have your hair secured and protected while you sleep.

Wrapping for me helps with straightness. I hate having bumps in my hair so I do the wraps

Cross wrapping require little or no brushing so it is better for hair, especially when it has growth. There is less manipulation of the hair involved which is great and put less strain on the hair.

The length of your hair will determine what wrap works best for you. Obviously a cross wrap will not work if you have NL hair and doobies are a bit impractical with MBL hair.

DO NOT pull too tight when wrapping. it must benefit not harm your hair

If you are doing the doobie, don’t always brush in the same direction, alternate

Doobie wraps tend to make MY scalp and edges rather sore if do them continuously so I will cross wrap more often. However everyone is different. I will post pics of how I wrap my hair next week when I have my wash day

Happy wrapping!!! And be sure to post comments and let us all know how your first wrapping experience goes! If your arent a first timer, what do you do to your hair at night and how is it going for you?

 ~XoXoXo~

K.