Maintaining Your Edges: Top 12 Tips

Your hair’s edges frame your face and take a lead role in determining how your hair looks. The impressive swoops and curls you can form with your baby hairs is critical when it comes to charming hairstyles. It’s all amusing and enjoyable until you start noticing your hairline thinning. What do you do? You may be wondering how you can ensure hair growth. Well, here’s exactly how to get your edges back.

What Are the Causes of Thinning Edges?

Before embarking on a hair growth strategy, it's important to understand why your edges are diminishing in the first place. Fortunately, you can start healthy habits and strategic hair loss cures whether your edges are starting to thin, or already have significant damage. Different hair types require different styles and products to maintain. For example, managing type 3 and type 4 hair may be challenging if you don’t have the right tools or knowledge. The nature of these types causes them to loosen easily and break away if restrained by over-styling or over-handling. Other causes include:

• Tight hairstyles: The major perpetrator that harms your hairline is the tight styles that strongly tug baby hair strands. This constant pull not only breaks the hair but actually damages the hair follicles. Wigs and weaves that require gluing along the hairline or tight braids and high ponytails can cause excessive strain on the fragile edges.
• Products and hair tools: Using harsh or alcohol-based gels that leave your hair dry could contribute to hair loss. Some chemicals found in hair relaxers have also been linked to thinning edges. Besides, tools or brushes you use during application can also compromise the hair follicles, especially for the curly type 3 or type 4 hair. You may have to look at the different hair brushes to learn which best suits your hair type.
• Medical conditions/hormonal changes: Everything in the human body is stimulated by hormones, and changes, for example, during pregnancy, can cause the edges to diminish. In addition, certain health conditions or medications involved during such illnesses can alter natural hair growth patterns.
• Excess friction: Everything from using a rough drying towel to excessive heat styling can damage the edges.

So, How Can I Regrow my Edges?

1. Watch Your Styling

The hair around your edges is the most fragile, and you want to be gentle when handling. Besides, if your hair has curls and coils present in type 3 and type 4 hair, the more you need to be tender when styling to avoid breakage. While it's super-cute to always lay your edges nicely, the daily use of brushes and edge control can be more damaging than helping, especially if you have dry or fine hair. We recommend trying to step back a little and give your hairline time to recover. If it's a necessity, use a brush with soft bristles to gently pull your hair back into that gorgeous bun or ponytail.

 2. Check the Tight Styles

You may have your favorite styles you can't wait to put on. While you feel confident and beautiful dressed in them, if they're causing excessive and unnecessary stress on your edges, you may want to reconsider. In this case, it will pay to occasionally try other hairstyles that can facilitate hair growth on edges. Surprisingly, you can even discover beauty in more relaxed styles than you thought after changing from that tight braid or wig. Remember, the aim is to stop the cycle of tension that occurs when you interchangeably move from one tight hairstyle to another.

3. Break from Heat

Excessive heat styling damages your healthy edges. Restraining from heat tools like flat iron, hair straighteners, or blow dryers can prevent your hair from sizzling, which causes breakage. Nevertheless, heat styling can still be fun, but you want to use heat protectant at all times to avoid damaging the hairline. Heat protectant sprays create a protective layer that acts as a heat barrier, hence, masking your hair from heat damage.

4. You Got to Love and Care for Your Edges — Keep the hairline moisturized

It's pretty easy to forget your edges when moisturizing your hair. If the edges are left dry, they will be more fragile and vulnerable to breakage. Therefore, give the edges special attention and care by sealing in enough moisture. So next time you're doing your routine moisturizing, give your edges that extra love!

5. Wrapping Your Hair Before Bedtime

A silk scarf or bonnet might do more than you think when protecting the fragile edges. If you go to bed without wearing neither, the fabric (e.g., your cotton pillowcase) will absorb oils and moisture from your hair, leaving it dry and brittle. Additionally, the friction with the bed’s fabric causes snagging and eventual breaking. To reduce friction, the scarf should be tied on the forehead instead of along the edges.

6. Deep Conditioning Your Hair Frequently

While regular conditioning is necessary, it doesn't hurt to take it a step further for the sake of regrowing your edges. Combined with heat and steam, deep conditioning penetrates your hair, causing more thorough hydration. This will keep your hair soft, bendable, and less prone to breaking when styling. How many times you should deep condition will depend on the hair type and needs. Reduce the frequency if you experience limp or weak hair. On the other hand, you should increase the frequency appropriately if you notice dryness.

7. Vitamin and Nutrient Supplements

Every part of your body needs specific nutrients and vitamins to grow, and it's no different when it comes to hair growth on the hairline. While vitamin B7 is the known main building block for your hair, other supplements such as vitamins A, C, D, E, K, plus zinc, iron, and proteins can also accelerate the regrowing process.

8. Ensure that You're Not Dealing with A More Serious Condition Other Than Breakage

Despite it being normal, traction alopecia should not be taken as a mere joke. No matter the strides you take towards regrowing your edges, it might prove unfruitful if other conditions are involved. Take a close look at the edges and if you notice that the hair is shedding instead of breaking, make an appointment with a dermatologist or certified trichologist. Shedding is where the hair loosens from the bulb at the end of a hair strand. Although we noted breakage could be due to lack of vitamins or nutrients, excessive shedding may be a sign of other underlying health issues. You should consider treatment early.

9. Scalp Massage

Massaging around the scalp area will stimulate and increase blood circulation to the scalp and hair follicles. This ensures enough supply of oxygen and nutrients, encouraging rejuvenated hair growth.

10. Don't Skip Washing

As tempting it may be, you don't want yourself skipping your regular wash days. Hair growth thrives if the scalp and the area along the edges are healthy. Debris and buildup left to pile up the edges discourage hair from growing. For type 3 and type 4 curlies requiring edge control products frequently, it's vital to clean out the buildup before subsequent application.

11. Use Proper Headbands/Hats and Minimize Touches

If you love using headbands or hats, then be careful to choose those with silk lining. Alternatively, you can use a thin satin scarf between your hat and your hair—the silk or satin helps protect the fragile edges from catching or breaking on hats. Additionally, it would help if you minimized unwarranted touches on the edges, which can cause breakage.

12. Consistency and Patience

Regrowing back your edges is a process, and all processes have something similar — they take time. If there were a way to sleep and meet your edges all grown and long in the morning, we'd waste no time informing you. But that mysterious magical method unfortunately doesn’t exist. However, the key secret to regrowing your edges is patience while consistently practicing the tips discussed. The process is steady, and soon you'll notice your edges growing back.

Today's Final Word

All the same, no matter how promising you see a product advertising on capabilities to regrow your hairline, nothing beats maintaining and taking care of your edges and hair. However, if you believe you're doing everything at your disposal with no improvements, consult a doctor or trichologist for the solution that works for you.

RevAir would like to help regrow your edges. For more information or to get your hair-related questions answered by our team, contact us today.