When you wear your hair out and it rubs against cotton clothing, wool hats and wool sweaters, your ends take a beating. Because dry ends often split and break, you’ll experience hair loss. Wear protective styles like braids, cornrows, two-strand twists, flat twists, topknots, buns, chignons and French rolls to keep your ends protected and less prone to dryness and breakage.

Protect Your Hair at Night
In addition to wearing protective styles during the day, it’s important to protect your hair at night while you sleep. Satin caps and silk or satin pillowcases are much gentler on your hair than cotton pillowcases or scarves. Your hair glides against silky fabrics, while clinging to cotton. Plus, cotton sucks moisture out of your hair, leading once again to, you guessed it, dryness.

Rinse and Conditioner Wash aka Co-Wash
Black hair does better if not shampooed daily. However, if you work out regularly or swim during the summer, you need to rinse perspiration, saltwater or chlorine out. After every dip in the pool or every strenuous workout, rinse your hair thoroughly and follow with a conditioner. Conditioner washes are good in between shampoos for keeping your scalp and hair clean without over-drying with too much sudsing.

Condition, Condition, Condition
It’s very hard to over-condition black hair, especially if you wear yours natural. Regular deep conditioning can restore the moisture levels you desperately need. For excessively dry hair, deep condition once or twice per week. You don’t need a hood dryer for this. You can slather on a good deep conditioner, cover it with a plastic cap and relax around the house for a couple of hours. Wrap it in a towel for additional heat to soften it.

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