Your Hair Type & Routines?

Naturally slightly wavy although it can air-dry anywhere between straight and medium wavy. Naturall it is a blend of 50% brown, 30% red and 15% black and 5% dark blonde.

Strands are mainly coarse but smooth.

7 inches around and over 25 inches long. It has cosistent thickness all the way down.

Permenant dye two years ago (about an inch left) and a few natural semi-permenants. Hair is currently all natural apart from the inch at the ends.

I wash once a day with Pasionately Red shampoo and conditioner(because I had a red semi in and I liked the boost the shampoo gave). I clarify with Vosene Original once a month. I don't brush my hair when it's wet and only comb it if I need to. I trim the ends myself and only use straighteners once every one to two months. I wear it in braids when I go to sleep.

Tell us if your hair is naturally straight, wavy, curly
or chemically straight, wavy, curly.

My hair is naturally wavy - it would be curly if it were short, but not terribly so.  It seems to be a short wave.

When you hold an individual hair strand would you consider it to be fine, medium, or coarse?

My hair is finely textured.

If your hair is long & able to make a ponytail and then use your fingers or a tape measure to measure the circumference / thickness. Is it a thin tail, thick tail, or really thick. The more hairs you have the thicker it is. 2-4 Inches is considered Medium. If you don't have long hair but used to you can guess.

Apparently it is between 4 to 5 inches.  My hair is thick but not bushy thick.  Did not realize that it would be that thick.  The pony tail itself is fairly thick and does slim out alittle towards the end.  I can get  a fairly braid too, but it does not rival someone like Anna Kournakova's wrist-thick braid.

My hair is about waist-length in the back (was a little longer, I recently trimmed it).  It is in that U/V shape trim, not layered.  I have shorter bangs up front, I cut myself in that wedge-cut.  Not sure of the over-all length - how does one measure this?  Do I simply pluck a long hair and measure it to determine overall length?

Also let us know if you have used any chemicals or colors on your hair within the past few years.

I use L'Oreal hair color - Excellence - a store bought brand, nothing special - to touch my roots up.  It is dark golden blond in color with it getting lighter on the surface ends.  I realize that with longer hair, maybe I should not color, but after coloring down close to my natural color (I used to routinely highlight my hair and it got real bright)  I detected a hint of gray recently and simply refuse to put up with it.

While I toned my hair down (this was over a period of a few years), I experiemented with related colors in my range - mainly red golds although I tried brunette once.  I stuck with L'Oreal, and I have used Feria once or twice.   Once in a while I get the high-lighting bug, but will use a slightly lighter Excellence hair color rather than a harsher standard highlighter. 

(Note - it has taken me a number of years to get to this length and when I got bored, rather than cut, I would frequently play with color.  And it has taken a long while to get it to this length.  Have been considering gorwing the bangs out - but am not sure.)

After you tell us your hair type please tell us your current routine and the products you use. Also if you've tried routines or products before that let us know about those too and if they worked and also tell us if you liked them or not?

I shampoo/condition every other day (used to be every day).  I prefer Biolage's shampoo/contitioners - the hydrating kind for color treated hair if possible.  The conditioner that comes in the L'Oreal boxes is also excellent and the tubes provide several treatments worth.

I recently began not combing my hair out when wet and it dries with a lot more wave to it.  Plus I am trying to pick it out versus straight brushing.  My hair can knot-up, so I have to be careful.

Styling products - mainly mousse and hair spray.  And whily I let the hair dry naturally, I will use a hair dryer on medium to style the bangs or it will look goofy.

I can get split ends and sometimes breakage, but in the past two years, this seem to be lessening as a problem.  One possibly cure to it was that I had been using a very stiff plastic brush and happened to find a more gently one (at Target).  Also, spot trimming helps eliminate problems.  The breakage occurs not in the longer, older portions in the back, but the somewhat shorter sides that are a lot closer to the 'styling' activity.

• I have straight hair which sometimes goes a bit wavy, depending on what it's feeling like
• I think my strands are medium
• Medium thickness (4 inches)
• My hair is about 30 something inches long, I'm about 5 8
• never coloured my hair. unless you count those wash in wash out temporary colours....
• routine. ummmm wash once or twice a week with baby shampoo and condition. Air dry. Comb with a 'detangling comb for long hair' Do search and destroy when I can be bothered. ditto with hot oil treatments. Only just started doing them.
  

Oh, hair surveys, I love these!

~My hair is naturally very straight. I've never had a problem with wavy hair before, but right after it dries, it likes to rub against eachother to cause "poofy" hair. And thus, I will put my blow dryer on ONLY cold shot to smooth down my hair (especially the top layer). It also waves/curls very easily when I request for it to. Yay!

~According to the average Asian, my hair is medium. However, when taking into account of the people out there with baby fine hair, I know that my hair is definately what you call coarse.

~Although the hair itself is quite thick and I also have a LOT of hair, my hair is staright enough so that when I lightly measure the circumference, it will seem small, but when I apply pressure to my hair strands, it will still be relatively thick even when compared to curly heads out there.

~The chemicals I've used in my hair? Well, last year, regrettably, I colored my hair A LOT. It was around once every 3 months. I dyed my hair red in August, touch-up (all over) in November, Another touch up (all over) in Febuary, brown with highlights in late March, I colored it all over with blue-black (my natural color) in late April (sadly, it ended up a different shade of black than my own, and looked dreadfully horrid), applied red highlights in May, and then attempted for red hair again in early June, but when that failed, I gave up on my hair's natural color. I don't think I'll bother trying the color bottles for a long time because of all the damage I caused.

My routine!

So far, the best luck I've ever had with a conditioner would have to be, hands down, Garnier Frutis. However, for the last 8 months, I have stayed away from Garnier, in hopes of finding a different conditioner that will be just as good, if not better than that green bottle of miracle.

I wash my hair, on average, every 3-4 days. I work on Sunday at a restaurant, so I have no choice but to wash it on Sunday night, and then I will usually wash it on Wednesday or Thursday too. The day before I wash it, I may rag curl it with a mixture of jojoba and coconut oil (which works splendidly for shiney curls, but I recommend that you don't let anyone touch your hair, because it will feel so greasy; at least it does with the amount I put on).

With the way my hair is, I have no choice but to apply conditioner to my entire head of hair. And thus, my wash and groom routine goes in 2 different variations. On Sunday's washing, I will wet down my hair first. Then, I will put VO5 Kiwi Lime on the lower half of my hair. After that, I will either use a diluted mixture of 50/50 shampoo and water, or I will use my Suave Kid's shampoo (Mmm.. the watermelon smells like Jelly Ranchers), or I will use some undiluted Aussie Moisture Shampoo (but I only use this once a month or so, depending on how long it's been since I've gone without the full strength of shampoo). Anyways, I will put the shampoo on the upper half on my hair, starting at my crown and the front of my scalp. After my scalp is thoroughly clean (in my opinion at least), I will rinse out everything in my hair. On the Wednesday/Thursday wash, I will do everything the same, except I leave out the shampoo, and I just CO with VO5.

After the rinsing, I will thoroughly apply my "heavy" conditioner on the lower half of my hair. This tends to be the Aussie 3 Minute Miracle or Garnier Frutis (before I went in search of something else). Since my hair sucks up conditioner, I like to apply some more VO5 to the top half of my hair to keep it nice and shiny too. I usually like to give 10 minutes for all of that conditioner to sink in. The last thing I will do before I hop out of the shower is to rinse out all of the conditioner from my hair, and then I will turn on the cold water, and apply a cold water rinse.

After blotting my hair with a towel, I like to apply this Aqualust Lusterizer cream to my hair. It really helps to detangle my hair, and make it feel beyond soft--truly a great find. I recommend this to any one with coarse hair; you can buy it at Sallys. Anyways, then I will detangle with a wide-tooth comb, create my part, and wait for my hair to dry. Once it hits the "not wet, just a little bit damp still" mark, I will either apply some jojoba oil, or coconut oil, or Redken Anti-Snap. Just a smidge of whatever product I feel like using at the time. Then I will detangle once more with my wide-tooth comb, and let it finish drying. After it finished drying, I like to check to see if my hair looks good or bad. If it does look bad, I apply a tad more of the Aqualust cream, and it's an instant fix!

The only huge problem I face is the split ends on the long long hairs that stem from the nape of my neck. The ends are almost always split (and not the normal splits either. It's the 3 or 4 splits in strand kind). I also face this problem with the front of my top lays, but it's not nearly as bad as the splits I find around my nape.

Oh goodness, this was a long post. Well, it just shows what happens when you have extra time on your hands.