Thought I'd add in some long hair care tips my friends found useful, one of whom is doing long hair for the first time and was having trouble with fluffy fly-aways in their face.
This obviously varies depending on your hair type. This should be helpful for most people, but especially people with 2A (mildly wavy) to maybe 3B (high end of white-person-curly). If those numbers are a mystery to you, they're a shorthand for describing curl pattern, which makes it easier to find the right kind of care for your specific situation. Type 1s are straight, Type 2s are wavy, Type 3s are curly, and Type 4s are coily.
First and fastest thing to do (to fix frizzy flyaway prone hair) before majorly switching up hair care routines is just get some leave in conditioner and slap some on whenever your hair is too frizzy. It’s also great for detangling between showers. Mix it with water in a spray bottle, as applying directly in my experience is way too heavy, but test what works for you. If you don't have leave in conditioner, you can use regular conditioner in a pinch, just use a very small amount diluted with enough water to make it work in the spray bottle.
You only need to shampoo once or twice a week. You can still shower daily, just rinse it and lightly condition the ends rather than shampooing. The dryer and tighter your curls, the less often you want to shampoo, because it strips your hair of the protective oils that hold moisture in. Generally, you should only ever condition the length of your hair, never the roots.
Every one says right after you stop daily shampooing your scalp will go nuts and overproduce oil for a bit because it’s used to being dried out, but I’m betting you could cut down on that by accompanying your wash with a dry scalp treatment. Maybe switch to an anti dandruff shampoo, something with zinc in it. Head and shoulders dandruff defense dry scalp rescue was a life saver after I fucked up with the hair bleach and burned myself. You use it after shampooing, before conditioning.
Look for a sulfate free shampoo (sulfates are extra prone to drying your hair out) and one that’s intended for dry or curly hair, same with conditioner. I’d start with the strongest you can find while your hair is recovering from being dried out and damaged, and if your hair gets too heavy/greasy, step down till you find the right balance.
Deep conditioning treatment once a month. The little packets are like a dollar and even with as much hair as I’ve got, I can stretch them for like four treatments. Thoroughly saturate your whole head, scalp and all, and cover it with a shower cap or a towel or what have you (I use a walmart bag because I'm trailer trash and I don't care) and let it sit for at least 10 to 15 minutes, I usually do 20 minimum, but I don't think there's any harm in leaving it in as long as you like. I left a deep conditioning treatment in overnight once, and I wouldn't say the results were significantly better than just doing it for a half hour, but it didn't hurt anything either.
Also, check how you’re brushing it! Turns out brushing is basically just for either styling, or after detangling, using a bristle brush to distribute scalp oils. You don't need to be dragging a brush through it every day, yanking on tangles and causing breakage.
Your friend bristle brush..............................the enemy evil styling brush.
If you detangle in the shower while you have conditioner in it (I just use my fingers, but a nice wide toothed comb is also helpful, and like op said start from the bottom and work your way up) then you don’t really need to brush it except to smooth out the surface and get it all going the same direction.
Trying to detangle your hair dry with a styling brush is a recipe for a TON of breakage, which in turn makes your shit tangle more! Vicious cycle. So when you first stop brushing so much it’s probably going to punish you with a ton of tangles, until the damage grows out. Trimming the broken ends to begin with helps a lot.
Bristle brush is very optional, but if you've ever heard the vintage hair advice about "a hundred strokes" that's using a bristle brush NOT a styling brush. A bristle brush is not for detangling or styling. The point of it is to spread the protective oils from your scalp down the length of your hair, which was a lot more important back when they didn't have good conditioner, but can still make your hair shinier and healthier, and is also just kind of a pleasant meditative activity in the evenings. I can't do it without being transported back to watching "A Kid in King Arthur's Court" as a child and being inexplicably fixated on the scene where the princess who's been dressing as a male knight to kick ass at the joust brushes the other princess's hair in a moment that was, to my memory, weirdly romantically charged.... Anyway.
Also get a satin or silk pillowcase, or a silk nightcap. You’d be surprised how much it helps. Also, braiding your hair before you sleep can help prevent it from tangling overnight. Don't aggressively rub your hair with your towel while drying it. Just ring it out and let it air dry. Blow drying should only be for specific styling or because you fucked up and don't have time to wait for it to dry.
Heat is Bad for your hair, especially if your hair is curly and dry. Rather than hot rollers or curling irons, the best results I've ever got were using no heat over-night rollers. You can buy a bag of them at the dollar store, these long foam sticks with a wire so they can be bent into shape.
With your hair detangled and just slightly damp, section it as many times as you have rollers or patience for, spritz a section with diluted leave in conditioner, then wrap the bottom of the section around the roller and turn the roller to coil it up to your scalp, then bend the ends over it to hold it in place. It should sit relatively firmly against the scalp, if it's loose and dangling try bending the ends in the other direction. It takes some practice to get it right. Cover the whole mess with a scarf or a nightcap and go to bed, and wake up in the morning with insane curls, no heat necessary.
