My hair has never really grown past my bra line, and since I decided to bleach it in October 2014, hair my growth was pretty much stunted. After nearly two years of frustration and a life time of shoulder length hair I decided to book myself in for hair extensions. I’d watched lots of videos online about managing them and felt I was ready to take the plunge and felt I had learnt enough information to care for them. I hadn’t.
I got hair extensions that were attached by a light weight glue (see photo above) so this analysis is on these particular types of hair extensions. I have never tried metal bonded extensions like easi-locks.
I was very excited the day I first got my extensions, and loved the look of having long hair. But the feeling on them felt very strange. They were not the same texture as my natural hair which is relatively thin and silky. And the first few nights of sleeping were very difficult. They also hurt my scalp a lot and up until about a month after they slowly grew away from my scalp, they itched like mad. My scalp was red from how much I was scratching it I thought I was allergic and needed them removed, but it slowly eased as time went on.
When I would put my hair up and then take it down, it felt like someone was pulling on my hair. I went for quite a long length, the longer they are the heavier they are, and the more delicate your natural hair is, the more it pulls due to the weight on such a small piece of hair which causes pain. I had 3 bonds that I had to remove myself after a week because they were put on hair that was too close to my hair line and was giving me a delicious red itchy bump on my scalp on where it was pulling.
The one issue that made me hate my extensions was the shedding. They shed like a Shetland pony in the summer, all day, I dread brushing my hair because I know I’m going to be covered in it afterwards. I’ve lost over half the hair extensions I had within a month. Every time I run my hand through my hair out comes at least 3 hairs and unless you want a really blocked shower drain, you have to pull out the hair that’s shedding when you wash it and put it on the shower wall to then bin it later.
^how much hair i’d lose after washing it ^
They also don’t sit evenly If you don’t blow dry them with a brush. Because they are bonded in little sections, they will sit in those sections and look really piecy and straggly which means you have to put the effort in when you dry them.
You cannot wash your hair in the bath. I made this mistake once after a really long day at work and ended cutting mattes out of my extensions. Not pretty. You also cannot leave them wet. One they will sit really strangely as I described above, but they also get weaker at the bonds.
If you get conditioner on the bonds, after a while the bonds can start to feel like chewing gum and therefore they can stick together and cause matting at the root. I had to remove many myself after this little fiasco.
You have to invest some serious time, effort and money to maintain them, I had to go out and buy new conditioners, new serums and new creams for my hair, and the ends of them still felt really dry no matter how much conditioner I put on them.
If you wear your hair in a half up half down or like to change your parting over, be aware that people will see the bonds.
You also have to braid your hair before you go to sleep, which means if you like having straight hair extensions, you will have to straighten them every day and wash them more often
Now I am at a stage where I just want them out. But I don’t want to have to spent £70 to remove them which is again another problem. So I’m slowly removing them all myself.
All in all, I loved the look of having longer thick hair, but hated the feeling of them. I most probably would not get them again in the near future and just focus on growing my natural hair and use clip ins where I need them.
Now I’m focusing on getting blonde hair out of the carpet, out of my clothes, out of my underwear draw, out of the filter in the dryer, I even found my own hair on the cat. It’s tangled up into towels and in my duvet, and my sister finds herself covered in my hair too. If it wasn’t for this, I would probably love them but due to the fact I am molting like an animal shedding their winter coat, I probably won’t.
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