During the transitioning process, different parts of your strands have different needs, making it increasingly difficult to find the right hair care products that will serve both sections. The parts close to your roots demand curly hair care products in contrast to your ends. This is one of the reasons why people prefer doing a big chop or a semi chop in order to facilitate the process of finding the right hair care product. If you have chosen to transition rather than to big chop, you will need products that can do the following 3 things for you.
1. An effective leave-in conditioner
A leave-in conditioner is key to maintaining moisturized locks during the transitioning process. How do you find one that works for you without wasting money on products that do not work out? The first step is to determine your hair’s porosity, which will have a major impact on what does and does not work for you. If you are unfamiliar with this term, we define porosity in our Glossary as “how easily your hair is able to absorb and hold moisture and chemicals. There are varying degrees of porosity that we commonly use: high porosity, medium porosity, and low porosity.” If you do not know your porosity, you can take our quiz here.
I personally have low porosity hair, so a few of my favorite leave-ins are the Eden BodyWorks Coconut & Shea Leave-in, SheaMoisture Jamaican Black Castor Oil Strengthen Grow & Restore Leave-in Conditioner and Moisturize Me Curl & Style Milk by Lotta Body.
Relaxed or chemically processed hair is high porosity, and NaturallyCurly contributor Sabrina Perkins recommends SheaMoisture Coconut & Hibiscus Curl Enhancing Smoothie, Kinky-Curly Knot Today, Oyin Handmade Hair Dew and Eden BodyWorks Jojoba All Natural Hair Milk for high porosity hair.
2. A Holy Grail protein treatment
Purchase products that strengthen your hair. Due to the high porosity of relaxed hair, your ends may appear dry and unhealthy. High porosity hair is unable to retain moisture, because the outer layers of the strands has gaps and holes. A hydrolyzed wheat protein treatment increases the ability of your hair to retain moisture and makes your hair more manageable. It can also reduce your hair porosity over time.
If a protein treatment is new to your regimen, check out ApHogee Intensive Two Minute Keratin Reconstructor, Aubrey Organics GPB Balancing Protein Conditioner and Briogeo Don’t Despair, Repair! Deep Conditioning Mask. Find a full list of our top protein treatments here.
3. A creative cocktail
You can create amazing products yourself, which is in the long run cheaper and more effective. During my transitioning process, I cocktailed deep conditioners, leave-in conditioners, and a jelly all together. My Dominican family gave me amazing homemade recipes for deep conditioners. The advantage of creating your own cocktails is that it will match the needs of the different sections of hair. Need more moisture? Just add some coconut oil! Moreover, if the cocktails do not work you can use the remaining ingredients for the creation of a new product altogether. Need a starting point? Here are 3 easy cocktails you can try today.
