The key to natural hair care, especially for those who have black hair (and are looking to grow their hair longer), that have decided to give going natural a try, is to increase the number of things that you do right for your hair. It sounds simple, but really is the key to success.

You must eliminate or mitigate techniques and methods that are harmful to your hair goals. Forget about all the tips that you hear from the natural hair gurus, because honestly natural hair gurus don’t exist. No one can tell you what you should do for your hair, unless they understand your current hair regimen.

However, you should keep the following points in mind, there are many quality natural hair tips that can greatly improve your natural hair journey starting today. Nappy Star is sort of like a going natural magazine that provides you with the basic information that you need to really have a successful natural hair journey.

Look at it this way, this website was created to serve as an online hair therapy session for those struggling to embrace their naturally curly hair. Ah and yes, beauty. There are also so many ways that someone can beautify themselves or even other people. With so many options, you might be confused as to where to start. You could get off to an excellent start by trying out some of the tips that I provide on this website.

Don’t Want to Big Chop – No Worries.

Many naturals are concerned about going natural, because they don’t want to big chop. Don’t allow this to be a concern, especially if that prevents you from going natural. It’s okay – don’t big chop. Going natural without the big chop simply means that you will have to transition to natural hair. The process of transitioning really involves several different things, but the two seemingly most important things to understand right now are the physical transition and the mental transition.

Physical transition: The physical transition is a process of growing out your relaxer. This means, instead of big chopping immediately, you will grow out your hair and the relaxer over a period of time to be defined by you. There really is not a limit on how long you can transition.

Mental transition: The mental transition is a process of changing your mind. For many women going natural can be very taxing mentally. So, transitioning mentally is the process of preparing your mind for your natural hair journey.

So, again, it’s really about increasing the number of good things that you do for your hair and the reducing the number of bad things that you do for (or to) your hair.

Let’s Talk Hair Growth

On average, hair grows approximately 1/2 inch per month. If you have average hair growth, then you should expect your hair to grow about 6 inches per year. So, it’s important to understand what to expect from your hair overtime. There are ways to calculate your actual hair growth rate, but for the purposes of this article, let’s assume that your hair grows close to the average.

This means that even with perfect length retention, which isn’t possible, your hair would increase in length about 6 inches per year. Once you consider that many women don’t take proper care of their hair and some trim more often than really necessary, growing long hair becomes quite a challenge.

If you have a Amazon Kindle, then their is a book called If You Love It, It Will Grow: A Guide To Growing Long Afro-Textured Hair that provides quite a bit of good information about growing long hair. It’s a good read, especially for natural newbies, who are just starting their natural hair journey.

What’s Does the Term Natural Hair Care Actually Mean?

What does natural hair care mean? Wait, what does the term natural hair really mean? Does it imply no relaxers (many people use the “no perm” terminology, which is technically inaccurate)? For the purposes of this website, the term natural hair means relaxer free hair. So, that hopefully ends the confusion. As long as you don’t have a chemical relaxer in your hair, we would consider you to be a natural.

Natural Hair Subscription Services

There are several hair boxes or subscription services available nowadays. And, frankly, it appears that a new service is created almost every day. The truth is most of the services are awful. The product quality is inconsistent, customer service is lacking and there are numerous shipping delays and complaints actual customers. 

The only subscription services that I currently recommend is Natural Hair Box (NHB). NHB is a subscription service for women with natural hair. Each month they ship subscribers a box with natural hair products and sometime other beauty products that containing gentle, natural ingredients.

What About Natural Hairstyles?

I’m not really a great stylist. You shouldn’t expect to see me on YouTube creating styles and showing off my hair. I will happily remain right here behind my keyboard. At any rate, for those who have black natural hair and you want to look their very best, without putting a lot of extra time into their hair (like me), you might decide to give consideration to braids. There are lots of hair braiding styles which are fantastic, with ladies and also in men and kids.

Also, the best thing about braids is that, even though you’ll need some time to have them done, they will really make hair care a great deal easier! Once you have them done, you definitely will forget about all those long hours that where required to get them.

Braiding your hair can be a good way to manage your hair (some braiding styles are “protective styles”), look attractive, and are flexible enough that they can be easily modified for all occasions. It doesn’t really matter whether you have short or long hair. You need to be sure that the style you choose works for the shape of your face. Plus, if you want to wear your hair in different ways, or add weave, extensions (or other types of artificial hair) with your own hair, you can easily accomplish this with braids. You can even change the style of your hair without having to update the braids every single time. Also, there are a variety of braiding styles are out there.

Here are the most popular ones:

• Micro braids: Could be the more adaptive style, since it allows your hair to hang down as it would naturally. Also, you can arrange your braids into different looks. For people with long natural hair, be sure you don’t add excessive weight to the micro braids, as this could result in damaged hair.
• Cornrows: A real ageless, popular hair style that can offer an ageless look that is certainly never out of style. This one is quite popular among black males.
• Individual twists: This look is especially suitable for people with short black hair. It’s certainly a lot easier to do and it suits both males and females.

One of the greatest things about braiding hairstyles is that they are typically low maintenance styles over a period of time. However, it’s really important that you care for your hair appropriately after having the braids done.

Finally, What Are the Top Natural Hair Blogs Online?

There are several great natural hair blogs online that provide outstanding content. Some of the best one include:

1. Natural Hair Community: If you’re looking for a great blog and the best collection of articles about natural hair, then this maybe the best natural hair blog online. Kenneth and Jael also respond to nearly every comment that they receive, which pushes this blog to #1 in my opinion.

2. Curly Nikki: This blog focuses on natural hair styles and curly hair care. Nikki also has a really good natural hair forum that you might be interested in checking out, at some point during your natural hair journey. It would be nice if Nikki would respond to more comments on her blog. She sometimes appears to be inactive, although the information is plentiful.

3. Black Girl Long Hair: This blog one of the better natural hair blogs within the natural hair community. There appears to be a group of writers and they also publish quite a bit of content that isn’t unique or original, but the quality is always pretty good.

So, that was quite a bit to take in all at once. The bottom-line is there are mainly two ways that you can go natural. You can either transition to natural hair from relaxed hair or you can big chop. Obviously, if you have always been natural, then neither of these circumstances apply.