One of the most debated topics online is which are the best haircuts for curly hair.

  1. YOU DON’T ALWAYS NEED TO SEE A CURLY SPECIALIST

Yes, there are different standards that hairdressers are trained to, and while seeing a curly hair specialist can help, it doesn’t always necessarily guarantee that you’re going to get a great haircut.

Many curly training skills seem to be a little outdated. So, going to see a hairdresser who takes the time to listen to you and understand your hair is far more valuable than a particular specialist.

  1. WET CUTS VERSUS DRY CUTS

In the hairdressing industry, it’s pretty standard to do cut hair when it’s wet. There is a movement amongst curly girls to prefer a dry haircut. This is where they cut your hair curl by curl. It does have some advantages, but it also has some disadvantages.

  1. DEVACUT

DevaCut was started from the Deva chain of salons in New York. This was also formalized by Lorraine Massey in her book Curly Girl. This technique is a dry cut, where they cut curl by curl, examining your hair as they go.

The benefit of this cut is it’s less likely that you’ll end up with a haircut that’s too short because it takes into consideration the way that curls ‘shrink’ once they dry.

However, if you have way more heavy hair and your curls can change from day to day, this type of cut produces a very uneven result. It can be quite a time-consuming process and the stylist will charge more for this type of appointment.

  1. OUIDAD STYLE

The Ouidad school of hairstyling (pronounced ‘wee-dad’) has a kind of hybrid haircut theory. They start with a wet cut, slicing into the curls to shape your hair. Then they dry cut and do a recheck and cut again when it’s finally dry.

Cutting it wet and then, once its dry, rechecking to make sure that its even seems to make the most sense.

  1. ONE THING TO AVOID: THINNING SCISSORS

If you’ve ever seen these scissors at salon or had them near your hair, you know immediately why we are saying no to thinning scissors.

Very popular in the ‘80s for that Farrah Fawcett flick, these are not the kind of scissors that you want to thin out curly hair. These scissors have one blade that’s a regular scissor blade and a comb-like blade on the other side. They cut out half the hair as they go through.

While they will thin out your hair, they will also leave it looking very fine on the ends, which can make your hair look thin and stringy.

  1. THE ‘UNICORN CUT’

We’ve seen this mentioned a lot on YouTube and a lot of curly girls in the forum talk about giving themselves a home haircut by doing a ‘unicorn cut’.

We don’t want to encourage you to do it, but briefly this is what you do: roughly put all your hair up into a ponytail on top of your head and then cut straight across.

The idea of this technique is to create a shag haircut where all of the layers are the same length. Most of the time though, it’s very difficult to cut your own hair evenly – or even someone else’s if you’re not a trained hairdresser.

What you’ll end up with will be something that looks more like a mullet. Try this one at your own risk.

AND AN EXTRA FINAL NOTE ON HOME HAIRCUTS:

There’s a reason why hairdressing scissors cost hundreds of dollars. They’re incredibly sharp and they’re a precision instrument.

Don’t think you can do a home haircut or trim your own split ends at home with a regular pair of scissors. You’ll more likely create more split ends using scissors that aren’t incredibly sharp.

Blunt scissors cause a blunt edge on your hair strands, which will in turn lead to more split ends.

We hope this helps you understand what the best haircuts for curly hair are and, as always, we recommend taking photos to your hairdresser for reference.