How to Style Low-Density/Thin Curls, Dos & Don'ts, Scalp Covering

you have low density or thin curly hair and want to get more fullness and volume well i'm going to walk you through a full step-by-step styling routine and share with you some do's and don'ts for thin curly hair in order to get more volume and fullness if you are new to my channel welcome my name is gina and i make videos all about naturally curly hair i love simplifying things for beginners talking about the science of hair product ingredients and much more so my hair type is actually medium to coarse so that is my texture that is the width of the individual strands of my hair but my hair is low density so that means my hair is thin i don't have a lot of hair if your hair is less than two inches around in circumference if you measure your ponytail then you have low density hair anywhere from two to three inches is medium density and then anything over three inches is high density hair so that's very thick curly hair so it's important to understand that the difference between low density hair and fine curly hair i often get mistaken with fine curly hair because my hair is pretty thin it's not very thick it doesn't have a lot of volume however density refers to how much hair is on your head so it just means i don't have a lot of hair on my head and i might see my scalp a lot more compared to someone with very thick hair but when we talk about texture that actually refers to the width of the individual strands of your hair this is hard to tell sometimes i actually got a analysis done by my main bio which is where you send off some of your hair they do an analysis and tell you about your hair's characteristics well there is where i learned that i had a half medium and half coarse hair and then i realized that's why some sections of my hair feel very rough and bumpy i can definitely feel the strands between my fingers they feel kind of kinky like they take some different turns if you look at them very closely and they're very dark and thick and you can definitely see them on surfaces on the other hand if you had fine curly hair it's hard to feel the strand between your fingers they're very fine and wispy you might be more prone to breakage your hair might love protein and it might be hard to kind of see your stray hairs or you might not really be able to feel them between your fingers well even though my hair is not fine i still incorporate a lot of tips and tricks for fine curly hair because i know a lot of you do have fine hair and i also have to keep in mind that i can't use things that are too heavy and i do still incorporate a lot of techniques for getting more volume because my hair is low density so even though if you have fine hair you can definitely still follow these techniques and i hope you still enjoy my videos because i'm always sharing tips for fine curly hair so there is one thing i wanted to add that is very important to understand and that is that thin and low density hair is still beautiful don't stress about having thinner hair it's unrealistic for us to expect our hair to be very full and voluminous so we cannot compare our hair to people who have very thick hair sometimes it's just not possible genetically there's so many factors that go into hair thinning keep in mind that i'm just sharing tips to help you get a fuller look or more volume if that's the look you're going for having thicker hair a lot of times is just an illusion i mean all my hair is pulled around to the front right now and i do a lot of techniques to get more volume but look at the back there's like no hair in the back because it's all pulled forward so it's just sometimes you just can't compare your hair to anyone so let's go ahead and get started with the routine so the first step is to dry detangle so dry detangling helps prevent your hair from breaking and it also helps prevent major matting and tangles when you are shampooing i'm going to apply a little bit of an oil first this is from flora and curl it's the soothe me scalp refresh pre shampoo oil i've really been enjoying this one because it really softens up the hair and the reason my hair is so stretched out and not even looking curly is because the last time i washed my hair just two days ago actually i did not put any styling products in i just wanted to get my hair clean but i wanted to film this video so i didn't end up styling it so what you don't want to do is go right in with shampoo on matted hair if you have low density hair it probably gets matted up very easily you probably get tangles very easily and if you went several days without washing your hair then it probably is really tingly so the last thing you want to do is go straight in with a shampoo that's just going to raise the cuticle of your hair and make even more tangles so that gets rid of all the loose hairs too so when i go and shampoo they don't just get all matted up even more so now i'm going to let this sit for about five minutes you do want to let it soak in it can be really hard to shampoo your hair if you have a ton of oil you also don't want to use too much so the next step is to shampoo your hair in the shower i really recommend shampooing in the upright position if possible now i definitely do shampoo over my tub a lot of times but i do find that that leads to more tangles and more shedding and it's just harder to get in there so i do like really shampooing in the shower if possible i would recommend using a lathering shampoo if you want to get more volume and they just help to cleanse better in general you can still use a sulfate free shampoo but i would avoid using a co-wash all the time if you do have very thin hair or low density hair because it can really weigh it down it doesn't really get it very clean but honestly today i might use a very mild shampoo because my hair is not very dirty i just washed it two days ago so this one is one of my go-to's that i usually use when i just need a very mild shampoo it's from curlsmith it's the vivid tones of vibrancy shampoo so i'm going to use this one today this one's more of like a daily everyday shampoo that's not going to dry out your hair great if you have color treated hair too or damaged hair so i'm going to go ahead and hop in the shower and shampoo and then i will be back out to show you the deep conditioner that i'm going to use today so i just got the shower loved that i used that curlsmith vibrancy shampoo it actually does lather up pretty good so that was awesome so i think that's a good mild alternative to using a co-wash when you still don't want to strip your hair in the middle of the week or something i am going to deep condition so today i decided to use this one from briochio this is the don't despair repair deep conditioning mask so my due for low density hair is definitely still deep condition everybody needs moisture sometimes using protein like this can really improve your curl definition but my don't would be to not apply it too close to your roots if you're worried about it weighing down your hair so you can just apply it from like your ears down i like to go all the way up to my root because my hair is pretty dry all over but if your hair's not very dry and you're just doing a regular deep conditioning treatment you can avoid your roots if you want to this mask i don't find to be super heavy you can avoid masks that have super heavy butters and oils if you're worried about your hair getting weighed down i don't find this one to be heavy though at all i find it to be pretty lightweight it has a little bit of protein in it so i'm going to put on the shower cap just to hold the heat of my head in and i'm gonna go do my makeup and i will be back after about 10 to 15 minutes actually what does this say always good to read your label to see how long it says leave on for 10 minutes so i think because it's a protein mask you don't want to leave it on for too long so it's now been about 10-15 minutes i need to go ahead and rinse this out but my next tip is to rinse your hair in the upright position if possible i'm obviously not going to get back in the shower i already have some makeup on so what i'm going to do is rinse over my tub but i would highly recommend trying to kind of lean your head back and pull the hair away from your scalp what we want to avoid and i'll show you what it looks like is when you rinse your hair upside down it gets stuck to your head and it kind of gets separated where you can really see your scalp so then when you come back up to style you want to make sure that you are brushing that out and detangling again and separating the hair off the scalp and not leaving it like that and just styling upside down so i highly recommend upright styling if you have low density hair and you struggle with your scalp showing it's definitely very beneficial so my next do's and don'ts is do use a towel to towel dry your hair at least your roots this is a hair repair towel it's a completely flat cotton weave towel so it doesn't cause any frizz and i also use it to absorb some water at my roots you don't want to style your hair soaking wet if you have low density hair because then the hair is really just going to stick to the scalp it's going to create too many curl clumps we want that fuller more voluminous look so i highly recommend damp styling and i still don't style my hair like super dry i do add water with a spray bottle which i will show you so here's another example of why i don't style my hair upside down and why i always brush it upright is because look how the hair is pulled down against the scalp and you can really see the scalp right here it's completely flattened forward plus if i style like this my hair would be in my face all the time and it would be really hard to cover the scalp in the back but if i were to just apply my stylers when i was over the tub look at how the roots would look so i definitely need to use a brush to help style my hair upright you might get more volume washing and styling upside down but the roots just always are like plastered against the scalp even if you lift them off of the scalp when you're upside down still they're pulled forward in that direction the hair in general is going in different directions like it's going this way and then this way so that's why we are going to use a brush to style also my hair is high porosity so you see how fast it's drying it's already getting dry and it's only been like two minutes since i rinsed high porosity hair also really wants to stick to the scalp because it has that raised cuticle layer so it really wants to cling to everything that's why you get a lot of tangles so i'm obviously not going to style my hair dry i am going to dampen it with some water you want to make sure your hair is evenly wet when you are damp styling so the premises of dab styling is basically your roots are towel dried your roots are not soaking wet i don't feel water running down on my scalp it's mainly just the lengths of my hair that i'm adding water to that way the scalp still stays fairly dry and that really helps with that fullness at the scalp instead of being soaking wet and plastered down to the scalp okay now my hair is more evenly wet so i'm going to go ahead and go in with curl cream my next do's and don'ts is to use a curl cream that's not too heavy and full of a lot of oils and butters i've been testing out the blue clam lime so i'm going to use their curl cream here this curl cream does have a virgin coconut oil which is known to be a little bit heavier but sometimes it's formulated to be lighter weight i would say this curl cream is like a medium moisture level which is actually good because i have that coarse to medium hair i do need quite a bit of moisture but i still don't want anything too heavy that's really going to weigh down my hair not like a super thick butter or anything like that i am going to add some water to my hands you can also dilute your product you know if you do want to use a cream that's heavier just use less and then obviously dilute them with some water so i like to go ahead and go in with my curl cream or leave-in and then detangle because it's going to give me some slip if you do have fine hair i would recommend just going with a very moisturizing leave-in like this curlsmith weightless air dry cream this is another one of my favorites that is a highly moisturizing leave-in conditioner it's a lot lighter weight so it's not going to weigh down your hair i also did get a discount code from buckland to share with you all so i will have that down below my next do's and don'ts for low density hair is just like the deep conditioner you might want to avoid your roots if it does get very weighed down i don't like a ton of product at my root and i definitely don't apply a product to my scalp i do like to get all the way up to the root just to make sure that gets nice and moisturized but i never apply product to my scalp okay so going back to the do's and don'ts about upright styling that's where the brush comes in so i recommend brushing your hair in the upright position instead of combing it all forward that's just going to pull all that hair back against our scalp and make the scalp more exposed in the back also when i get to this area i always go like that to make sure i'm covering the cowlic area and i usually go from underneath like this and brush upwards and i am going to work on styling my hair once my gel is in so we'll work on some root volume in a minute but right now i'm just distributing that curl cream so now the hair is nice and detangled look how much better the roots look completely covered scalp is not showing and at this point i like to take my hands and break it up so i do this just so it's not like stuck down to my head and just to break up those curl clumps that might have formed from the brush so now that my hair is nice and detangled and separated i'm ready to go in with my gel this is the boo clem super hold styler highly recommend using a gel or a mousse a mousse is actually going to probably give you a little bit more fullness i'm just testing this one out at the moment but it is very lightweight i don't find this to be heavy at all it has a really nice like jelly consistency i don't know if you can see it there but it's kind of falling down on my hand i love gels that have a lot of slip i don't like gels that are super heavy so that's my next do's and don'ts for low density hair is do not use a gel that is super thick like a very thick cream gel or a very thick gel that has a lot of oils if you saw my last video i did with the new not your mother's curl talk gel that gel was super thick way too thick for my hair type and i had to dilute it with water so if you are using a gel that's very thick just make sure you add some water to your palms to emulsify it and to mix it in with that water so it thins it out because that's just really going to weigh down your hair so you'll notice i am kind of just raking it through and pulling it down but i'm going to use my brush to actually style and get some more volume i'm just kind of getting the product in there at the moment you'll see that i also like to section my hair a lot of times which is great for getting more definition but it doesn't always lend to more volume whenever you're sectioning your hair you tend to get a lot more definition but not quite as much volume so today i'm not sectioning i'm just going to do some brush styling in the upright position just with my hair like this it's a quicker method so my next using don'ts is to do use a brush or finger coil or something like that to get some definition but don't create a lot of thick curl clumps that's why i don't recommend styling upside down and brushing your hair forward and getting all these thick curl clumps because then all your hair is just going to be grouped together and not separated and it's not going to give you that fullness so i'm just picking up vertical sections and pulling my hair up and away from the scalp the reason i'm using this brush instead of like a denman brush or a behavioral brush although i love those brushes they create two thick curl clumps for this style that i'm going for with more fullness so this is just like a regular brush so it's going to not have quite as much tension the less tension that you have the less like thick ringlet ribbon like curls you're going to have which is going to help you get more volume so i'm going for a little bit more of a separated look which is why i'm using this brush it doesn't have a ton of tension as you can see so this is also how i like to direct my hair away from my face i just pick up sections like this and i go up and away from my scalp so this underside layer always wants to clump too much so i really try and break up those clumps with my hand and i'm also not doing every single hair i'm just kind of picking up some areas and adding some curl pumps around so that's going to give you that overall fullness but you're still getting some curl clumps like some of those clumps are going to pop through and i'm going to see some ringlets when my hair is dry but it's not going to be my entire head there's still some fullness on the inner layer where it's more separated so you all have seen me do this a million times but for the back section i always like to pick up around my crown and go up and away from the scalp here here you want to pick up horizontal sections so i'm going with a section like this and keeping the brush flat against that and going up let me show you from the back that's going to help cover your scalp more then you just want to kind of shake it out and lift the hair up off the scalp so i have a whole video about how to cover your scalp i highly recommend checking that out because there's lots of styling tips in there for covering a cowlick in the back if you have that then i kind of also just like go like that shake up those clumps underneath and the underside layer that's where i especially don't want a lot of clumps because that's going to help give me that fullness from underneath and then i have like more of the ringlets on the top layer so for my next do's and don'ts it is to don't plop your hair but instead micro plop your hair so i'm going to take my hair repair towel this is pretty wet so it's not going to absorb too much product which is ideal and i'm just going to gently scrunch my hair so this is called micro plopping and it's essentially just removing any excess water and product from your hair without smooshing your hair against your scalp when you plop your hair especially if it's soaking wet you're just pressing all of that product onto your scalp which is what you don't want that's going to weigh it down it's also mashing the curls against your head and we're trying to lift the hair up and away from the scalp and prevent it from sticking we want it to be more separated and away from the scalp so that's why i recommend this method you can also lift the hair at the root and then just give it a gentle scrunch you don't want to be too rough with it this is a lot quicker too you don't have to walk around in a plot forever so now i like to apply another layer of gel that's just me on like really strong hold you get more hold if you layer gel on top of hair that is just damp and not soaking wet so i am going to go in with a little bit probably about a dime size amount adding some water just to dilute it and then i just use that to kind of smooth any frizz sometimes you might get a little bit of frizz on your ends if they're damaged when you scrunch like that so i just kind of glaze i don't want to break up all of those curls that i just created if you see any really chunky thick curl clumps like this one that's probably too thick so i'm going to go ahead and separate it now that way i can kind of finger coil and smooth any frizz versus waiting and separating it once it's dry that might cause more frizz that micro plopping also really will create some curl pumps so usually i do have to separate some of those then for the back this is where i definitely like to break it up at the very end right before i diffuse i'm just kind of roughing up the hair right there and then smoothing the tangy flyaways my next tip is to take a handheld mirror like this and then i'm looking in my other mirror in front of me to make sure that everything is covered so by doing this i can see where there's still scalp showing and make sure that i pull some hair over it and kind of shake it out to where it's not all clumped together at the root one of their do's and don'ts i wanted to mention is do it scrunch all the way up at the roots so as you can see when i was brushing my hair back it kind of straightens it out a little bit so you want to make sure you were scrunching all the way up at the root instead of leaving your hair kind of pulled downward and stretched out that's why i don't recommend brushing your hair upside down and pulling it all forward you're just stretching out the roots by doing that let me give you a little close-up so you can see my scalp is pretty much fully covered if my hair was soaking wet and i was styling with my hair dripping wet you would definitely see my scalp more so it definitely looks a lot fuller it's not too wet it's actually kind of dry underneath not super dry but it's towel dried which is what we want you can also kind of go underneath and lift the hair up off the scalp be very gentle because this will cause frizz when your hair is wet just make sure that your hands are wet too when you're doing that so this actually goes much quicker when i'm styling these are just some things that i incorporate in my routine but it definitely does not take me long at all to get my products applied and do some of these techniques so my next do's and don'ts is to do diffuse and don't air dry this makes the biggest difference for volume and fullness if you're not diffusing give it a try if you find that you get a ton of frizz then you probably don't have a strong enough gel or you're not diffusing it the right way so i have a video all about how to diffuse and a video about how to get stronger hold so i would recommend checking those out if you are really struggling with frizz when you diffuse but air drying just takes so much longer it takes like all day your hair is getting frizzy it's touching you while it's wet which is always annoying and i just find that i get way more fullness and volume when i diffuse so this is from conair super cheap diffuser it's like 30 bucks or under on amazon i will link you to it i always use the warm setting in the low airflow and so i like to plop my hair over my counter and just hover diffuse and then i will actually use it to scrunch my hair and then i will also go in like this and get some root volume which is going to help lift the hair off the scalp even more are you noticing a trend here that's what we're trying to do with everything and that will also kind of break up the hair of the scalp so it's not all like pieced together so now i'm done with my hair it's completely dry and the last step is to scrunch out the crunch because that is our next do's and don'ts for low density hair you definitely want to fluff out the roots scrunch out the crunch get rid of a lot of that gel cast to help give you that fuller look you can still leave some in if you want some humidity protection and longer lasting hold i'm actually going to try this out for the first time this is the curlsmith intense treatment serum this is a solid serum so it's not like your traditional oil you can use a little bit of oil to scrunch out the crunch but this is in a solid butter form this would probably be too heavy if you have fine hair because this is like pure shea butter so now i'm just going to scrunch out the gel cast this is going to give you instant fullness it's not going to be quite as transparent it's a little bit fuller you can also take the oil and kind of smooth over any pieces that look a little frizzy like maybe this one then i'm going to fluff the roots this is key to getting that separation at the scalp and keeping your hair from just being dried and stuck against your scalp so that gel actually really softened up nicely but i still feel like i have pretty good hold so i really like it i'm kind of struggling to even get this on my hair if y'all have tried this let me know how you use it but there's like barely any on my hand i feel like i mean other than scrunching out the crunch i don't feel like you could like cover your hair in this one other thing you can do is break up any curl clumps so like this one i can definitely separate so if i look closely i can kind of see where it would naturally separate to where i'm not going to totally make frizz i'm just going to kind of finger coil it so that is it for this wash day routine i hope you all found this helpful i'm going to summarize all the do's and don'ts over on the blog post that goes with this video so make sure you check that out if you want a full summary i'm also going to link you to all the products as well as any discount codes that i have for some of these brands in the description box down below that's it for today's video thank you all so much for watching don't forget to subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and i will see you in next week's video bye everyone [Music]

Channel: Gena Marie

Views: 68,914

Rating: 4.9617224 out of 5

Keywords: 3b curls, 3a curls, high porosity hair, low density curls, fine curly hair, thin low density curly hair, low density curly hair products, thin curly hair, thin curly hair routines, thin curly hair hairstyles, how to cover scalp for thinning hair, how to cover scalp line, curly hair scalp covering, how to get fuller looking curly hair, thin curly hair styling techniques, does and donts curly, dos and donts curly hair, styling thin curly hair, how to style thin curly hair

Id: lSy4TvEAq5g

Length: 22min 21sec (1341 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021