How to Minimize Shrinkage in Wet Natural Hair

Having kinky curly hair rocks, the texture and body that my hair naturally has allows me to create cool styles easily. But a downside to kinky curls is that they can shrink dramatically - up to 75-80% of their original size, depending on how tightly wound the curl is.

Shrinkage can make shoulder length hair contract to ear length, and ear-length curls can tighten closely to the scalp. Shrinkage is probably one of the main hindrances for women who want to go natural and while it's pretty much unavoidable if you have any kind of curl to your hair, there are ways to keep it at a minimum when you're styling wet hair.

Pre-Shower Protection

My curls tighten up a lot, and although shrinkage wasn't my favorite quality about my hair when I first went natural, it wasn't really a big deal to me either. But over time, as my hair grew longer, the shrinkage definitely became a major problem for me.

My curls would draw up dramatically every time I washed it, which would then cause it to become incredibly tangled, which would then cause to me to spend hours combing through it.

So I realized I had to make some changes in my shampoo routine. The first change was that I stopped shampooing my hair while it's loose (loose hair plus water, plus friction, equals major shrinkage).

No matter what, before I shampoo I take the time to make about 15 medium sized twists or braids in my hair. These haphazard braids don't look cute, but they help to retain some length once my hair hits the water because the curls can't draw up as much as they'd like.

Shampoo Rules

The next change I made was to not go crazy while I shampooed.

In the past I've had hairstylists who liked to pile my hair on top of my head, and then dramatically and vigorously massage a lot of shampoo onto my head for as long as possible. I liked to emulate this technique at home because it felt great. But it usually left me with a ton of tangles (even when I wore my hair straight) and lots of shrinkage.

Now I just use my fingertips to lightly and slowly massage shampoo onto my scalp. Even though the fast massaging feels great, I try to avoid going that route, because I don't want to disturb my roots too much. Since they aren't restrained by the twists they can shrink a great deal.

Once my scalp is clean, I lightly cleanse my strands by sliding the shampoo down the twists with both hands. Usually this gets my hair clean, but if my hair's a bit too oily, I'll just take one twist down, gently work some shampoo into it, rinse the section and then re-twist it again before moving onto the other sections.

Both of these techniques may seem more time-consuming, but it usually only takes an extra 15-30 minutes. I find the extra time is worth it, though, because it minimizes the shrinkage (and tangling) in my wet curls and cuts my styling time down dramatically.