How I Refresh

One of the hardest parts about starting the curly hair journey is learning how to refresh your curls. In my early days, I basically re-soaked and re-styled my hair every day because I couldn’t get the hang of refreshing. I’m happy to say that I no longer need to do that.

There are multiple methods of refreshing. A wet refresh is generally re-soaking and re-styling, but without actually washing. A damp refresh uses a little bit of water to wet, but not saturate the hair. And a dry refresh uses products that can be applied to the hair without water- either because the product itself is water-y (i.e. a foam or a mousse) or has a smooth balm-like texture that allows it to smooth over the hair.

Every so often I will play around with the other methods, but for the most part this is what works for me. Scroll past the video for further detail!

Step 1- Dampen hair with warm water. Warm is important, especially for low porosity hair, since it more easily penetrates the hair shaft. I use a flairosol sprayer mostly of the time, but feel free to use any spray bottle that you have around.

Step 2- Split your hair in half. Put a small amount of leave in conditioner and styler of your choice in your palm. In this video I used about a gum ball size amount Giovanni Direct Leave In and a dime size of Jessicurl Spiralicious Styling Gel, but those quantities change depending on the product. For example, Kinky Curly Knot Today is a lot thicker than the Giovanni Direct Leave In, so I use substantially less when I use that.

Step 3- Add some water to help emulsify the product. Then apply by grazing hands over one half of the hair using the “praying hands” motion. Especially when using creamy products- such as a leave in conditioner, a cream gel, or a curl cream- I find that I can add some more water, rub my hands together again and magically I’ll have more product to use, so feel free to do that as much or as little as you’d like. Once this is complete, repeat steps 2 and 3 on the second half of the hair, making sure to get the hairs where the two sections meet in the back. Then resection hair into top and bottom halves and repeat on the middle layers of your hair.

Step 4- LIGHTLY scrunch hair once or twice on each side. Yes, only once or twice- if you scrunch too much you’ll break up your clumps since your hair isn’t soaking wet. Then do one final smoothing over your hair after scrunching. Then onto drying! I almost always air dry my hair, but you are welcome to diffuse if that’s your preference.

*Quick note* I should have put this at the beginning of the video, but I remembered the reminder at this point- make sure to take off any jewelry before doing this. Rings can easily get caught in your hair especially when it’s only damp instead of soaking wet.

Step 5- Scrunch Out the Crunch! I usually use oil to SOTC, but some people are fine with bare hands, others prefer using leave in or a curl cream, and sometimes people use things like a paper towel or a buff. However you would SOTC on wash day works perfectly fine here as well!

Voilà! Happy, refreshed curls.

Note: While JessiCurl has sent me product for the purpose of my previous review, this is NOT a sponsored post. As stated in my review, I already liked and had purchased some of their products with my own money prior to the gifted products and the gel that I used in this post was purchased by me.