Hair Relaxing and Perming Tips
When both relaxing or perming and colouring Black hair, the Number One Rule is; you must never perm a colour, you always colour a perm. What this simply means is that you must always do your colour after your perm. If it's a protein colour, also known as colour glazes, your best to do it the same day as your perm, when the cuticle layers of your hair are more open from the perming process. This way the colour will penetrate deeper into the hair shaft. This is both better for the conditioning befit as well as making the colour last longer. If it's a semi or demi-permanent colour, they also may be done the same day, depending on the condition of your hair. However, for all permanent colour we recommend that you book your appointment a week to 10 days after your perm, no more. This is the best possible timing for colouring relaxed or permed hair, if you wait longer than 10 days, the process of combining these two services becomes much more problematic.
Be aware that when re-perming your hair, different products have very different chemical formulations which may not be compatible with each other. If they are not compatible you could end up seriously damaging your hair and causing severe breakage.
Removing all of your hair's natural curl is alright (usually referred to as "bone straight"), if the hair is going to be kept short.
We strongly recommend relaxing your hair only up to 80% maximum, unless as we said before it's going to be keep short. This will allow some elasticity to remain in your hair. This elasticity is essential for body, bounce and strength, When you take your hair "bone straight", you also take out most of your hair's elasticity. The result is flat, lifeless hair. It is this elasticity that is crucial to hair being able to stretch when you are styling or manipulating it in any way, and not break.
It's imperative if you are relaxing your hair at home that you make sure that you remove all the relaxer from your hair. This means that to be on the safe side you must thoroughly shampoo your hair 3-4 times. If you run out of the shampoo included in the kit any shampoo will do. It is does not have to be a neutralizing shampoo, it's the water the really does the "neutralizing". If you leave even very, very minute amounts of chemical in your hair, the process of what's called residual chemical action will occur. What this means is those trace amounts left in your hair continue to work causing your hair to over-process and then break. We find that we can trace this to be a main reason of the breakage problems people come to see us with.
We do not recommend that you relax your hair in any way when you first come out of extensions or braids. We have found that both of these services inflict on the hair micro nicks and abrasions. When you relax your hair the relaxer works quicker at these areas or "hot spots" causing an uneven process and usually causing breakage that may not show up until a number of months later. If you must have a straight style, your much better off doing a deep reconstructing treatment and light press the first week. And If you must relax the same day you take out your extensions or braids you must (although we want to state again, we really don't recommend doing a relaxer on the same day you come out of extensions or braids) fill your hair, this is the method of using a process protector on your hair to fill in those hot spots so that you will get a more even process and minimize breakage.
A lot of people ask us if we feel it's safe to perm during pregnancy. The answer is yes, if by perm you mean relaxing in any way with any hydroxide based relaxer and not perming with rods using a thio based product. By their nature hydroxides are inorganic, meaning they don't off gas or have volatile compounds in them so we feel they are safe to use during pregnancy, especially with our off scalp technique. Products containing thios' or other volatile compounds on the other hand we usually don't usually recommend at this time because they do off gas.
When relaxing your hair you must avoid any overlapping of the chemical onto the previously relaxed hair. The previously relaxed hair doesn't need to be relaxed again. The relaxer must be applied to the new growth area alone, only this hair needs to be processed. By over lapping on the previously relaxed parts of your hair you are continually over processing these parts. It will defiantly lead to breakage.
http://www.jazma.com/relaxing.html
When both relaxing or perming and colouring Black hair, the Number One Rule is; you must never perm a colour, you always colour a perm. What this simply means is that you must always do your colour after your perm. If it's a protein colour, also known as colour glazes, your best to do it the same day as your perm, when the cuticle layers of your hair are more open from the perming process. This way the colour will penetrate deeper into the hair shaft. This is both better for the conditioning befit as well as making the colour last longer. If it's a semi or demi-permanent colour, they also may be done the same day, depending on the condition of your hair. However, for all permanent colour we recommend that you book your appointment a week to 10 days after your perm, no more. This is the best possible timing for colouring relaxed or permed hair, if you wait longer than 10 days, the process of combining these two services becomes much more problematic.
Be aware that when re-perming your hair, different products have very different chemical formulations which may not be compatible with each other. If they are not compatible you could end up seriously damaging your hair and causing severe breakage.
Removing all of your hair's natural curl is alright (usually referred to as "bone straight"), if the hair is going to be kept short.
We strongly recommend relaxing your hair only up to 80% maximum, unless as we said before it's going to be keep short. This will allow some elasticity to remain in your hair. This elasticity is essential for body, bounce and strength, When you take your hair "bone straight", you also take out most of your hair's elasticity. The result is flat, lifeless hair. It is this elasticity that is crucial to hair being able to stretch when you are styling or manipulating it in any way, and not break.
It's imperative if you are relaxing your hair at home that you make sure that you remove all the relaxer from your hair. This means that to be on the safe side you must thoroughly shampoo your hair 3-4 times. If you run out of the shampoo included in the kit any shampoo will do. It is does not have to be a neutralizing shampoo, it's the water the really does the "neutralizing". If you leave even very, very minute amounts of chemical in your hair, the process of what's called residual chemical action will occur. What this means is those trace amounts left in your hair continue to work causing your hair to over-process and then break. We find that we can trace this to be a main reason of the breakage problems people come to see us with.
We do not recommend that you relax your hair in any way when you first come out of extensions or braids. We have found that both of these services inflict on the hair micro nicks and abrasions. When you relax your hair the relaxer works quicker at these areas or "hot spots" causing an uneven process and usually causing breakage that may not show up until a number of months later. If you must have a straight style, your much better off doing a deep reconstructing treatment and light press the first week. And If you must relax the same day you take out your extensions or braids you must (although we want to state again, we really don't recommend doing a relaxer on the same day you come out of extensions or braids) fill your hair, this is the method of using a process protector on your hair to fill in those hot spots so that you will get a more even process and minimize breakage.
A lot of people ask us if we feel it's safe to perm during pregnancy. The answer is yes, if by perm you mean relaxing in any way with any hydroxide based relaxer and not perming with rods using a thio based product. By their nature hydroxides are inorganic, meaning they don't off gas or have volatile compounds in them so we feel they are safe to use during pregnancy, especially with our off scalp technique. Products containing thios' or other volatile compounds on the other hand we usually don't usually recommend at this time because they do off gas.
When relaxing your hair you must avoid any overlapping of the chemical onto the previously relaxed hair. The previously relaxed hair doesn't need to be relaxed again. The relaxer must be applied to the new growth area alone, only this hair needs to be processed. By over lapping on the previously relaxed parts of your hair you are continually over processing these parts. It will defiantly lead to breakage.
http://www.jazma.com/relaxing.html
