BEACH WEEK: The Ultimate Beachy Waves Guide: No Heat

Welcome to Beach Week, an annual themed week here at Elle Sees. I'll have posts on beachy hair, beauty, and tips! See last year's posts here. Enjoy! Love, Elle

With summer comes one of my favorite hairstyles: beachy waves! Since everyone’s hair type is unique, I’ll share TEN techniques on how to achieve your own beachy waves—with and without heat. Even if your hair is stick-straight, you too can have waves. Read on to get waves without heat:

METHODS 1 -5:

TIME: 5-10 minutes, not counting drying time

TOOLS:

·         Water

·         1/4c Kosher salt

·         Spray bottle

       Conditioner or hair oil (I use coconut oil)                                                                                                                                          

       Optional: Bumble & Bumble’s Surf Spray or Sunsilk’s Waves of Envy

·         Anti-frizz serum

·         Hair spray or spray gel

·         Bobby pins or hair clips

       Lemon juice

METHOD 1:

I consider these the classic methods on how to get that beachy hair look. For the first method, simply mist your hair, braid and sleep in the braid. In the morning, your hair will be wavy. Separate the braid, gently brush through the waves with your fingers, and apply an anti-frizz serum (ike John Freida’s). You can also mist hair, braid, air dry or dry braid with a hair dryer (but hey, this is no-heat so...). Optional, use spray gel or hair spray to hold the waves. While I use one braid, up to three big braids will work as well. Tiny braids will result in crimped hair. No! Anyone else remember crimped hair?

METHOD 2:

Use the same directions as above, just put your hair in a bun instead of a braid. Because my hair is so thick, I use 4 buns. You can sleep in this style, let air dry, or use the hair dryer.

METHOD 3:

Sea Salt Spray works great on the beach (or anywhere) and can be done for next to nothing! However, many don't like this method because hair often ends up frizzy--I'll show you how to remedy that. First, fill a spray bottle with water, kosher salt, 2 squirts of hair gel, and 2 squirts of conditioner. The gel gives hair some texture while the conditioner helps with frizziness. By the way, I use a little heated coconut oil (or other hair oil) sometimes instead of conditioner on my thick, dry hair.  Shake and spritz liberally on hair, scrunching as you go. This can be done on wet or dry hair. I've used the popular Bumble & Bumble spray (there are dozens of types), but I use either my own recipe or the cheap Sunsilk Waves of  Envy Sea Mist. 

T
IP: to avoid frizzy waves, avoid using your hands to scrunch (thanks to my sis for this tip!). Use a t-shirt instead to scrunch your hair. This next tip works best for blondes, but I've used it on my hair as well: add some lemon juice to your sea salt mixture for natural highlights! Lemon juice is really drying, fyi.

METHOD 4:

Use the same method as above, but instead of scrunching, wrap hair 1-in sections around 3 fingers and pin or clip. Let hair air dry and undo bobby pin/clip. Style as mentioned previously.

METHOD 5:

Mist hair and twist into small sections. Clip or pin to top of head. Let air dry and apply products mentioned above. 

Another option are these Goody Summer Waves Hair Rollers. These produce a tighter wave and are easy to use.

Still not enough ways to get those beachy waves? Stayed tuned for part 2 tomorrow!!

I look like I'm mad, but I'm not!