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Hair, Haircuts

Posted

January 20, 2016 at 8:10 pm

Cut and Color by Rachel McCoy

Color and Cut by Rachel McCoy

Color and Cut by Rachel McCoy

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Hair, Haircuts

Posted

August 10, 2015 at 11:47 pm

Lovely guide for growing your hair out!

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Hair, Haircuts

Posted

July 22, 2015 at 12:12 am

Long and Healthy

Since hair grows and average of 1/2 inch a month if your hair is 16 inches long, those ends have been with you for two years! Thats longer than some TV shows!

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Hair

Posted

May 27, 2015 at 11:31 pm

Four Levels of Damage

Cuticular Damage
Loss of Moisture
Loss of Protein
Loss of Elasticity

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Hair

Posted

April 30, 2015 at 11:00 pm

Summer Humidity and Your Hair

Summer time humidity!

How it happens: Curly, coarse, and chemically treated hair is often moisture deprived, so the cuticles on each strand are raised, making the hair more porous. This type of hair absorbs moisture from the air, which makes the hair shafts swell up. The result: big, unwieldy hair.

To prevent it next time: Get the right cut and the right products.  Even just a trim helps to keep your ends healthy and happy which adds to controllable summer time hair!
We have a lot of humidity resistant products to help combat the hot humid weather of Chattanooga summers!

*Keep hair hydrated. Use a good conditioning treatment to seal cuticles so hair can’t absorb moisture.  Apply from roots to ends, leave in for 15 to 20 minutes, then rinse well.  Unless you are using the super amazing ArgaBeta Oil, then you want to leave it in your hair until your next shower!  Details below*
Dikson ArgaBeta Oil
(an intense beauty treatment for all hair types that contains Argan Oil and Beta Carotene.  Non-greasy, it absorbs immediately and does not leave residue, ensuring deep hydration and leaving your hair feeling silky with incredibly shiny highlights.)
This is the entire amazing ArgaBeta Oil line, for all hair types and situations.
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Hair

Posted

April 10, 2015 at 10:34 pm

9 Hair Tips and Tricks You’ll Be Happy To Know

1) Find a shampoo that lathers less.  Sudsy doesn’t necessarily mean clean—sometimes, it means the opposite. Shampoos that lather too much are often overloaded with moisturizing products, which can leave build-up in your hair, making it look and feel dirtier quicker. (Dikson shampoo being an Italian brand tends to lather less and still gets the job done!)

2) Give your locks a burst of cold. Before you hop out of the shower, turn the cold water on for a second and quickly rinse it through your strands. It helps seal the cuticle, adding a sleek finish to your locks.

3) Play hot-and-cold as you dry. When using a round brush to dry your hair in sections, start from the roots and dry all the way to the ends, letting the brush linger at the tips of your strands. Let your hair cool off like this on its own for five seconds, then repeat on another section. If your blow dryer has a cool setting you can also apply that for the same amount of time.  Alternating between heat and cool-down time helps set your style, and your blowout will have more body.

4) Use rollers for high-volume. For sex-kitten lift, blow out your locks until they’re dry. Then, section off the hair on top of your head—between your temples and all the way back to the crown of your hair. Divide that section into three smaller sections vertically (as if you were making an awesome mohawk), wrap each in a 2-inch velcro hair roller. Let your hair sit like this for 30 minutes, then unwrap your strands, lightly comb, and spray for hold.

5) Drop the towel. Keeping wet strands wrapped in a towel for a half-hour as you do your make-up will just cause frizz! The roughness of the cotton forces your hair cuticles open, making them more likely to go every-which-way. Instead, squeeze out excess water as soon as you’re out of the shower, then let your hair air-dry for five or ten minutes before blowdrying.

6) Apply products 10 minutes before you style. Whether you’re curling, straightening, or whatevering, applying product 10 minutes in advance helps it fully absorb into your strands so you get all of its benefits and more bang for your buck.

7) Wrap—don’t clamp—your hair for quick curls. When using a curling iron, you don’t need to fasten your locks to the barrel. Wrap sections around the iron and hold in place for about 10 seconds to score the same soft, sexy curls.

8) Use spray bottles as your new lazy-day BFF. If you wake up and your locks are totally flat or grungy from the day before, just spray the top layer of your hair until damp, and then use a big barrel roundbrush (2 inches or more) to blow your locks dry. You’ll score high volume on that top layer, and since it’s freshly blown out, you’ll create the illusion of all-over smooth hair.

9) Use dry shampoo a different way. Instead of waiting until your locks need an dirt-fighting pick-me-up, apply a dab of dry shampoo to your roots immediately after you wash and dry them. Though your hair’s already clean, the barrier will stave off the debris and oil your strands will collect throughout the day before it hits. Bonus: It also gives you killer volume.

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Hair Color

Posted

March 12, 2015 at 2:57 pm

Going from light to dark, or dark to light, and the perils within.

When you’re ready for a change you’re ready for it!  You’ve been thinking about it, kicking the idea around of doing a drastic change, so that by the time you are in the styling chair you want to see what you’ve been envisioning.

That is exciting, and I LOVE providing people with drastic changes when they are ready for them.  What is difficult to me is that if you’ve been white blonde before, you decided to go dark over the winter, then come in and want to be back to your white blonde, it’s going to take some time.  Not everyone understands that.

IMPORTANT TO KNOW:  Here is our mantra again!  BEAUTIFUL HAIR IS HEALTHY HAIR.  No one who has grossly damaged hair has pretty hair.  Healthy hair holds its color it has shine and is lovely from far off and up close.

WHY THE PROCESS:  There is an underlying pigment to hair color.  The darker the color, the warmer the underlying pigment is.  Black hair has the underlying pigment of violet.  Medium brown hair has the underlying pigment of red.

*     *     *

Going Light:  You first lift to a red color, then a copper brassy color, then it will lift to a banana yellow color, before getting to the summer white blonde you came in dreaming of.

That is a whole lot of lifting, and most likely if you’d been doing highlights previous to going dark then your hair is still damaged from those previous foils.

That is why.  Here we refuse to destroy someones hair if at all avoidable.  To go from dark to light in a healthy happy manner can take two to three visits.
THE WARNING:  You’ve been excited, telling all your friends, you sat down and you heard that it would take a while, but you may be sad that is more of a lighter brown or a dark blonde then yours goal was.

That is in some cases the only option though unless you want your hair on the floor instead of your head.  Which I know is NOT what you’re going for.
*    *    *

Going Dark:  The same colors that you took out when you highlighted your hair, have to go back in your hair if the color is going to last at all.  So even if you HATE warmth in your color, you have to add a little of that red in or it will be gone by the end of the week, it’s a necessary evil.Even adding this in you most likely will still get some fadage.

Considering that, this can take two or three times to get it to last.  Your cuticle is wide open from your years of highlighting, so those color molecules float right on out, until you’ve packed so many in, and given it enough healthy hair treatments, that it can hold.

MORAL:  When you are going for a drastic change, be patient, for your hairs sake if nothing else! You’ll be so happy you did.

www.chestnutstrand.com

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By

in

Hair

Posted

March 12, 2015 at 2:42 pm

Oily roots, dry ends, and how to meet in the middle

The biggest trouble with dry ends?  Is that they aren’t healthy happy ends, which means they aren’t pretty.  You know thats true.  Healthy hair is pretty hair.  But if you naturally have oily hair regardless of your dry ends I bet your roots can get really oily.  That doesn’t mean you can avoid conditioning.  Here are some tricks to help your locks be more luscious!

1)     When shampooing your hair, focus on your roots (unless you’ve just finished a mudrun, in which case shampoo ALL of your gross muddy hair you rock star you).  Once you’ve scrubbed your roots, allow the water to rinse the shampoo over the rest of your hair.  It will rinse your hair clean without anything making a deep enough impact to make your ends unhappy.  (Also make sure you are using the right shampoo, many shampoos can create their own build up instead of cleansing your locks)

2)     Condition your hair.  I know I know oily roots blah blah, you still have to condition.  First apply the conditioner to your ends, let it soak in while you lather up, shave whatever.  Then apply the conditioner to all of your hair, root to already saturated ends.  Let it sit for a moment before rinsing it all out.  Anytime you use a deep conditioner apply it only to your mid-shaft and ends.

 
3)     Apply a leave in conditioner or Dikson ArgaBeta Oil (part argon oil part keratin) to your mid-shaft and ends definitely not your roots and leave it on.
 4)     Also the option of using a dry shampoo.  The ingredients in dry shampoo (and baby powder) soak up oil and dirt on the scalp. When your hair appears greasy, usually just the roots that need to be refreshed. Applying a dry shampoo effectively soaks up any oil and dirt, leaving your hair looking refreshed and clean.  Buying you extra time between shampoos.
 
5)     Get regular trims.  Even if you’re trying to grow your hair out make sure to get your ends snipped to keep any dry split ends from getting worse.

www.chestnutstrand.com

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Haircuts

Posted

March 12, 2015 at 2:31 pm

Trimming helps it grow…right?

Trim your hair and it will grow faster and thicker is an old wives tale I’m sure we’ve all heard.  Is it true?

The ends of your hair have nothing to do with the roots of your hair.  Since the roots is where all your growth comes from, this obviously this can’t be true.

Where in the world did this well known “fact” come from then?

When it comes to growing your hair you should trim it.  Not because the trim makes your hair grow but because it keeps your ends healthy.  Without trims you develop split ends.  Everyone does regardless of how well you take care of your hair.  The problem with split ends is that they don’t just stay at your ends.  Without trimming them, and with enough time those splits spread further and further up your hair.  That takes your next cut from 1/4 of an inch trim to 2 inches of nasty hair needing cut off undoing all your hard work of letting it grow.  So in that way trimming it DOES help your hair grow.

Also with growing your hair out from short to long you need to keep it trimmed so you can keep it in a style.  That way you don’t wake up one morning panic and chop it all off because it hasn’t laid right in 2 months (based on you not getting your hair cut in 6 months)!   I digress I’ll blog about the process of growing your hair out with style later one….

Does a trim make your hair thicker?  Its often with children that their hair seems thicker after their first cut.  When really they’ve spent however long growing their hair, it has so many different lengths in it that cutting it to all one length gets rid of the stragglers.  The same with hair that has gone too long without a cut and has three inches of split ends.  Cutting the thin (thin because of all the splits) straggly ends off does make your hair look thicker.  Even though it doesn’t actually make a difference in how much hair you have.  Again the ends of your hair don’t effect the roots of your hair.

The number one reason to trim your hair and our mantra in business is HEALTHY HAIR IS PRETTY HAIR.  You want beautiful long hair?  Trim it.  No one thinks ratty ends are pretty.  Keeping it healthy keeps it pretty!

Strand Salon

833 Chestnut St

Chattanooga, TN

Super zoom on strand of hair with split ends.

Super zoom on strand of hair with split ends.

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