Loc Care for Beginners

If you've recently loc'd your hair, you'll want to keep reading because we're giving you 3 essential tips to help you to grow long, beautiful, healthy locs for years to come!

1.Relax!

If you're just beginning your loc journey, please don't overthink it. You've probably just transitioned from loose or relaxed natural hair and are very accustomed to using dozens of haircare products and doing an endless number of things to maintain the health and overall look of your hair, but you'll 1st want to remember that in caring for your locs, less is best! Of course, you'll still use haircare products and follow a routine that helps you to reach your hair goals, but trust that caring for your locs will be less demanding and more simplistic than caring for relaxed or naturally loose hair. You're going to love it here!

2. Choose Your Loctician Wisely

Let's' admit it! We all want beautiful retwists and judging by social media, most locticians are pretty good at both! However, when you're just starting your loc journey, your overall goal should be to find someone who isn't just skilled in loc'ing and retwisting but someone who is equally skilled in caring for your hair and also communicating how you should care for your hair should you have any questions or issues! And who better to inform you of loc do's and don'ts than the person caring for them, your loctitian? It's so easy to get pulled in to the allure of getting pretty retwists we see online! However, we should be as equally concerned with making sure are locs are being properly cared for by the ones we entrust our locs to, our locticians. Hence, knowing what's going on underneath your locs and how to care for them at every step of your loc journey will empower us to care for them properly. Have your locs become dry, damaged, or brittle? If you've chosen the right loctician, he/she will automatically give you feedback and even supply you with a course of action that would correct these issues and get back your hair back on track.

Additionally, a good loctician will have adopted their own loc care routine from shampooing to conditioning and drying to loc repair that will promote your hair's growth, including examining your locs at the beginning of each visit to determine what state they're end and if treatment is needed. If there is a problem, he/she will make you aware of it and tell you what both of you should do do address it. But choose the wrong one, and you'll literally be pulling your locs out trying to figure out what's wrong and how to fix them all by yourself for months and years to come!

Moral of the Story:

Always choose a loctician who is as willing and able to care for your locs as they are to loc, retwist, and style them.

3. Stop Googling!

Disclaimer: No one is exactly where you are on your loc journey with all factors considered, including the length of your locs, its texture, growth rate, and lastly the amount of time it takes your locs to reach full maturity. These factors alone make your loc journey unique to anyone else regardless of the images you see on Google, Pinterest or even TikTok so look at them with discretion, and don't base your whole loc experience off of an image.

If you would simply like to get a general idea of how your locs will look within a specific timeframe,

 web images can indeed be very helpful. For example, looking at before and after pics of someone's loc's journey is a great way to assess on average how long or full your locs will potentially grow to be. Still and so, you should resist the urge to model your entire loc experience after a particular person or an image even if his/her hair is similar in texture or length. Hence, you may become disappointed if their locs are progressing faster than yours. You will need to keep in mind that your hair will reach full maturity in due time, but genetics plays as much of a role in your hair's performance as day to day loc maintenance and diet. Knowing these things will help you to keep and open mind and set reasonable goals. Be realistic so that you stay the course.

As a beginner with dreadlocks, what'll you need more than anything is patience and trust. These 2 virtues will get you through short times, "the ugly phase", awkward length, and all of your moments of uncertainty. But trust that searching is not going to make your journey go any faster or your hair grow any longer.

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