One of my FAVORITE looks as a woman with longer-length hair is a messy, beachy wave. Maybe it’s because I was born and raised in SoCal…our summers were yearning to be down at the beach…checking out the cute boys on the boardwalk, noshing on a frozen banana or Ruby’s milkshake, and sporting the salty, ocean-water beach waves in our hair. Our big family vacation a few summers during my middle school and early high school years was spending a week down in Newport Beach, wanting to experience just that as a young teenage girl. In recent years, I’ve also worn this look many a time for past photo shoots, music videos, red carpet events, and everyday looks. My husband always calls it my “lion mane” when I wear it this way (hence the above picture), and one of my easiest and favorite ways to achieve this look is by doing this….first, are you a shower-in-the-morning kind of gal or shower-at-night kind of gal? Well…if you said shower-at-night kind of gal, perfect because this is the first step in achieving this look…at least from my own personal experience. So…here we go. Start by washing your hair in the evening. If you use additional products after a hair rinse such as Moroccan oil, leave-in conditioner spray, de-frizzing products, etc….no worries…put those products in after you’ve towel-dried your hair and brushed it out. Then, with towel-dried, brushed hair, put your hair up in a bun on top of your head in a “scrunchie.” Mind you, I emphasize the word
“scrunchie.” This is because when you use regular hair rubber bands to put your mane up for long periods of time, it can cause hair breakage and damage. So take your hair scrunchie (I like these Goody Ouchless ones) and throw your hair up—don’t worry about making a perfect bun…better to toss it up there like a messy bun, and leave it slightly loose enough so the scrunchy isn’t super tight, but in tact enough so your hair should stay for the majority of the night while you sleep with it up. When you wake in the morning, take out your scrunchy and you should have naturally ‘wavy’ locks. If your hair happens to still seem a little damp, sometimes its best to just let it air-dry for 20 minutes or so, and scrunch it with your hands every few minutes (hold hair in hands and press upwards to ‘scrunch,’ causing a wave). You can use a little product on it so that the wave will hold. Some folks use beach/salt hair misters. I’ve used these in the past and they do help, but they also always bothered me a little bit as they gave a certain ‘crunch’ to my waves I didn’t dig, and I felt like they were drying to my hair. One product I love putting on when doing the “casual wave” is (Brazilian Blowout’s ‘Acai Protective Thermal Straightening Balm‘–which is funny that it’s a ‘straightening balm’ because I feel like it helps the waves when working with air-dried hair)…or you can always use a little bit of a medium/light-hold hair spray to keep your waves in tact. Either way….once you’ve achieved the wave look, it’s like anything goes!!!!