Fall in Love with These Natural Hair Protective Styles

It’s the fall season! Time to gather with your girls for some football tailgate parties! Time for slow cooker comfort food. Time to pull out your stylish boots, chic sweaters, and best of all, your favorite protective hairstyles for natural hair.

As the temperatures fall, it’s time to prepare your kinky tresses for this excellent season.

Benefits

Why protective hairstyles for natural hair? I’m glad you asked. Protective hairstyles are a means for us curly hair girls to put away the ends of our hair into a beautiful hairstyle to protect them from the taxing environmental factors such as the wind, the sun, snow and the brittle cold temperatures.

Give your hair a break and save it from a lot of manipulation and maintenance. Another benefit of protective styles for natural hair is to maintain moisture. Ladies, I’m sure you know how easy it is for our natural hair to get dry and brittle.

In this fall season, we have to give our hair a bit more tender loving care and moisturize often. Another plus to wearing a protective hairstyle is that it will save you time! You could use this extra time in the morning to put on your favorite eyeshadow, mascara, and lipstick.

Next, rocking a protective hairstyle also helps our hair grow and promotes length retention. Plus you will look amazing with a protective hairstyle! You just have to find one that would be cute and stylish on you!

Before you pick your protective hairstyle

I know you are so ready to deep dive into the protective hairstyles for natural hair, but before you choose your hairstyle, you must prep your mane to take this journey.

You would want to start your hairstyle on freshly washed hair and thoroughly moisturized hair. Using a deep conditioner and your favorite curly hair moisturizer would make your hair happy, noticeably fragrant and soft!

Picking your hairstyle

When it comes to protective hairstyles for natural hair, there are so many styles to choose from! Either you decide to add some extensions to your protective hairstyle for a bit more volume.

Or if you prefer to wear a full wig to protect your curly tresses or you want to wear some chic braids.

Or rock a cute messy bun, the choice is yours to make. It will come down to your personal preference, what would look best on you, and if your hair is long, short, curly or relaxed.

Protective styles for short natural hair

There are so many possibilities for protective styles for short hair! To highlight a few, let’s look at some natural updos, buns, and flat twists!

Natural updos

Natural updos are the perfect protective style for the ladies with short natural hair. They are very simple yet elegant at the same time.

You can wear your updo to the office or a wedding or fancy evening out. You can do a cute pin and tuck with a beautiful pompadour at the top.

Or you can do a gorgeous French twist or goddess braids.

Natural hair buns

Next up for protective hairstyles is the naturalista’s favorite go-to style of a bun!

Natural hair buns can be messy for a lazy lounging day around the house or a casual day out.

Or they can be elegant enough for a beautiful wedding or holiday party or a neat and clean, professional look for the office.

Flat twists

Finally, there’re flat twists! This protective hairstyle is a fun and creative style that has so many possibilities!

Flat twists are a cross between French braids and two strand twists.

Protective styles for transitioning hair

For all my ladies who are new to the natural hair game, and who are transitioning from relaxed hair to natural hair, there are some excellent styles for you as well.

Protective hairstyles for relaxed hair

Protective hairstyles for relaxed hair are an excellent way to help you grow your hair long. By not having the ends of your hair exposed to damaging UV rays and harsh weather, they stay healthier and need less trimming. Less trimming means you’ll see faster results. When protective hairstyles are done with relaxed hair, the results will look smoother. Dutch braids, French twists, and buns are protective styles that offer sophisticated and polished looks to your hair. Some styles can be worn for weeks.  Most of them are easy to maintain and take minutes to freshen up. They are ideal options for the lady on the go and for those who don’t want to spend a lot of time styling their hair.

Bantu knots

My favorite transitioning style is Bantu knots.
Bantu knots is a style where you separate your hair into sections and twist them and wrap these twists around your finger like a corkscrew into small or large knots to form these super comfortable and beautiful knots.

Plus you can hide any broken or straight pieces of hair in these knots!

Braided protective hairstyles natural hair

Protective hairstyles for natural hair braids bring an exquisite look to your hairstyle and are an excellent way of keeping your hair protected while it grows out. Braids are also very easy to care for. Braid configurations are countless and are limited only by your imagination. Another benefit of wearing your hair braided is that they can be worn regardless of the length of your hair. Braids are an ideal protective hairstyle for the active woman and can be worn for up to eight weeks with minimal maintenance. Usually washing and moisturizing the braids once a week are all that’s required. Keeping the scalp moisturized with oil helps to keep flakes away and promotes healthy hair growth. With so many benefits to wearing a braided protective hairstyle, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.

Crochet braids

Next on the list for protective hairstyles for transitioning hair are the crochet braids! These braids made a returning debut in 2015. This hairstyle was popular back in the 90s when they were called latch hook braids, taken from the standard method of installing this resurgent hairstyle.

To achieve the hairstyle, you would braid your natural hair into cornrows then loop the weave into the cornrows using a crochet hook. Tada! You get to rock a chic and sassy protective hairstyle while your transitioning tresses can grow into a natural state.

Weaves

A word of caution: when installing your extensions, please be careful not to put them in very tight because you can damage your ends and roots.

Another favorite protective style for transitioning hair is rocking some weave! Make your natural hair transition easy and low maintenance by wearing some human hair kinky twist extensions or wear some super cute cornrow extensions.

If you’ve just started growing your hair longer, there are protective hairstyles for natural hair with weaves. Weaves lengthen your hair instantly and because the ends of the hair are woven in, they remain protected. With a weave, you don’t have to sacrifice length and can still rock gorgeous long hair as your natural hair grows. Because weaves can be left in for months, it’s a good idea to wear a different type of protective style before getting another weave. Maintenance is as easy as moisturizing your scalp weekly and washing and moisturizing your hair about every three weeks. Weaves are available in different textures, colors, and lengths so you can choose the best style for you. You can even switch to a different style each time a new weave is installed.  Before you know it, your natural hair will be long and healthy.

If you are bold and want an entirely fresh new look to go natural for your relaxed hair, you may be daring to try the big chop!

Protective styles with extensions

When installed properly, protective styles with extensions help you grow long and gorgeous hair. Hair extensions bring styling versatility to your shorter hair and come in textures and lengths to suit nearly everyone. Hair extensions are tracks of hair that are attached to the hair on the head with either glue, clips or combs. Then they can be fashioned into protective styles that allow your natural hair to grow. Depending on the type of extensions you wear, they can last anywhere from a few days to several months. If the extensions you choose are going to be worn for months, it’s essential to properly care for them. Regular washing, moisturizing and caring for your scalp keep your new hair growth healthy and protected. Proper care also prevents the damage that can occur from wearing extensions for too long. Like weaves, it’s a good idea to give your hair a break before reinstalling a new set. This is especially true for extensions that are worn for longer periods of time. It won’t be long until you have your own natural, healthy and long hair.

Easy protective styles for natural hair

If you’re looking to save styling time, there are a lot of easy protective styles for natural hair to choose. Protective styles are hairstyles that hide the ends of the hair to keep them from sustaining damage caused by exposure to the elements. Dry air, sunlight and pollution all contribute to damaging hair. By wearing protective hairstyles, there is less of a risk of damage to your hair and your natural hair can remain healthy.  However, you don’t have to spend hours every day styling your hair. Hairstyles like chunky halo braids or buns are beautiful hairstyles that are quick and easy to do. They are a breeze to touch up and can be worn for days. Variations such as braided buns or wearing the bun higher or lower on the head add different looks. Halo braids can be French, Dutch or twisted to add a fresh look to your style.

 Your protective hairstyles at night

To keep your protective hairstyle looking fresh and last longer, you have to take care of it at night. You can wear a satin hair bonnet or sleep on a satin pillowcase.

Ladies, we all know that cotton is not very friendly to our natural tresses, as it dries out our hair and will ultimately lead to breakage; and I know you don’t want that, not after all the work you put into maintaining your protective hairstyle for your natural hair.

It would also be helpful to moisture protective hairstyle at night with some coconut oil or shea butter, depending on the style.

So we have discussed the benefits of protective styling, what you should do to prepare your natural tresses for your protective hairstyle of your choice plus some styles for you to choose from! We have come to the end, but I know I have not exhausted all the possibilities for protective styles for natural hair! Happy styling!

Patrina

Hey Curl Friend, I’m Patrina Haupt the creator and author of Natural Hair Queen. I hope you find my healthy hair care tips helpful in your hair journey. Healthy hair care practices are definitely, what helped me to achieve waist length hair.

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