A perm for long, straight hair

Some people are envious of my naturally straight hair but, as usual, I always envied other people’s hair! I’d tried everything to give it some body and bounce, and I mean everything, but nothing ever lasted past a few hours. So when you’re off out for a special occasion and you’ve spent so much time getting in a twist with tongs, rollers and hairspray, it basically sucks when it all falls flat a couple of hours later.

What better way to finally fix my ‘problem’ than by getting a loose perm. I can actually have some body to my hair when it’s down, add texture when it’s up, and blow dry it straight when I want to go back to basics. 

Here’s the before photo…

Because I wanted a loose curl towards the ends, I have virgin hair (no dye etc.), and my hair is so long, a weak solution would be put along each section before curling it up into the roller to enable it to start working on the tips first. It took a while as you can imagine, but once all were in place, the strong solution was spread across everything ready to leave it working its magic for 25 minutes. 

I said no to the stylist taking my photo while looking completely stupid, but after I was left for a few minutes stewing in the rather potent perming solution, I thought hey, why not laugh at myself. So here’s the during photo…

A stiff neck, 3 hours, a new hair dryer and diffuser, and £60 later, I came away from the salon with mixed feelings. It looked nothing like the photos we’d gone through at my consultation, but nothing ever looks like the photos right? It wasn’t curls and more just waves than anything, but that’s still better than boring straight hair, right? And even though I knew I’d never have time to do touch ups every morning, I figured shoving some product in and giving it a scrunch wouldn’t take up too much time… right?

It grew on me through the rest of the evening and after my boyfriend said he liked it, but I was still a tad disappointed that there were no ‘curls’ and definitely not any big, loose curls like I was hoping for. If anything, I was originally worried I’d come out looking like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance, but I would have liked it to have worked better than it did.
I used my straighteners to add curls and it does seem easier than before, and they definitely stay in longer, but it was never my intention to spend 45 minutes at 6.30am curling my permed hair…

And 4 days later, here’s the after photo (having just washed and ‘styled’ it as instructed)…

Some spray-in gel works to hold the 'waves', and that does seem to last all day, but we’re back straight the following morning again! And 4 weeks after the event I’m blow drying my hair with no attachments, with just a bit of root booster in, and it’s turning out straighter than someone’s hair who’s spent ages straightening it. In fact, I’m actually using my straighteners to curl the tips slightly to stop it looking so darn straight!

I was told it would probably last 3 to 4 months, but 3 to 4 weeks, or even days, was more like it. Having started off with healthy, virgin hair, I feel a little as though I’ve damaged my hair for no reason, and have been left with patches where each strand has set at a right angle away from my head where the roller was pinned. Great.

All in all, I don’t think I’ll be trying this again! However, I would love to hear any success stories if you have them, so please do leave me a comment or drop me a line.

Good luck!