Thick hair
Dense, heavy hair. 7 hairstyles on EveryHairstyle so far.
Thick hair can mean wide, strong strands, or dense hair with many hairs on the head, or both. It looks full and holds braids, buns and curls well, but it can be heavy, slow to dry and bulky. Stylists remove weight from thick hair with layers, thinning and undercuts, and thick hair carries the long braids, chignons and buns that need a lot of hair.
Taking out weight
Layers, as in the shag and the mullet, lift and lighten thick hair. Thinning scissors and point cutting remove bulk from the middle lengths. A hidden undercut, the hair at the nape or under the sides clipped short, is a common trick for very thick hair: it removes much of the weight but is invisible when the hair is down and shows only when it is tied up.
Styles that need volume
Thick hair makes full, heavy braids, long plaits, large chignons and buns that hold without padding. Many of the long-haired traditions of South Asia, the long plait of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and the long Russian braid have prized thick hair. Thick hair holds a set curl for days but takes longer to dry, so many people with thick hair let it air dry part way before using heat.
Famous thick hair hairstyles
Further reading
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Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Mullet: Wordzandguitar, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Undercut: Dick Thomas Johnson, CC BY 2.0, source
- Shag: ABC Television Network ., Public domain, source
- Layered hair: Rganesh72, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Chignon: www.GlynLowe.com, CC BY 2.0, source
- Braids: Unknown author, Public domain, source