Stretching Your Coily Hair: 4 Methods to Keep It Growing Past Your Shoulders

You step out of the shower with hair falling to the middle of your back. Two hours later, it stops at your shoulders. Nothing has disappeared: your hair fiber simply coiled back on itself as it dried.

Stretching isn't straightening. You aren't undoing the pattern; you're elongating it for a hairstyle or a cut, and it returns after the next wash. Four methods achieve this, and they are not all equal: one is a step in our method, two come from family traditions, and the last is reserved for special occasions. All require the same thing to start: a prepared hair fiber. This is the work of the six steps of the Rituel Texture®, brought together in our step-by-step tutorial.

What we are trying to correct

Shrinkage is not a flaw of the hair fiber; it is its geometry. A curly hair grows out of the scalp through a curved follicle and coils back on itself at very close intervals. When wet, it hangs under its own weight; when dry, it regains its shape, and the visible length may represent less than half of its actual length. Nothing breaks, nothing is lost: hair that shrinks a lot is not hair that isn't growing. But this coiling multiplies friction points and knots, and that is where stretching ceases to be a matter of appearance: stretched hair is easier to detangle, more accurately cut, and less likely to tangle overnight.

Preparing the hair fiber

A dry hair fiber does not stretch; it gives way. A tangled fiber breaks as soon as you pull it. Regardless of the method chosen, everything depends on the initial condition of the hair, and this condition is built during the complete routine.

The detangling begins dry, with the fingers: this is detangling with the Chadian finger, the first step of the Rituel Texture®. We work with at least six sections, eight for very dense hair, holding the root with one hand and smoothing the section with the thumb of the other. Contrary to what is often read, it is not dry hair that breaks: it is the comb forced into a bare fiber, which no product makes slide. The Peigne de Man Dol', carved from buffalo horn sourced from the food industry, upcycled and handcrafted in Vietnam, comes later, once the lengths are coated with a mask and the fiber slides.

Finally comes La Crème Coiffante, on still-damp hair. It is what makes the section supple and manageable, and it is this suppleness, not the force of the gesture, that provides the gained length.

Method 1Blow-drying to stretch

This is the house method, and it is not a last resort. Stretching takes place here during step 05 of the Rituel Texture®, the protective drying: La Crème Coiffante applied to towel-dried lengths, then a bare blow dryer, small sections, a short, direct airflow that never stays in the same place. We described this drying step-by-step in another article. What we are focusing on here is the variant that elongates.

It comes down to a single decision, made at the end of each section. During an ordinary drying, you release the ends and let them coil back on themselves. To stretch, you keep them taut until the end, moving back toward the root in small strokes, and only let go once the section is dry all the way through. The rest does not change, starting with the width of the sections: a section that is too thick retains water in its core, and a section that retains water requires you to go back over it.

For a long time, blow-drying was described as the gesture to absolutely avoid on curly hair. We do not share this view. What costs length is the brush that pulls while heat passes through, and the fiber left bare under the device. When done under the conditions described above, heat stretches the hair without damaging it, and that is the full meaning of the word protective.

One clarification, because the question comes up at every training: the diffuser attachment is not the tool for this method. It was designed to respect a curl that is already formed, and it is only useful in rare cases on curly texture.

Method 2Vanilles and Bantu knots

Two sections twisted around each other, or a section wrapped around itself until forming a small knot: the principle is the same, and it requires no heat. The hairstyle is applied to damp hair, just after La Crème Coiffante, left to dry completely, and then undone. The stretch obtained is moderate, but the pattern remains neat.

Two details determine the result. The first: the tension is placed on the section, never at the scalp. A vanille tight at the root pulls on the follicle all night, and repeated traction on the hairline is the recognized mechanism of traction alopecia, documented in women and young girls who regularly wear braids and cornrows (Khumalo et al., Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 2008). The second: you never undo it on still-damp hair, under penalty of getting exactly the frizz you wanted to avoid.

To undo it, you unroll without pulling, then separate each vanille into two or three, no more: that is where volume is gained or lost. Our step-by-step guide for successful vanilles on curly hair covers the gesture.

Method 3Thread braids

This is the method that gives the most visible length, without heat either. On damp hair coated with cream, you separate into sections, start a supple base without tightening the scalp, then wrap each section with weaving thread all the way to the ends. The entire section must be covered: an end left free will dry shrunken and cancel out the work of the rest.

You keep the threads in place during the complete drying, often overnight, under a silk scarf. Upon waking, you remove the thread by unrolling without pulling, and separate the sections with your fingers to regain volume at the root. This is the most patient of the four gestures, and the one that works best on very dense hair. The thread also rests on already dry hair, to regain in the middle of the week a stretch that has sagged.

Method 4The flat iron

It exists, women use it, and ignoring it serves no one. We do not perform straightening at Les Ateliers Crépus, but we prefer to inform rather than let you search elsewhere. The iron gives a neat and immediate result, and it presents a risk that the other three methods do not: heat damage, the permanent loss of the pattern on the affected sections. No treatment repairs it, only a cut eliminates it, and this risk builds up over time.

If you are committed to it for an event, three precautions really make a difference. Go through a complete protective drying, so you only have to pass the iron once over each section. Apply La Crème Coiffante before this drying: it protects the fiber from heat. And stick to a few times a year, the iron remaining an evening exception and not a maintenance method.

Making the stretch last

A stretch successfully done on Saturday and undone on Sunday morning served no purpose, and the pillow decides. In the evening, you undo the hairstyle of the day, reapply a little La Crème Coiffante where the section is oldest, redo six tight knots on themselves but never at the root, and tie it over a silk scarf, the pillow also being dressed in silk. Cotton absorbs the water that the fiber contains; the bonnet, on the other hand, rises and leaves the hairline exposed. The scarf holds better.

What you should not do, however, is spray water to refresh the hairstyle: wetting your hair every day makes the fiber porous over time, and a re-wetted stretch is a lost stretch. Our nighttime hairstyles detail the evening protection.

Which one to choose

The choice depends less on your hair than on what you want to do with it that day. For a neat result, ready to be styled or cut, it is blow-drying, which is part of the Rituel Texture® instead of being added to it. For maximum heatless stretch, thread braids, if you have the evening ahead of you. To go fast on Sunday night and regain volume upon waking, vanilles or Bantu knots. The iron, meanwhile, remains the exception for one evening.

One last thing: stretching is not an obligation. It serves a cut, an appointment, or the comfort of a week without knots, and our article on length retention puts it back into perspective over time. A head of hair at rest, in its pattern, has nothing to correct.

Frequently asked questions

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Sources

• Khumalo N. P. et al., « Determinants of marginal traction alopecia in African girls and women », Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 2008.