When to cut your coily hair, and how often: beyond “just the ends”

You sit down in the chair and say, more as a warning than a request: “just the ends”. Behind those words are years of watching for length that never seems to come.

The fear is understandable. But it rests on a misunderstanding: what costs coily hair its length is almost never the cut, it is what you let set in by not cutting. Here is what a trim actually does, how often to plan one, how to spot the right moment despite shrinkage, and what happens when you keep putting it off. For the care that lets you space out your trims, our step-by-step tutorial walks through the six steps of the Rituel Texture®.

The mechanismWhy the ends give way first

An end is old. On shoulder-length hair, it left the scalp three or four years ago, and it has been through every wash, every detangling session and every style since. The layer that protects it, the cuticle, wears away gradually from the top of the strand to the bottom: intact at the root, frayed at the tip. When it finally gives way, the fibre splits lengthwise.

On coily hair, two factors speed up this countdown. The first is the shape of the fibre: it changes direction very often, and every bend is a place where it thins and folds. Dermatological research has measured this fragility, along with a slightly slower growth rate than in other textures (Loussouarn, British Journal of Dermatology, 2001). The second is sebum, produced at the root, which travels poorly along such a tightly coiled fibre and almost never reaches the end. Structurally, then, the ends are the driest and oldest part of your head.

That is why a split end is not a care accident. It is a deadline, one you can push back with good care, but cannot cancel. Our article on protecting your ends explains what holds it off most effectively.

The real questionWhat a cut does, and what it does not

Let's start with what it does not do, because that is the promise you hear most. Cutting does not make hair grow faster. Growth happens at the follicle, under the skin, at the other end of the hair, and nothing you do to the ends reaches that far. No treatment can glue a split fibre back together either, whatever the bottle says: a smoothing product closes the split visually for a few hours, until the next wash.

What a cut does, on the other hand, is very concrete. A split fibre does not stop where the split begins: it keeps tearing upwards, and the strand breaks further up, often well above the damaged area. Taking off one centimetre the day the split appears saves you losing four, six months later. The gap between the two explains most of the length you think you do not have.

Hair rid of its split ends also detangles faster, and faster detangling means less tension, and so less breakage. A cut works twice: once on the fibre it removes, once on all the others. This is the mechanism known as length retention, and on coily hair it matters far more than growth rate itself.

The rhythmHow often to cut

The usual benchmark is a maintenance trim every three months, of about one centimetre. It is not a lab rule, it is a rhythm that roughly follows the pace of wear on well-cared-for hair, and it has a practical advantage: at this frequency there is never much to take off, so there are never any nasty surprises in the mirror.

The principle matters more than the number. The more often you cut, the less you cut each time. Waiting a year does not save length, it forces you to lose several centimetres in one go, because the splits have had time to travel up. The intuitive calculation is exactly backwards, and that is what makes the fear of cutting so costly.

Two situations justify booking appointments closer together. The first is regular heat use or colouring: the cuticle opens, wear speeds up and the ends turn pale. The second is visible breakage, strands left in your hand when detangling or an end that frays into fine threads. On the other hand, hair worn in protective styles for much of the year, with ends that have stayed supple, copes very well with an appointment every five or six months. The calendar follows the condition of the fibre, not the date.

ObservationSpotting the moment despite shrinkage

Shrinkage complicates the check more than anything else: a fibre coiled up on itself hides its own ends, and what you see from above is never the tip. Anything you observe on hair at rest will tell you nothing.

So start by stretching. Simply pull a strand taut between two fingers, or smooth it flat, without needing to blow-dry it fully. Then slide it slowly between your thumb and index finger, right to the end. A healthy end glides through without catching. A damaged end snags, looks noticeably thinner than the rest of the strand, or ends in a tiny knot you cannot undo. Repeat in three places, including the nape, because different areas wear at different rates.

Two other signs are worth a check. The first is detangling that has become harder although nothing has changed in your routine: it is the split ends catching on each other. The second is length that has been stuck for months although new growth is visible at the root. In that case it is not growth that has stopped, it is the bottom of your hair breaking off as fast as it grows.

In the salonHow a cut works in the salon

On coily hair, the cut does not open the appointment, it closes it. It is done dry, on stretched hair, after protective drying: that is the only state in which the strand falls at its true length, and so the only one in which the length promised will be the length you get. Cutting wet hair means working on hair that is going to shrink back within hours, and the result is always a surprise, never a good one.

A trained hairdresser then works section by section, with Le Peigne de Man Dol' or a wide-tooth comb, following the shape of your head rather than a horizontal line. They cut for the hair you actually wear: if you never wear your hair loose, a cut designed to be worn out is pointless. It is a conversation as much as a technical skill, and the final length stays a shared decision.

The right thing to say is not a number of centimetres, it is an intention: take off what is damaged, no more. A professional who knows the texture will know where to stop. If you do not yet know who to go to, our criteria are gathered in how to find a good hairdresser, and the full technique is described in our article on cutting coily hair.

At homeCutting at home, and how far to go

A shape cut is not something to improvise in front of the bathroom mirror. Trimming your ends is, as long as you stick to that and accept that the result will be decent rather than perfect.

The safest method uses twists. On dry, detangled hair, part into sections, twist each section on itself all the way to the end, then snip the tip of the twist where the fibre becomes visibly lighter and thinner. The twist gathers the ends together and saves you cutting blind. Proper hairdressing scissors are essential: a blunt blade crushes the fibre and creates exactly the split ends you were trying to remove.

Finally, two limits. Hair damaged over several centimetres is a job for the salon, because you need to go higher than you would dare yourself. And a change of shape, a short cut or layers, cannot be achieved by snipping twists: it is structural work that needs an outside eye.

Frequently asked questions

Further reading

Sources

• Loussouarn G., “African hair growth parameters”, British Journal of Dermatology, 2001.
• Robbins C. R., Chemical and Physical Behavior of Human Hair, Springer, chapter on cuticle wear and trichoptilosis.