Growing Out a Bad Haircut

If you clicked on this post, the odds are that you have been in this potion: you go to a new salon, you want a new cut, and then by the time you leave you are regretting every choice you have made that lead you to that salon in the first place. Sounds familiar?

Last April my stylist I had been seeing for several years moved to another state and I was left to find a new stylist. The first time I saw this woman, we will call her Beth, was to get a trim on my fairly grown-out hair. Beth did great with a simple trim and just getting things shaped up, but when I came back about 6 weeks later to chop my hair, things went south quickly. I came in with multiple reference photos, we talked through the cut and the shape I was looking for, and the fact that in June I was going to be a bridesmaid in my cousin’s wedding and needed it to grow out well since I wouldn’t have time for a shape up before the wedding. I left no stone unturned. I over-communicated the whole thing. And a year later I am almost done with the whole grow out.

Here are the photos I came in with:

I was looking to go shorter, but also add some layers and LIGHT texture so there was movement and it didn’t look like a mom bob. And like I said above; I wanted some leeway when it came to grow out so it would look cute without a trim. We talked about face shape. I truly gave her as much info as I possibly could and we talked this topic to death. I felt so confident going in.

This is what I got:

The first photo shows what it looks like when I left the salon: cute and wavy, sat super nice, and the next morning I woke up with it even more cute and messy! I thought it was great and so fun. The next day when I decided to see what it looked like blow and straight, I found the following photos. Not only was the length uneven at the bottom, but. the texture was so aggressive and so one-sided, it made the hair on the right side look dented and the bottom so thin. The first thing I did was lose my mind and frantically freak out to everyone who would answer my texts and Snapchat. Next, my favorite hairstylist who moved away counseled me on what to ask next time I went into the salon to get it shaped up. I went and saw the stylist who wrecked my haircut and just had her even out the bottom so that the ends were at least all the same length, regardless of all the weird choppy bits. And really that was step 1: evening it out as best I could. This is my first bit of advice. Get the parts even that you can without chopping off all your hair (unless you want to do that) and then proceed carefully to step 2.

Step 2: Figure out what styles make it look ok. You are most likely not going to love everything your hair is doing while you grow it out, but there are going to be certain styles and things you can do for your hair that look better than others. Play around with it and see what looks good! I found that I couldn’t wear my hair straight or natural at all. I HAD to curl it or else you could the dent that the haircut had left. When I had it curled, you coudln’t really tell unless I pointed it out that something was weird about it. As you can see down below, I would straighten the bottom layer to keep it from getting too poofy (since I have pretty thick hair) and then I would curl the top layer and then some other random pieces to make it look messy and fun.

Step 3: Get some hair accessories. Get some fun clips, scarves, hats, literally anything to add to your collection to keep it fun and hide the issues presenting themselves. If your hair is long enough to put into a ponytail or a bun, that’s also a viable option to hide it while it grows! I wore a lot of little space buns and half-up buns because the top layer of my hair was really the issue. I also started taking biotin vitamins again to really boost my hair growth and hoping things would get healthy and just grow as quickly as possible.

Step 4: Maintenance cuts and highlights. This sounds counterintuitive but it really is important to fixing/hiding your bad haircut. I gave it about 3 months of just growing it out before I had another cut or added any hair color to the mix. A friend of mine from high school had started doing hair (which sounds risky but I had been following her work and she was and still is killing it!) so I made an appointment for a shape up and a balayage so she could help me with some of the award shapes starting to form. She did a great shape up and helped minimize the look of the truly weird layers on the right side, and by adding the balayage she gave me dimension that not only made it all look refreshed, but also helped blur some of the more noticeable issues I had from the first cut. Below is what it looked like after all of this!

Last but not least, Step 5: Repeat all the above steps until it’s grown out. I know that sounds horrible but the worst part about the whole thing is the waiting game you have to do. Keep getting regular trims so that you can keep up with the weird layers growing out. Get creative and keep playing around with it to keep it fun while you grow it out and deal with the repercussions. If you know your stylist well and have been seeing them for a while and they just made a mistake, then calmly and kindly tell them what’s wrong and your concerns so the two of you can come to a solution together. Stylists are human so they are bound to make mistakes now and then and if they are good stylists, they will work with you on how to deal with the fallout. If like me, this is a new stylist for you, I would say it is not worth it to have this conversation. Go back to get it evened out as much as you can since they should do this touch-up for free, but then look for another stylist. You don’t have to agree, but this is my personal advice to handling all of this. Maybe any hair stylists can chime in and let us all know what they would prefer? I would love to have another perspective!

This last photo is my hair 7 months after this whole debacle, with a new cut that finally evened out most of this mess. It still has a small uneven patch on the right side but my new stylist and I agreed that it would have been too short for my indecisiveness so we got it all even minus the shortest chunk, but even though I know it’s there, you can’t tell! My hair is almost all situated and I couldn’t be happier.

I hope this helped at least one of you if at least to let you know that you are not suffering alone, and we can all get through the bad haircut together!

Madey