When you have thick hair, the hassle is often the same: stuck brushes, endless blow-drying, emergency bun from 8:30 a.m. However, everywhere we see names of cuts promising lightness, from the soft shag to the butterfly cut, without always knowing which ones really simplify life.
Celebrity hairdressers agree on one thing: on dense hair, the right cut must above all remove weight, create movement and reduce styling time, not necessarily shorten it at all costs. All you have to do is find the one that will finally save you ten precious minutes every morning.
Thick hair: understanding what really lightens the routine
Hairstylist Scott Martinez points out that thickness corresponds to the diameter of each fiber, while density refers to the number of hairs on an area of the scalp. You can therefore have thick hair but little density, or the opposite, and the choice of cut will not be the same in each case.
For hairdresser Tamás Tüzes, “the trick is not to cut everything, it’s to remove material in the right places so that it moves and doesn’t seem heavy“, he explains to Vogue. He adds that “thick hair is a great base: it has volume, keeps shape and offers lots of possibilities“. The objective of the following cuts starts exactly from this idea.
17 cuts for thick hair that can be styled (almost) by themselves
On the short side, the textured pixie, the bixie, the textured bob, the graduated bob and the cloud bob are well suited to thick hair, provided you thin out the inside to avoid the helmet effect. For mid-lengths, the lob, the soft shag, the curly wolf cut, the cropped wolf cut and the French Bombshell cut lighten the mass and accept air drying very well.
If you really like lengths, long layers, feathery layers, marquise layers, the butterfly cut, face-framing pieces, curtain bangs and even a simple side part allow you to keep the length while opening the face. Tüzes describes long layers with curtain bangs and framed highlights as “probably the easiest and most universally flattering option” because you can often style just the front and let the rest live its life.
Thick hair: cutting mistakes and correct styling gestures
Hairstylist to the stars Chris Appleton warns against ultra-smooth blow-drying, micro-bangs, poorly placed layers and overly structured cuts, which freeze the features and require constant maintenance. On thick hair, these choices stiffen the mass, amplify regrowth and require you to take out the hair dryer almost every day.
To make any of these cuts even easier to live with, the pros recommend a microfiber towel, a light leave-in treatment, a little styling product and air or diffuser drying as soon as the cut allows. Many women with thick hair discover that by opting for a well-placed layered cut and focusing only on the bangs or the front, their hair finally becomes a morning asset, not a headache.