MAINTENANCE 101

★ Brush the extensions morning and night. Start from the bottom and work your way to the top, to ensure there are no tangles. It is very important to brush thoroughly to avoid matting, but not yank through the hair, as it is attached to small sections of your natural hair. Brushing too aggressively can cause damage. With wefts, you can use one hand to 'hold' the top of the weft while brushing through the rest to minimize tugging on the natural hair.

★ Preferably pull your hair back into a lose braid or low pony to sleep. NEVER go to bed with wet hair.

★ It is not recommended to air dry the hair. Wefts can sag when they are wet for extended periods of time. At the very least, blow dry the top/root of the extensions to avoid this.

★ Use a salon quality sulfate-free shampoo and conditioner to wash your extensions 1-3x a week. Any more than this can dry the hair out more than usual. When shampooing, try not to scrub the ends of the extensions, focus on the root area instead. Apply conditioner only from the jaw down, to the ends of the hair. When wearing tape ins, using conditioner on the root can cause the tape to slip. Keep products using alcohol and oily products away from tape in tabs.

★ It is very important to be gentle with your hair extensions. They are attached to small amounts of your own hair. While extensions themselves will not harm your hair, rough handling of them will pull and may cause damage.

★ Avoid heat styling on a daily basis, and keep the temperature below 350°. Always use a heat protectant! Keep heat styling away from the tape in tabs to avoid melting the glue.

★ Hair extensions do not produce the natural oils that your own hair does. For this reason, the extensions are more prone to becoming dry. Using proper products such as salon quality moisturizing shampoos and conditioners along with moisture treatments, hair oils, and heat protectants is highly recommended to combat this.

★ Swimming with your extensions will drastically shorten their lifespan, and I highly recommend avoiding it if you can. If you are planning on swimming, applying a generous amount of conditioner, concentrated on the ends, and braiding the hair will help the extensions not tangle as much. If wearing tape ins, avoid conditioning the tapes. Salt water and chlorine can caused tabs to break down, and will also strip the color out much faster. Activities taking place in a constant damp environments, such as steam baths or saunas, or excessively hot environments such as tanning beds may lessen the longevity of the extensions. Dry hair as soon as possible after these activities.

★ You will need a maintenance appointment every 6-10 weeks (depending on type of extensions and hair growth) to have the extensions moved up. The tape-in method needs to be moved up more often at 6-8 weeks.

★ Wefts are sewn into hair quite tight and can cause some minor itching/discomfort for up to a week after installation due to hair being close to the scalp.

★ Avoid sunscreens containing the ingredients avobenzone or octocrylene. As a rule of thumb, mineral based sunscreens are safer for the extensions. Sunscreens containing these ingredients can cause the extensions to turn orange, and this is almost impossible to correct once the damage is done. I recommend the brands sunbum or alba botanical, but any mineral based sunscreen not containing those ingredients will do.

★ Some extension loss and shedding is normal and to be expected. Expect to lose 1-4 tape-in extensions in a month. When moving up tape-ins, you can expect to see natural shedding trapped in between the tapes from the 50-150 hairs naturally shed a day. There will also be natural shedding trapped in the beads that the wefts are secured to. This is normal!