Curly Hair Management 101: French Braid Drying

So I have curly hair. It can be great but most of the time it's the worst. It's become a particular problem now that I am working full time. I am embarking on a journey to come up with styles that are easy to manage and look great! These are trials, not guarantees. I will include pictures and at the end I can let you know if I think it worked.

[ A brief history of my hair (You can skip this if you want to go straight to the experiment):

If I get up in time, I can straighten my hair. It takes around 20 minutes. Not a bad amount of time. I only do this after my hair air dries though. This is because I don't own a blow dryer. I did, but my mom stole it because I never used it. I didn't use it because I made the mistake for years of going to cheap hair stylists who just didn't understand my hair (It's not thick but there's a lot of if so catches them off guard) and they all did not know how to blow dry my hair. It always turned out poofy. Now I spend way too much money on my hair, and know that it is POSSIBLE for my hair to look nice after a blow dry. One of these days I will buy a hair dryer and it will be included in this project.

Back to air drying - this can take anywhere from an hour and a half to 3 hours. Quite annoying. So I usually shower the night before and then deal with the dry hair in the morning. My straight hair looks like this:

Now, I can also curl it with a rod curler. I have had no success with traditional clip curlers and rollers don't give me the look I want. But I invested $30 in a rod curler about 6 months ago and it had changed my life:

SO, that's about all the styles I can do as of now. Besides the french braid and the sock bun. I am officially a hair NOOB. ]

This first method is one I did when I was in Italy with my family, without a hair straightener, much like my situation now where my hair straightener is straight BROKE. Whatever. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book for straight haired ladies, you braid your hair as it dries and, voila, you have curls!

The issue us curly haired girls run into is that the top remains a frizzy mess and, also, WE ALREADY HAVE CURLS!

My hope is that if I switch up regular braids with french braids, in pig tails, on each side, this will hold the hair tight enough for the top part of my head to also dry pretty.

Now, I have to do this pretty early because hair takes longer to dry in french braid as there is no air circulation between the strands. So I'm getting my hair wet at like 7:30 and hoping that over 12 hours, while sleeping with the fan facing toward my head. It will be dry.

Step 1) Take a shower and get your hair wet.

Step 2) French braid your hair

Step 3) Wait

Result:

I'm ok with it. I don't love it but I'm not embarrassed. I am kind of capturing the "wildness" of my hair without it being terribly messy.

END OF DAY UPDATE!

It stayed okay. I have the tendency to play with my hair so, taking that into account, it held pretty well. But it is definitely a bit messier than I would like, optimally

FINAL SCORE:

Ease:               4.0 - the braids are easy but brushing the hair when wet was not fun

Time:               4.0 - The braiding and the removal were fine, but you had to wait around 12 hours for it to be mostly dry.

Result              2.5 - Not bad. Not Good. Utterly Average

Lasting Power 3.0 - Also average, but leaning on the side of better rather than worse.

Total: 3.38 (out of 5)