Here’s usually what happens when a guy wants to grow out their hair.
They’ll decide they want a longer hairstyle, they’ll let it grow out for a month or 3, hate the way it looks in the awkward stage and drive themselves insane trying to talk themselves out of cutting it every 3 minutes after getting a glimpse in the mirror,
….and eventually THEY WILL succumb to doing it at a moment of weakness.
If that sounds like you, listen up because we’re going to give you a road map on how to grow out your hair and finally get those luscious locks you’ve always dreamed of.
Since this is a roadmap you’re going to need a beginning and an end point.
What’s your grown out hair ideally going to look like? Are you trying to go for a slicked back medium flow, a man bun, or Jason Mamoa?
Having an end goal is mandatory because you need to calculate exactly how long it’s going to take to grow out your hair and work around that timeline.
Here are some examples of end goals for long hair:
It’s also really helpful to have an end goal because a skilled stylist can help you reach it more efficiently. For example if you want something like a Leonardo DiCaprio hairstyle, they might give you an undercut and tell you to grow it out for a few months.
But for this article we’re going to assume you’re starting with a buzzcut.
So now you’ve got your hair goal in mind, maybe you’ve saved some images of what you hope it will look like. It’s time to create the roadmap to get you there.
The Beginning (0-3 months)
So you’ve buzzed your hair, I like to call this the tennis ball phase because your hair is going to grow out evenly all around making your round head look like a fuzzy tennis ball.
It’s important to know that the average length of hair growth is about half an inch per month. To really begin to look longhaired, you’ll need at least nine inches of hair.
If we average it out, that’s about a year and couple of months for most guys to have that long haired look.
During these first few months you have very short hair and much better access to your scalp, so it’s the perfect time to create a healthy scalp and give it the conditions to grow thick, healthy hair.
This means doing a few things.
Note that you can do all of these or skip all of these. It depends on what you’re trying to improve.
- Scalp exfoliation – helps with dry flakes that are often confuse with dandruff (use a scalp scrubber).
- Rosemary Oil – nourishes and moisturizes your scalp and has shown evidence of hair growth and hair thickening. (Recommended: Mielle Rosemary Oil For Hair)
- Diet – eat plenty of protein, eggs are amazing. They’re natures multivitamin.
if you’re too lazy get an all-in-one hair vitamin like sugarbear.
Now here’s the secret to avoiding the awkward phase when growing out your hair.
The key is in the longest strand of hair at the front of your scalp.
This hair tells us how much we can clean up and trim the hair without losing growth. If you lay down this strand of hair to the side, anywhere below it is what you can trim an clean up without messing up the growth of your long hair.
At around 2-3 months we get our first clean up.
From here on out, every month or two depending on how fast your hair grows, we get a clean up following the front strand rule. So your next haircut might be a side part.
and after a few months after that you’ll no longer be able to buzz the sides super short, so your hair is going to start taking shape.
and now we’re about 6+ months of hair growth in and you have officially what I call “home stretch hair” which means the hair has a nice shape, it’s officially treading into “long hair” territory, and you’ve managed to avoid most if not all of the awkward phase.
From here on out, I suggest getting a trim very rarely to clean it up, cut off split ends and just keep it neat, but you definitely don’t want to over do it and accidently lose months of growth.
So let’s summarize the first 6 months of our hair journey:
- Start with short hair
- With easier access to our scalp, create an environment for healthy growth
- In the first 2 months, get a low taper, fade or trim to avoid tennis ball head.
- Follow the front strand rule to avoid the awkward stage.
Example:
- After 3 months get a side part
- After 4 months get a gentleman’s cut, which is basically a grown out side part
- 6 Months is the beginning of home stretch hair, slight trims is all you need until your goal.
Now here’s where you guys might think the journey ends, but it’s just beginning.
Most men have no idea how to take of their longer hair, which is why it often turns into a greasy, stringy, frizzy mess. If you’ve had short hair all your life, this is going to be a new world, you’re actually going to have to take care of it now if you want the kind of long hair that actually looks good.
This is going to mean finding the right products for your hair, using hair oils, hair masks, specific shampoos and conditioners, having a specific washing schedule – if you thought it was easy, you thought wrong. Having actual long hair that looks good is hard work.
With all that in mind, we will make a specific article and video on all of this so you don’t have to worry about finding all of this information yourself.