Senegalese Twists – protective hairstyle

Posted by admin on Mar 11, 2012 in Protective Hairstyles | 1 comment

I took out the kinky twists after 5 weeks since they were slipping out far too much.  I went to the salon, twice, to have sections redone but they still kept slipping out.  I was afraid of losing twists as I walked down the street so I just took them out.

I found a new braider who appeared to do good work and I had new twists installed.  Although we used the same hair, Janet Collection Afro Kinky 24 inch, the style looks totally different.  It also took much longer this time.  The kinky style took 5 hours (103 twists for $100) while these thinner, smoother twists (73 twists, also $100) took 8 hours to install.  There was a second day of touching up as well, and adding different hair.  That took an additional 3.5 hours so 11.5 hours total.   All in all I am pleased with the style and will have these Senegalese twists done again; however, I am not sure I’d use Janet Collection hair since it’s too short to fully cover my own hair.  My twists are longer than the usual so the braider “feed in” additional hair to get the length I wanted just like feed in cornrows.  Although the Janet Collection Kinky Afro package says 24 inches, the hair is nowhere near 24 inches long such that if folded in half, you will not get two 12 inch pieces.  In fact, I think the hair is more like 12 inches long such that folding it in half will give you two 6 inch sections.  Hair had to be added to extend each twist, which was time consuming because we wanted each section to be uniform, unlike with the kinky twists which were sort of puffy.  She also twisted each section to the end.  With the kinky twists they were twisted just beyond my hair and then left loose, to be sealed by hot water.

We ended up using Marley Braid hair which is about 30 inches long, unstretched.  The Marley hair did not need to be extended for my hair length.  As of today I would use Marley hair again; however, it does seem a bit more coarse and may require me to moisturize my hair more often than with the Janet Collection hair which the braider and I agreed was softer and possibly less drying to my own hair.  It’s not anything new to experienced braid wearers but extension hair can be drying to your own hair so you do need to moisturize your braids regularly.  I moisturize my hair at least once per day while wearing extensions.