How Do Hair Extensions Work?

There are tons of different types of hair extensions on the market but most of them can be divided into one of two categories: individual strands and wefts. Individual strand extensions involve taking maybe twenty to fifty strands of extension hair (either natural or synthetic). These strands can be attached to your hair in many ways. They can be woven in, fused, glued or clamped to your natural hair using polymers, waxes, glue or wires. When you get this type of hair extensions there is inevitably some kind of damage to the hair where the fake hair has been clamped or glued on. It is simply an unavoidable part of the process.

Wefts look like little curtains of hair and can either be hand made or machine made. The best quality weft hair extensions are hand made and they can be custom ordered to match your own hair’s colour and texture perfectly. The wefts that are made from machine don’t tend to be as thick or last as long as the ones that are machine made.  The most realistic looking wefts are the ones that are made from natural hair.

Wefts are attached to you hair by attaching them to a tiny braid made out of your own hair. Hairdressers call these lateral braids (actually quite a bit like corn rows) the “track and the wefts are attached to this cornrow. The wefts are attached in the middle of your scalp beneath your hair so nobody can see them. The longer that you desire your hair to be, the more wefts that you would need attached to your scalp. It might take as many as nine wefts to achieve waist length hair. Shoulder length hair requires about five or six wefts.

Whether or not your hair extensions will look good on you depends a lot on the quality of the hair that you choose. Synthetic hair is not recommended unless you like the fake Barbie Doll hair look.  Fake hair like this is essentially shredded plastic.  Asian hair extensions are also not recommended. The hair on Asian people tears and splits easily and simply does not make natural looking or long lasting hair extensions. The hair that makes the highest quality extensions is usually marketed from southern Italy and Spain. It is sold in darker colours and bleached to match the lighter shades that people often demand. All human hair that is used for extensions is usually stripped of colour and retinted before it is marketed.

Another key to achieving a successful look with your hair extensions is to find a quality practitioner who works out of a highly rated, reputable salon that specializes in the art of applying them