How to Trim Long Hair at Home (The Right Way)

You’ve seen those do-it-yourself home hair fails. We all have. Go search YouTube. Check it out.

I’m not laughing at them, I’m just saying YouTube is an incredible resource to learn things, but it can also be a very dangerous place to learn things.

You want to know how to trim long hair at home.

Don’t stress it, I’ve got you covered in this article. I’m going to share exactly how you trim your own hair at home.

Let’s dive in how to trim your hair at home.

First things first!

Table of Contents

Tools

You’re going to need some tools.

You’re going to need a brush. This brush is going to be used to comb out the tangles.

Then you’re going to need the comb. The comb is obviously going to be to comb the sections so that we can start to cut.

You’re going to need your straight shears and you’re going to need or ideally you would use thinning shears or texturizing shears if you have them. If you don’t have these, it’s not going to stop you from doing this, but it will be a little bit easier. If you do have these great, if not, no stress.

You’re also going to want a water bottle. It’s going to be important that we keep your hair not dripping wet, but towel blotted, if you will. So you want to make sure that the moisture level is somewhat even. You’ll use this in case it takes a little while and pieces start to dry up.

Then you’re going to also need six rubber bands.

Let’s dive into the steps.

Steps

First you’re going to clean your hair. Get it wet, make sure that it’s clean. If you do this on dry hair, it can be done. The only thing is a lot of times, especially on thicker textures, it could run you into a situation where it just feels like there’s so much hair to manage. It becomes a little bit less clean, a little bit less neat and you end up with a result that just isn’t quite as polished.

Start combing through your hair just to get the tangles out and make sure that it is nice and ready to be cut.

Once you feel like you have the tangles out, move on to next step.

The next step is you’re going to determine where you part your hair.

If you part your hair down the center, then you’re going to part it down the center. If you put your hair on one specific side all the time, you’re going to part it on that side. If you flip your hair back and forth, you’re going to part it down the center again.

If you part your hair on both sides, you’re going to take a center part and part your hair from the center of hairline, all the way back down to the back of your neck.

Next step, once you have that part down the center, you’re going to now part your hair from the top of your head to the top of your ear, right behind the ear. Take a section on both sides from the center of the head all the way down to the top of the ears.

Once you are done with one side and before you move on to the next side, put that front section in a ponytail, so that you can manage it and get it out of the way.

Make sure that that’s combed real neatly. It’s important that these sections are neat. If they’re messy, the cut is going to be messy.

Keep in mind that the cut is only as clean as your parting. So try to keep that hair combed neatly.

Now we’re going to take a section on the other side, from crown to the ear and then we’ll part the front and then we’ll put the front in a ponytail the same way we did on first side.

Now in the back sections (you’ve got two sections in the back ), what you want to do is, you’re going to turn these into four sections. You’re going to split both of these sections down the middle.

What you’re gonna do is grab one of those two sections and you’re gonna put it in a ponytail to separate it so that you don’t have to worry about it.

Once you are done, you have your hair parted into six sections.

You have two in front of the ears, one right behind the ear and then you have two in the very back. These in the very back are not super thick, they’re the right size so it’s just this back panel or section of hair.

The next step after you’ve got that completed is you’re going to pull all of these pieces forward and you’re going to use rubber bands as guides to your length.

You need to determine what length you want this to end up.

What you’re going to do is you’re going to start with the front and you’re going to pull those rubber bands to mark the length that you want.

Now what we want to do with these rubber bands is we want to use them as a gauge to determine that it’s going to be even.

Another important thing is that if you’re standing when you do this, that’s great, but try not to be standing too far off of center right. So stand up, stand square, look straight in the mirror.

If you’re sitting down, don’t cross your legs, don’t do anything like that. Make sure that your shoulders are square, so that you can be sure that those are even.

Next thing you’re going to do is going to take the second section from the back, you’re going to pull them forward and you’re going to do the same thing. You’re going to match the same height with the rubber band as you did with the front sections.

The last thing we’ll do after this is we’ll check those just to be sure that they’re all good.

Look at them and just hold your head at a normal position, don’t be looking down too much, don’t be looking up too much, just look straight ahead and make sure that those look even.

One trick to this is if you feel like you’re not really telling if they’re even or not, you can always put your comb across there and try to parallel your comb to the floor or to a countertop and see does that actually look even or do they feel like it maybe it’s a little bit uneven.

The last sections you have to deal with are these sections in the back.

You’re going to pull them forward but at this I want you to actually take that rubber band about a half an inch higher than the front rubber bands.

We’re going to take a little bit more length out of this back section and the reason for that is because that’s going to allow us to cut a straight line.

If you want a rounded line in the back, you’re going to leave these rubber bands the same length as the other rubber bands and what you’ll end up with is a little bit more length in the very center of your back.

But again, if you want it to be straight across or straighter across, you’re going to want to bring these rubber bands up a little bit shorter and they’re going to help it to be a little bit straighter.

Then the last thing you want to do is to make sure that you are going to pull the last pieces out of the way and then you want to make sure that those two look even.

Trimming

Now you’re going to take your straight shears or your thinning shears.

Thinning shears are going to be a little bit, I don’t want to say harder, but a little bit more intense to use, but they will give you a little bit of a softer line. The more blunt you cut these ponytails, the more lines you’re going to see in the back.

If you’re off at all, you’re going to notice that.

Grab one of those ponytails and cut right below the rubber band, not above it.

What you’re going to do is you’re going to make sure that you don’t just snip it off. You’re going to take smaller motions. This is going to help break up those ends just a little bit, so that you get a little bit of texture and it’s not quite so blunt. You are going to give it a very tiny amount of texture at the very bottom of that line, which is just gonna help this to look a little bit more polished.

Then we’re gonna do all of them the same as you just did that one now.

The next step is you’re gonna comb it all back into one ponytail. You’re gonna want it wet, at least damp for this, so spray your hair down just a little bit with that water bottle, just to make sure that it’s an even dampness.

Last thing you’re gonna do is you’re gonna pull it all straight back and you’re gonna pull it into a very low ponytail.

Take that ponytail, grab it from behind and pull it to whatever side is comfortable for you.

What you’re going to see is, when you pull this out, if you just use your fingers and start to smooth this out a little bit, like a beaver tail, that there are some extra long stuff.

Lay this down and just snip into it, what we would call point cutting so that it’s a little bit textured. If you want to go blunt with it, you can.

Just understand that anytime you cut a line in there, you’re going to notice any imperfections in that line.

In The End

Dry you hair and you take a look at it. If there’s anything that you need to clean up after it’s dry, you can just turn around and snip it. Pull the little pieces of hair forward and snip the little tiny ones off.

You should be pretty straight from that point forward.

I hope that helped you understand a little bit more about how to trim your hair at home the right way.

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