how often should you trim ends?

Hello Jkat!

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the boards, glad you joined us!

While there isn't necessarily a need to trim for health reasons, unless your hair is severely damaged, as Dave mentioned, it depends on your reason to trim.

Some trim for a neat and tidy appearance, some trim to keep split ends away, some trim for change, and even some, like myself, trim on a regular basis to allow other lengths to catch up when trying to achieve all one length or otherwise. In my case, they were bangs. It all depends on what you prefer.

As you mentioned a trim 'so the length isn't messed up', I get the impression that you are trying to grow or maintain your length. In fact, if your ends are not damaged, split, or otherwise, you may not need to trim at all. A good trim once in a while does make you feel good about your hair.

Hope you will return to the forums often.

Karen Marie

 

 

Welcome jkat118!

THe answers to your questions depend in part on the answer to this: what do you want your hair to be like?  Longer (and if so how much), and less or more layering (or none).

We trim Jennifer's hair very rarely ... I think we've trimmed a half inch to an inch off twice in the last year or more.  Her hair grows between a half inch and an inch per month, so she's probably gained about 8-9 inches or more during that time.  Her hair has that v-shaped look of hair that isn't trimmed very often, but the plan is to get it long quickly and then begin to cut off any damage when it's the length she wants.  If you want to keep split ends off, I'd guess that about 1/4 inch every 3 months would be plenty as long as you care for it by staying away from hot irons and hair driers during those 3 months.  If you want to keep it growing, you don't want to trim any more than necessary so don't trim until the split ends are really bothering you and then only trim enough to remove the splits.  Some people in this forum use the "Search and Destroy" method where they periodically search for split ends and just remove the damaged split ends.  Hope this helps.