How to Stop Hair Webbing in Natural Hair : Fine Natural Hair Care & Faith-Based Wellness

Last updated on August 5th, 2024 at 07:23 pm

Webbing in natural hair is something that usually occurs when hairs at the root tangle up into what looks like a web. However, it can occur further away from the root as well. In this article, you’ll discover how to stop hair webbing.

Hair webbing can occur for a number of reason but the major cause for hair webbing is a lack of adequate moisture. A few additional reasons your hair may begin to “web up” are:

excess tangling

extended protective styling

damaged hair

As someone who has fine hair, I can tell you that I’ve only had webbing occur at the roots. It makes sense too because that’s the part of your hair that’s always exposed. Hence, it dries out much faster than the rest of your hair.

Moisturizing to stop hair webbing

The first thing you want to address is making sure you keep your hair moisturized at all times. Being proactive, even.

That means, don’t allow your natural hair to dry out. Moisturize it before that happens. Specifically, the areas of your hair that are more prone to webbing, like the crown section of your hair.

Preventing tangles to prevent hair webbing

The second order of business to prevent hair webbing in natural hair is to make sure you don’t allow your hair to roam free too often. Doing so will just increase tangles and the chance that your hair will begin to web up.

Consider protective styling your hair at least 90% of the time.

Keep your hair stretched

While wearing your hair in its naturally curly state doesn’t necessarily cause hair webbing, it does increase the rate of tangling. It also causes your hair to dry out faster.

Therefore, wearing your hair in a stretched state helps reduce tangles and prevents your hair from drying out as quickly.

It’s a well known fact that natural hair is dryer because the sebum (your God given natural moisturizer) that comes from your scalp has difficulty making it down the hair shaft due to all the grooves that come with kinks and curls.

When your hair is stretched, sebum can travel much easier down the hair shaft.

Lubricating your strands

As important as moisturizing, is lubing up your strands. Lubricated strands allow for much freer movement of the hair.

So, while you’ll want to use an oil to seal in moisture, every few days, work a little oil throughout your hair as well.

Cut out Extended Protective Styling

Lastly, don’t keep your protective styles in too long. The longer you leave your protective style in, the more hair growth is realized at the root and more shed hairs will mix in with that new growth.

The result will be hair webbing. Additionally, the longer your protective style is in, the more dirt and oils will settle into your hair.

The best hairstyle to prevent hair webbing

While the most important key to putting a stop to hair webbing is keeping your hair moisturized, how you style your hair can greatly assist.

There are many protective styles that you can choose from the best one to stop hair webbing is braids without additional hair added to it.

After styling my hair in twists and braids for many years, I noticed one thing. It’s the braids that keep my roots from webbing up. Braids allow your hair to lay completely smooth.

And, of course you want to make sure you moisturize your braids between wash day. Check out:

How to Moisturize and Seal Braids on Natural Hair

There may be times when your hair is moisturized and literally just detangled, but you experience webbing further down the hair shaft.

That’s when you need to examine your hair to determine if a trim is in order to get rid of damaged and damaging ends.

To sum it up, you can prevent and even stop webbing in natural hair (especially fine natural hair) by simply: