Winter Hair Care Strategies to Protect Your Crown

There are various strategies and tips you can employ for effective winter hair care. The tips are generally for those with natural hair but those with other hair types may find value in them as well.

The information shared is for the benefit of those with an intent to protect their hair from breakage.

Winter Hair Strategies that Support Hair Goals

On the East Coast, when winter comes, it is in full swing.

As the temperatures drop and the air gets drier, it’s time to switch up your routines so you can give your hair the care it needs during these cold months.

The winter hair care routines you’re about to read will help support your hair goals.

So, to kick this off I will be sharing with you my top 3 strategies for effective winter hair care. These strategies will protect your hair from the harsh weather.

Following, I’ll go into how to care for your hair at night so you retain moisture, which is often challenging during the winter months.

Next, I’ll share the essential oils you’ll want to have on hand this season plus some simple DIY hair oil remedies to nourish your scalp to prevent excessive shedding, while strengthening your hair.

Top 3 Winter Hair Care Strategies

Let’s start with my top 3 tips or strategies for winter hair care. The first one is making sure you seal moisture into your hair using heavier products than you would normally use during the warmer months.

Strategy #1: Using Butters to Seal in Moisture in Place of Oils

So, for example, using butters like Shea butter or Mango butter in place of oils. The exception would be if you are wearing your hair out for a special occasion. I wouldn’t recommend wearing your hair out very often in the winter because then it’s exposed to the harsh climates which can quickly dry your hair out. So, I’d reserve wearing your hair out in the winter for special occasions only.

Strategy #2: Increasing Protective Styling

This ties in with the second strategy for effective winter hair care and that’s protecting your ends by increasing the amount of time you do protective styling.  In the winter I tend to protect my ends with styles like buns and pinned up twists nearly every day of the season. It greatly helps with length retention so if your goal is to grow longer hair during the winter months, protective styling will help a lot.

Strategy #3: Use Silk/Satin for Protection When Outdoors

The third strategy you could follow to protect your hair during the winter is to not only use silk or satin on your hair when you sleep but also when you are outdoors.  Even if you wear your hair out, you can loosely fold the ends of your hair up and wrap it with a satin or silk scarf until you reach your destination.

Night Time Routines

Now let’s talk about your nighttime routines.  This doesn’t need to be complicated and you want to avoid excess manipulation. My winter hair routine which allows me to retain a lot of length is to simply moisturize my hair as needed and to massage my scalp with a stimulating hair growth oil.

That’s it. Tend to your roots and your ends. Then, protect protect protect! How you set your hair for bed will be largely based on how you plan to style it the following day but if you are doing protective styles as I suggested, that will be very intuitive. Twists? Wrap them and pin them up. Buns? Loosen them and tie the hair down to keep it secure.

Using Essential Oils to Strengthen and Nourish

Using essential oils in your hair is also great for strengthening your hair and nourishing your scalp. The easiest way to add essential oils to your routine aside from buying a product containing them (which by the way you don’t really know how pure those oils are.

So, when you purchase them yourself, you can make sure you are using a therapeutic grade blend like what’s offered by Dottera or Young Living) the best way is to mix a few drops of an essential oil into a carrier oil that’s good for the scalp like jojoba oil, castor oil, or olive oil.

An easy DIY blend is 4 ounces of the carrier oil with 3-5 drops of the essential oil. 

Easy-to-find essential oils that you can use for stimulating your scalp are peppermint, rosemary or tea tree oil. You can create an easy blend using the carrier oil with the essential oil of your choice. 

Lavender essential oil is also good for calming an inflamed scalp. Just remember you always need to use a carrier oil with an essential oil. You don’t want to use an essential oil directly on the skin on its own because it can cause quite a bit of irritation.

Once you have a blend you are satisfied with, you can use it on your scalp but also all throughout your hair for strengthening or sealing in moisture. For example, a blend of olive oil and lavender essential oil is great for creating hot oil treatments that promote length retention.  

You can store your oil blend in a dark glass bottle or jar away from heat.

Scalp Care to Reduce Excess Winter Shedding

Finally, let’s talk excess shedding. While shedding is normal at 50-100 hairs per day, anything more than that is excessive and should be addressed immediately.

In the winter, some people tend to get more hair fall than others. If you find yourself shedding too much, some things you can do are first to make sure you are keeping your scalp hydrated and free of build-up. You can also try doing a black tea rinse on wash day. The chemical components of black tea cut down the production of the hormone DHT which causes some of that excess shedding. 

You can make an easy black tea rinse by brewing 2 bags of black tea in 2 cups of hot water. Let the tea cool and then after shampooing, pour the cooled tea all over your scalp, massaging it in, and allow it to sit for at least 10 minutes before rinsing. This can be easily done while you are working on your shower ritual (smile).

Another natural and easy way to reduce hair shedding is to ingest pumpkin seed oil. You can find supplements or you can rub an oil into your scalp. Pumpkin seed oil has compounds that may block the production of DHT.

A Balanced Diet

Also, let’s not forget the importance of eating a nutrient-rich diet that is balanced with vitamins and minerals.

Red meat isn’t the enemy, ladies. Unless you are a vegan or vegetarian, including some red meat in your diet is actually healthy provided your meat is sourced in a way where the cows are fed a diet that’s grass-fed and grass-finished.

I get my meat from the Butcher Box and all I can say is it tastes much better than what you can buy in any supermarket. I’ll leave a link to them in the show notes as well. They give away lots of free meat to new customers.

I hope you find these winter hair care tips useful and you are inspired to adjust your hair routines during these cold winter months.

Remember, you are fearfully and wonderfully made by God. So, prioritize nurturing and honoring your body as His temple.

If you enjoyed or found today’s episode helpful, please share it with someone who may need the tips and/or leave a review to help others find this content. You’ll also find additional educational hair care resources and printable planners in the Faithful Living Shop.

Until next time, stay faithful, stay beautiful, and keep caring for your crown luv!

Resources Mentioned In The Podcast Episode: 

Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/Finenaturalhairandfaith1

The Faithful Living Shop: https://shop.finenaturalhairandfaith.com/collections/all-products

Butcher Box: https://shop.butcherbox.com/partners/try-bb-free?coupon_code=EGTB-495321-uhAuOyKH&utm_source=referral&utm_medium=copy_link (you’ll get you first box free! just pay for shipping)