Hair | 10 Protective Hairstyle Ideas

I'm protective styling as much as possible for the rest of the cold season to help keep my hair more moisturised (more on what else I'm doing here). Even though it's now March, Spring is currently on hold in London with the arrival of a lot of (surprisingly) snowy weather! I've been looking back at a few ways I've styled my hair protectively in the past as a result and thought I'd share a mix of examples here. This is not an exhaustive list, wigs and extensions are also great protective styles but I left them out as it's been a very long time since I've tried either but hopefully the below gives you a few ideas when you're trying your next protective style.

The key to protective styling is compacting your hair together in some way so it's more protected than if it was left hanging completely free and the more covered the better. Some of the hairstyles here are super easy to do whilst others require a bit more skill but the beauty of protective styling is it doesn't have to be complicated.

I like to keep things simple, so I tend to wear buns the most occasionally switching it up with braids or a mix of the two. My favourite protective hairstyle I've done recently is faux locs (below) which I'd never tried before and it's the easiest wholly protective hairstyle I've done so I'll be more experimental in the future.