Just Trim More Often: The Worst Hair Advice on the Internet

"Just trim your hair more often and it will be healthy." That is my favorite piece of internet advice, right up there with "drink eight liters of water" and "don't stress." It usually comes from people who appear to believe that hair is a lawn.

I have a lawn at home. I mow it. I know exactly how mowing works.

Hair is not a lawn. Hair is dead tissue growing out of a follicle at roughly one centimeter a month, and nothing that happens at the ends affects what comes out of your head. A trim does not make hair healthy. A trim makes hair shorter. These are different things.

But — and this is where I enrage half the internet — regular end trims are still necessary. Just not for the reason everyone gives.

The ends of your hair are its oldest part. They are two to three years old. They have survived the blow dryer, the sun, the sea, and that bleaching experiment of 2019. And like any old part of anything, they wear out. The cuticle at the tips erodes, the shaft starts splitting upward, and that is when a trim actually works: you remove the damaged section before the crack travels higher.

It does not "stimulate growth." It is demolishing a structurally compromised bridge before it collapses. Different jobs.

How often? Depends what you do to your hair. Hot tools daily plus lightening: ends every 8 to 10 weeks. Nothing at all, wash and bun: 12 to 16 weeks. Absolutely nothing, plus a hat: you are blessed, go write a novel instead of getting trims.

It is the cheapest insurance policy in the beauty industry. My favorite clients come in every three months for an ends trim as an add-on to their color appointment. It is 30 minutes and 10 euros when done with the color. It is the cheapest insurance policy in the beauty industry, and it is quietly built into our price list because I cannot convince people to come in for it otherwise.

By the way, about internet advice. "Hair gets used to cutting and grows faster" does not work on hair, lawns, or husbands. Hair growth is run by follicles, hormones, and what you eat. Trimming is not in the equation. Sorry.

What actually helps length: stop blow-drying daily, do not sleep with wet hair (pillow friction snaps wet hair more efficiently than anything else), and use a heat protectant that is actually a heat protectant, not just a spray with the words on the bottle.

Trim the ends now. And if you want long hair by August, trim the ends now. A split that has traveled five centimeters upward sets you back three months. The math is simple, but everyone who has ever trimmed their own ends with paper scissors ignores it.

Come in for an ends trim with your color: 30 minutes, 10 euros, and your long-term plans stay long. I will tell you the lawn story another time.