Among the African American community the 360 waves hairstyle has been and will continue to be popular. You may not be really familiar with this kind of hairstyle, but you may have seen 360s before. So what are 360° waves? It’s just what it sounds like really. 360s is a method of styling your hair, usually done by African Americans because of the course texture, and tightly coiled hair strands, a person can get many visible waves in a circular pattern around their entire head.
Before I get into how exactly to get these waves, you should get familiar with some basic waveology. Knowing the background of how waves are formed and other pertinent information will greatly help you in your journey to getting full 360 waves.
How waves are formed:
Waves are formed when tightly wound coils of hair are unwound and made to lay down on top of the head rather than sticking up as usual. The training of the hair is the hardest part. After your hair is trained maintaining and enhancing the wave pattern is the task at hand. Think of a coiled spring being pulled way apart. The spring is straightened, but it still has visible curves or waves. That’s how hair strands work as well.
What you need:
To get 360 waves you only need a couple of things. One, being the most important of all, is tightly wound curly hair. It is not possible to achieve waves with straight hair. The second thing you need is a couple brushes. You can find these brushes at any beauty supply store, and they usually run between one and five dollars. You need one softer brush and one harder brush. The third thing you need is what is called a Doo rag. A Doo rag allows you to train your hair to lay straight down rather than sticking up as it usually would.
Other optional items but highly recommended include: some sort of moisturizer made especially for African-American hair, and depending on the coarseness of your hair, some light or thick pomade.
Starting out for wavers is the most frustrating time of all. This is because usually when you are starting out your hair will not get trained as fast as you would like, and results are kind of slow. Be sure to stick in there, and trust me you will get the 360 waves of your dreams.
The best thing to do when you’re for starting out is to get a haircut first. The reason for this is because you won’t be cutting her hair for another 4-6 weeks or longer. Once you got your hair cut and all the supplies I mention earlier, you’re ready to start your 360 wave journey.
The beginners’ method:
When you are trying to get 360 waves, you should start out with this beginner method for best results. The first thing you want to do is brush your hair all the time; and when I say all the time I mean it. Whenever you have a free hand you should be brushing your hair. The more you brush your hair the faster you will be able to train it. But you have to make sure you are brushing your hair right or all of it will be for nothing. This is the stage that you use a hard brush as mentioned earlier.
The right way to brush her hair is from the crown towards the edge of your hair in all directions. What you do is brush around your crown in a circular or 360° motion. You want to act as if you are trying to create a circle in your head with your brush. The brushing pattern is fairly easy using the following sequence:
You want to brush the top straight down, the back straight down, and both of the sides at an angle towards the front as if you were connecting the back and the top of your hair. Everything is in a circular motion and everything is controlled. You should not try to brush really fast, rather you should focus on brushing in an effective circular pattern.
Once you have the brushing sequence down the rest of it is a cinch. An optional method is to add the moisturizer mentioned before to your hair as you are brushing it. This is highly recommended as your hair is not use to that kind of brushing, so it may become dry and brittle. The moisturizer will prevent your hair from doing this and will allow you to see faster results. Not to mention it will make your hair strong and healthy.
You should develop a brushing routine that suits you and provides the greatest results. Everyone’s hair is different so you have to experiment until you get just the right method of brushing for you. Now that he know how to brush lets talk about what to do when you’re not brushing.
When you not brushing whenever you get the chance you should be wearing your Doo rag. Brushing trains your hair to lay down straight in order to create the wave effect, and your Doo rag keeps your hair laid down and further trains it to do so. You should wear your doo rag anytime you aren’t brushing, for example, sleeping. You should never lay down without your Doo rag on, because this can mess up the pattern you are working so hard to establish when your hair is not trained. Also never go against the pattern you are brushing. You will ruin your progress.
You should continue this method of brushing and doo ragging for about 6 weeks. Do not cut your hair! After around two to three weeks you will start to see the results of your work. Usually you will first get waves on the top of your head, which is okay because those look the coolest. After several cycles of brushing and growing out your hair for around 5 weeks you will start to connect those waves all the way around. Once you connect those waves, you can be one of true few who say they’ve got 360 waves.
Once you’ve got the 360’s you want to work on connection. Connection is everything when it comes to waves, because it makes them look really cool and not just a mess of waves going in different directions. This is where the soft brush comes in. Using the softer brush you will be able to work on your connection. So the hard brush is for training, and the soft brush is for connecting.
Final notes:
Getting perfect 360 waves is quite a journey. Honestly, it takes hard work and dedication. But when you finally get there your hair looks more than cool. Everyone will ask you how you got that wave pattern in your hair. 360 waves is a very attractive African American hairstyle. You can see popular rap artists, such as Fabolous, P. Diddy, 50 cent, and Tony Yayo have waves. Getting perfect 360s is a very prized accomplishment, but can take a long time depending on your hair texture.
Some people have naturally wavy hair so it’s easier for them to get waves. Usually these people are lighter skinned, and have a mix of ethnic background which makes their hair more manageable. Whatever your circumstance the key is to not give up, and you can have 360 waves like no other!
