How to Make Your Hair Grow Faster: Tips to Help Hair Growth

Hair envy is real, and it seems like anytime I get my hair cut short, I immediately want long hair—and as soon as my hair grows to any length, I get the urge to cut it short again. Then suddenly I’m Googling ‘how to make your hair grow faster’. If growing your hair quickly was a thing, this wouldn’t be a problem, but the reality is that there’s a long wait between the perfect pixie cut and becoming Rapunzel.

It’s a reality you can speed along, though, with the following tips. They won’t give you long, flowing tresses overnight, but every little bit counts, right?

Don’t Put Stress on Your Follicles

Your follicles, or the roots of your hair, are working hard to grow the hair for you, so you should be gentle on them. Aggressively brushing your hair can yank on it, and if you’re scraping your hair back into a severe bun or even a tight ponytail every day, you might want to rethink your style choices.

A looser hair style like a braid or half-up will avoid stressing your follicles.

Regular Scalp Massage

Aside from being the most relaxing part of any visit to the hair salon, a deep scalp massage will stimulate your follicles and ensure good circulation.

You can give yourself a scalp massage at home—just take an extra few minutes in the shower when shampooing to really massage the roots of your hair. Make sure you get all over your scalp, and use even pressure over all your fingertips.

(If you want to book in for professional scalp massages regularly, by all means do that too, but that’s a bit far out of my budget.)

Choose a Scalp-stimulating Shampoo

If you really want to make the most of your at-home scalp massages, you should be using a shampoo that promises to stimulate your follicles and their activity.

Shampoos containing essential oils like peppermint and rosemary can give an invigorating sense to your scalp massage, as well as treating any issues like dry scalp or flakiness that may be hampering your follicles’ ability to do their job.

Specialized scalp-stimulating shampoos are also available, making use of ingredients like caffeine to increase circulation and prompt growth in the follicles.

Don’t Put Stress on the Lengths of Your Hair

You hair might be growing fast as anything, but if you don’t treat the lengths of your hair right too, you’ll never notice. Daily use of hot tools and intensive styling products, especially those containing alcohol, can be highly damaging to your hair.

If it’s breaking off at a rate faster than it can replenish itself, your hair will never get any longer. Air dry where you can, and save the hot tools for special occasions.

Get Regular Trims

I know, you’re trying to grow your hair faster, so cutting it sounds counter-intuitive. This piece of advice goes hand-in-hand with the previous tip, though.

Breakage at the ends of your hair can turn into split ends, which progress further and further up the strand if not taken care of. Regular trims every six to eight weeks will stave this damage off without taking off any length.

A freshly trimmed haircut can even look longer than it did before, as removing the thin ends gives the illusion of thicker, fuller hair.

Skip the Color Processing

It’s a hard habit to break if you’ve been having your hair bleached or colored for a long time, but that color processing is really harming your chances at growing that long head of locks.

Any chemical process on the hair weakens it, so even dyeing your hair darker can compromise its strength. Bleaching, however, is the worst of all.

See if you can wean yourself off dyeing your hair, or switch to something like balayage where the roots of your hair aren’t getting processed.

Use Hair Masks

If you ever make time for a face mask and a pamper, pop a treatment mask in your hair at the same time and it will make a world of difference in taking care of your hair.

Hair masks can range from simple hydrating formulations to specialised protein treatments, but whichever you choose, you’ll be promoting the integrity of your hair’s shaft. And stronger hair = longer hair!

Take Vitamins

A regular supplement of the vitamins and minerals that boost keratin production will help your hair-growing efforts from the inside. While a healthy and balanced diet should be all your hair needs to grow long and strong, we all know that sticking to that diet can be more than a little challenging.

Help your hair along with a general multivitamin, or look for a Vitamin D supplement. Recent studies have shown Vitamin D may have a role in promoting the development of new follicles, contributing to a healthier head of hair.

If you follow one of these tips, you might not notice a marked difference in how fast your hair grows, but taken together, this advice will ensure your hair is at its strongest and healthiest, so it will grow longer, faster.

Get Longer Hair, Faster, with These Top Tips