Wanna have fun with your hair?

It's important to understand all about hair techniques before you land up at the salon for a treatment. After all, every individual's hair reacts differently to colouring, perming or even straightening treatments. Here BT gives you the low-down on some basic facts about hair treatments.

Hair extensions
Often, Bollywood heroines switch between flaunting long hair in some scenes and short hair in others. But gone are the days of relying on ugly wigs. Actresses today just opt for hair extensions to change their look.

Hair extensions are lengths of either real or synthetic hair that can be affixed close to the scalp. When well-matched in colour and texture, and professionally applied by a competent extensionist, hair extensions mix in and move naturally with your own hair, making it difficult to tell you are wearing them. They can provide volume, extend hair, and add highlights or lowlights without the harshness of colouring your own hair. Some extensions can be worn for up to three months.

Hair colouring
You may hear terms such as crown colouring, global colouring, highlights and lowlights. These terms are simple to understand - crown is the crown of the head. When colouring of hair strands is done only on the crown (where greying usually starts first), it's called crown colouring. Global is when colour is applied all over the hair. Highlights are sections of coloured hair that show well against the hair's natural colour. Lowlights are those that show very subtle colouring.

While some hair types may absorb colour more readily, others may need longer exposure to show a colour change. For naturally dark-haired people, bleaching of the hair is recommended before any other colour is applied. Before bleaching, test a patch of your hair to see how well your hair reacts to it.

Re-bonding
Re-bonding is a chemical hair treatment that straightens your hair. The treatment provides long-lasting results but can be expensive.

Hair has a natural bond. Curly or wavy type of hair is the result of natural bonds that give the hair its physical quality. The cream softener or relaxant used in re-bonding treatment breaks the natural curly hair structure. Then, a neutraliser bonds the structure again and makes the hair straight. In effect, re-bonding changes your natural hair structure and restructures it.

Once your hair is straightened you have to touch up the new growth depending on how fast your natural hair growth is. This could be every three months, six months or even a year.

Perming
Just like how women with wavy hair prefer to get it straightened, most women with straight hair very often try out the soft or large curl look. Perming provides a long-lasting solution. This chemical and thermal treatment gives hair waves or curls that do not straighten out even after several washes. As with rebonding, perming should be repeated once new hair grows.

Hair weaving
Hair weaving is the science of adding hair to the scalp by weaving or braiding of human hair. It is also called hair integration or hair intensification.

In this process, hair is woven to the root area of the person's existing hair, so that it grows naturally with the hair. The drawback of the process is that it stresses existing hair and may cause it to fall out.