Counter intuitive! Hair with some natural wave, texture and body can anti-age you more effectively than perfect sleek hair which accentuates gray, frizz, roots, dull color and aging face

Natural beautiful tousled hair can make you look flirty and romantic and has an anti-aging effect on women much more than sleek or curly hair. The standard styling procedure for the tousled hair look involves volumizing shampoo followed by anti-frizz cream or mousse on the wet hair. Then, hair is towel dried just to remove the water and air dried the rest of the way. For straight hair with little to no wave, medium curlers or a round barrel curling iron is then needed to amp up the loose curls. The result is set with light hair spray or styling wax balm. While it can look really fantastic, this all adds up to pretty high maintenence for a woman on the go go go.

What I don’t like about the standard steps for the tousle hair, is that you have to put product in your hair, and that your whole hair is finger dried essentially which can cross over from looking free-flowing to just plain messy on some older women. What I hate about the hair styling products and sprays is that so many of them result in crispy sticky hair rather than soft touchable hair. Once you are using hair styling products such as hair spray, your look is a one time event. If you put hair spray or styling wax into your hair it usually does not look good once it is slept on. By next day you usually have to wash your hair to get rid of the stuff that is on it.

What do you mean you have no time to painstakingly curl your hair one day and then have to clarify out sticky hair spray and styling products the next day? Me neither!

Few women have time to do their hair with hot curlers or even a round barrel curling iron on a regular basis. Remember that for tousled hair to look good, the rest of your makeup and outfit has to be pretty neat, otherwise you run the risk of looking like a slob. Many women cringe at the prospect of letting their hair dry totally naturally as they perceive it as making them look like a mess. My half-tousled hair style tip will give you the natural look of textured hair while still allowing you to have some neatness and control at the same time. Best of all, it’s free, easy and involves no hair products. With this alternative tousle beauty tip, you are going to have almost the same soft touchable tousles as the standard procedure, with literally no product and no time or money involved. What you do for this effect is your standard blow dry or flat iron procedure while leaving a percentage of your hair out to dry naturally. This gives you the polished clean feeling that you get from your blow dry or flat iron, with a slight anti-aging tousle mixed in. I call it the “half-half” where your hair is half blow dried or flat ironed, and half natural.

The camera knows best! 3D texture and volume around the face draws attention away from gray temples, incoming roots, hair frizz and facial wrinkles

Most women have the idea that if their hair is perfectly blow dried or flat, that they look polished and put together. However in many cases, perfectly flat straight hair does little to nothing to add to a woman’s beauty. Sometimes a woman’s eyes can’t see this but the camera lens definitely does see it. Blow dried hair is flat and non-dimensional. The camera loves texture, color and “3D” luxury objects in life. The camera loves contrast and dimension. On an older woman in particular, having some texture and volume to the hair adds a 3D effect both to the hair itself and to her whole face/hair combination. Hair with some natural texture to it actually looks great in a photograph. We are just so conditioned to go for the polished sleek look we sometimes don’t even realize it may not be helping us look as attractive as possible.

Having some volume and texture lux to the hair on both sides of your face draws the eyes of the person looking at you up (towards your eyes) and directly out (towards you hair). This draws focus away from facial flaws and wrinkles and the person gets a full 3D broad view of your hair and face combined, which anti-ages you. Some women understand this concept by having short hair styles however they make the hair high in top of the head only (wrong) instead of adding volume and texture beside both ears. Hair volume on top of the head only, actually ages you by elongating your face and drawing vertical downward attention to you. It’s the volume on the two sides of the face (and some on top too) combined that gives the person looking at you a “broadened” view of your face/hair which makes you look younger.

This “broad” look (hair with overall volume on the top and sides of your face) verses the vertical look (sleek hair with no volume or only volume on top of the head) has an anti-aging effect for most women regardless of the shape of the face. It looks great on a woman with a long face. It also looks great on a heavier weight woman with a round face. For an overweight woman having some hair volume around their face effectively counter balances their body weight by adding substance to their head and drawing attention upward instead of downward. It helps balance their figure.

Simple steps for a natural and beautiful product free tousled hair style. Styling Tools required: either blow dryer or flat iron, and hair clip for sectioning hair

To get the half-half tousle, you are basically going to go through your blow dry (or flat iron) procedure leaving pieces of hair out of the process. The percentage of hair you leave natural is up to you and depends on how thick your hair is and how much body you need. Most women blow dry (or flat iron) their hair in sections doing the underneath sections first and letting more hair down progressively until they get to the top layer. For the simplest method, just blow dry or flat iron the bottom section, and leave the top section natural. That is the true “half-half” look. You can finish off by flat ironed or blow drying the pieces around your face such as bangs if you need to. By drying the underneath layer you are creating a more polished overall look but leaving the top undone adds that little bit of natural texture and oomph into the mix.

If you have thicker hair or more time to play around, you can get a little bit more creative and mix up the straight pieces with the ones left natural. This is going to give you the best integrated result. As you go through your hair in sections, dry a section, then let a small section down and leaving natural (you can pin it to the side or out of the way with a hair clip) then let down another section and dry it, then let down a small section to leave natural. This alternating is going to give you the perfect “product-free” tousled look. Without the product in it, you can sleep with your hair in a bun, let down and wear the look again the next day – it will look even better than the first day!

If you have hair that tends to frizz you can wash it the night before and sleep on it damp or blow dry it with your fingers and then sleep on it. The next day, go through the half-half steps with just a flat iron, straightening pieces and leaving natural pieces alternating. Because you are only treating half of your hair, your hair styling time is cut down too! The result, a beautiful sexy look without products that is somewhat controlled yet still sexy at the same time. This look will last you for days. What I like the best about the half tousled look is that my hair does not get as tangled as if I leave it 100% natural. By partially styling some of it, it looks sexy but not does not get totally out of control and ratty. While not as perfect as the stylist methods with product and curlers, you are getting the half tousled look for free and in minutes. Without the hair spray products, your hair is going to remain natural, soft and touchable. Good luck and please comment below if you have any secret tousled styling tips to add to this beauty blog post!