Hair extensions can be intimidating - especially for beginners. So, when we decided to see what the hype was about (there's a rumour even Kate Middleton has got some for extra volume) we ventured out to speak to the expert who created one of Ariana Grande's ponytails - because who knows hair better than that? Swish swish...
How to wear micro ring hair extensions
Our hair has always been 'fine' at best and 'ratty' at worst. So, when Tatiana Karelina said she could make our locks luscious in just three hours at her studio in Kensington, obviously we had to visit.
Tatiana sources natural Slavic hair in every shade from the purest platinum to the darkest brunette, which her stylists hand pick and blend together to perfectly match your own locks. ‘My hair extensions can be washed and treated in the same way as your real hair - because they are real hair,’ Tatiana explains. ‘That means they’re easily taken care of and so simple to maintain.'
Using the mico ring method, Tatiana adds length and depth to your natural hair without using heat or glue by looping in discreet strands of extensions alongside your own tresses. Once they're in, they last about three months before they need adjusting to keep the attachments hidden. You can sleep in them, you can swim with them. Seriously, it feels exactly like your natural hair and doesn't feel heavy at all.
We were so shocked by how easy and low maintenance this was - Take our word for it, try them out now. Your dream hair can finally exist on your head...instead of just on your Pinterest boards.
How to wear clip in hair extensions
If you're a lazy person, you might think hair extensions aren't for you. Hair extensions are, we believed, for people who don’t wear pyjamas in the office (We're wearing pyjamas in the office). Which is why when we heard about the low-maintenance Lush Hair Extensions, and someone came in to the office and showed us you don’t have to have a neat parting to clip them in (yeah, clip them, not glue them) we were shocked and thought we'd give it a whirl.
From winding false hair plaits around a bun, to just putting them in our hair without removing our cerebral cortex, – the Lush Hair Extensions can be dyed, curled, straightened and loaded up with product. They’re ethically sourced and come in loads of different colours. We went for ombre to keep things jazzy.
So, behold, the easy (and not so easy) styles you can do if you’re really not the sort of person who is good at hair. We believe in you. You can do this.
Putting in hair extensions
People think you’re supposed to do a perfectly lined parting, but actually it’s better with these clip-on dudes that you don’t, because it looks more natural. Anything that means I don’t have to do something accurately gets roughly 300 points before I’ve even seen the results.
This took about 30 seconds to do, and we didn’t even look at where we'd put them in before checking out the back of my head and seeing only one tiny bump which disappeared when we brushed it.
Easiness rating: 10/10
Seriously, if we can do it with poker straight hair and not manage to look stupid, you can too.
Thickening your hair with hair extensions
Hide them by clipping the top of your hair back and clipping the extensions underneath the top bit. Sometimes we astound ourselves with the beauty of my our own sentences. What’s more important, though, is that this is idiot-proof and you can just keep going until you think you’ve got enough hair. Sort of like eating until you’re full, but with hair. Hair.
Easiness rating: 8/10
Only because you’ve got to make sure the clips don’t show below the hairline, which requires a mirror or a good friend with eyes.
Give yourself a blue streak
Or any coloured streak. To do this we just coloured one of the smaller strands of hair with Fudge Urban Colour spray and hair chalk to make it even brighter, and put it as high and as far forward as it could go without dangling from our eyebrows. Felt quite cool as we’ve always been too scared to dye any part of our hair blue. Have still got it in. Hoping we get compliments.
Easiness rating: 10/10
Use a well-ventilated room and don’t gas yourself with coloured spray.
Jazz up a ponytail
Getting a bit of your own hair and twirling it around the bobble is the sign of a woman who has a comprehensive bathroom cabinet and more than one wine glass in the house. Faking it with fake hair is way easier, quicker, and we genuinely won’t be wearing ponytails without doing this because it looks so much better than having your bobble hanging out. UGH BOBBLES.
You just clip a small piece of hair to the bobble, wrap it around and pin with a hair pin.
Easiness rating: 10/10
Could do this in my sleep if we had the right equipment and slept in freshly brushed hair. OK we couldn’t, but it’s very simple.
Jazz up a bun
The more plaits you clip around your bun, the more you can cover up said clips with said plaits, so aim for two at the very least (one is too thin, and you can’t conceal the root of the extensions). We wanted to do 15 plaits but there were time constraints. It’s also difficult not to make it look really messy, but the bigger the bun, the better it’ll look.
Easiness rating: 6/10
You have to manipulate the extensions a fair bit to cover the clips, make sure the bun is messy (mine was a bit too small so looks like a small latticed pie) and do more plaits than you thought. Will need hairpins, obviously. Oh, and plaiting hair extensions neatly is a bit more difficult than I thought. It took us a few goes. Still, it’s a lot easier than we thought it would be considering we're putting false hair on ourselves.
Curl the hair extensions
We can’t help doing a breathy, hair-advert-y voice. Anyway, to the hair. This was really tricky because a) We're not good at curling irons and b) the rest of our hair is so straight, and won’t curl, that we had to just settle for the front.
If you’ve got curly hair and want to use hair extensions then this’ll be a lot easier for you – just curl it and plonk it in and the joins will be practically invisible.
Easiness rating: 5/10
Depends on your hair type. The fake hair curled really nicely, though.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.