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Your Ultimate Guide to Hair Extensions and It’s Types

Hair extensions serve an enticing charm to your hair existing beauty. Originating from the old-fashioned Victorian era of ‘wigs,’ extensions became an uptight plunge shaping every woman’s twisty hair desires.

What are hair extensions?

First things first, hair extensions, also referred to as hair weaves, are real or synthetic alternatives readily available and accessible. That can be flexibly braided, taped, glued, sewn, or clipped onto your locks or scalp, resulting in luscious lengths, thickness and colourful strands.

With various choices, you can pick on the best extensions that aesthetically blends with the natural occurrence of your hair and the long-lasting factor you want.

With multiple styles, colours, and lengths to flaunt, this faux fashion can be gracefully pulled-off from the hourly requirement to monthly ones, considering the lifestyle you prefer to adhere to.

Types of Hair Extensions

While there exist several ways to marvelously stylize these extensions, however selection of the righteous kind can be a bit more overwhelming than it appears.

1. The Clip-in Hair Extensions

These are easily affordable and effortlessly usable kind of hair integrations, trendy amongst the teen-girls, making you fall head over heels for their convenient and economic attributes.

With several options of colourful highlights, ombre waves, and flawless curls to choose from, these easily blend with your natural hair making the ‘faux’ element disappear to bits. One thing to be pinned is the careful selection of these clip-ins based on your hair’s natural texture and grip.

2. The Tape-in Hair Extensions

These are one of the best fits to flaunt those hair extensions when you’ve got a significant time crunch. It has a perfect balance of simplicity and comfort in its appeal and will lend your hair an elegant look without dosing your hair with its weight.

These tresses’ reusability can be extended from 6 weeks up to 8 weeks with an application time of less than 90 minutes. Overall, these are an excellent option for those who want to bulk out the hair on a semi-permanent basis.

Photo: Luxy Hair

3. The Weft Hair Extensions

If you want to keep your extensions for the most prolonged duration but also don’t want to burden your tresses with heat or glue applications, access the weaving method of hair extensions. It involves a time-consuming technique of creating horizontal cornrows in your hair and sewing the extensions into them by using a needle.

These faux tresses last for months and bring along a few drawbacks too. If not washed properly, the weaves have a risk of developing bacterial infections, and this is the last thing you would want as a part of your long-hair fantasies.

Photo: Melbourne Human Hair Extensions

4. The Fusion Hair Extensions

These extensions allow you to undergo two different methods of application. The hot fusion method kicks off with a keratin U-tip bond lined with silicone to be attached to the extension. The extensions are further bonded to the root of your hair using a heating tool.

Also, cold fusion is another way of adorning your tresses with wings involving a heatless application method. And lastly, both of these fusion extensions easily blend with your natural hair adding just the right dash of seamless aura.

5. The Micro-link Hair Extensions

These false tresses are applied by attaching tiny wefts of hair into small sections of your natural hair with a silicone-lined bead. This bead is then secured and tightened in place using professional hair tools.

With no heat or glue application, this extension application requires a higher professional approach. You can carry these comfortably for up to 3 months and get the re-positioning done now and then to keep the micro-beads in place.

6. The Natural Human Hair Extensions

These human hair extensions are usually collected from donors and made out of real human hair that blend aesthetically with your natural hair. You can easily colour, straighten, curl or stylize these precisely like your hair.

Human hair extensions have an efficient potential of lasting for almost a year, depending on the hair care you follow.

7. The Synthetic Hair Extensions

These delicate, plastic fibres fabricated to imitate real human hair are comparatively stiff and don’t blend as smoothly as the natural human hair extensions. These pocket-friendly alternatives, synthetic extensions, come with significant setbacks.

Any heat applicants like straighteners, blow dryers, curling irons, or other harsh hair products are a complete ‘NO-NO.’ Also, these do not last as long as the natural human hair extensions.

Hair Extensions: Vigorous

Where to Buy Best Hair Extensions?

It’s every girl’s dream to look swoon-worthy even with the dummy tresses. You can explore the world of trendy hair extensions at several e-commerce stores on Instagram, where you can find everything that you need to flaunt those long-lengths exactly your way.

Here is a list of the best online stores to shop for hair extensions. Scroll through these options to buy the finest pick.

1. Hair Stop

Founded to combat the damaging effects of synthetic extension applications, this e-commerce store sells extensions that solely provide 100% premium quality, yet affordable human hair extensions.

Hair Extensions: 1 Hair Stop

It helps ensure clients feel confident about their tresses and can fulfil their hair fantasies while wearing the hair extensions.

PRICE RANGE: Medium to Premium

2. Diva Divine Hair 

Offering both, retail human hair extensions and professional hair extensions to stylists and salon owners. Diva Divine Hair India stocks a great mix of highest quality human hair with the widest variety of hair extensions and wig products at the most affordable prices.

Photo: Diva Divine Hair Extensions

Not only do they market their products online, but they also have stores in major cities across the country, allowing the clients to see and touch the hair extensions. Diva Divine Hair offers the broadest range of temporary clip-on and professional semi-permanent human hair extensions. This one’s definitely worth checking out!

PRICE RANGE: Low to Medium

3. BBLUNT

Not everyone is born with perfect lustrous manes that are a captivating sight. BBLUNT offers a wide range of clip-in hair extensions with varied options of colours and lengths to choose from. They are the ones that launched bespoke hair design for Bollywood’s all-time favourite ‘DIL CHAHTA HAI.’

Photo: BBLUNT

Their easily-applicable clip-in hair extensions are a hassle-free solution to all your last-minute hair woes. We highly recommend this website if you want a bespoke hair extension experience.

PRICE RANGE: Low to Medium

4. Instalength

We’re aware of the eternal miseries of synthetic hair extension application. Instalength is an online luxury 100% Remy Clip-in hair extensions. Their removable clip-in wings are designed with smaller clips and unique silicone strip that won’t harm your natural hair or scalp at all.

Hair Extension: Instalength

It’s hair quality gets better and better with each wash. You definitely wouldn’t mind trying these on.

PRICE RANGE: Low to Medium

5. Majik

Eminently popular across e-commerce brands like Amazon and Flipkart, Majik offers hair extensions ranging from synthetic ones to Remy/ human hair ones. They also offer varied options in clip-ins, tape-ins to wigs in different lengths, textures, and colours.

This one is your best shot at a perfect match of quality and a reasonable price.

PRICE RANGE: Low to Medium

Things to Consider Before Hair Extension

1. Always go for the nearest colour match

Even the slightest difference between your natural hair and the extensions shade is highly noticeable. You have to be extremely careful when selecting the right tone of the extension you pick up. The merging needs to be completely seamless.

2. Purchase exchangeable products

Being a first-timer at hair extension experiments, you need to play super safe while investing your money into this. Try looking for or purchasing merely those products that have a flexible option of reversing the purchase or offer an exchange. Remember, hair extension is a game. Only multiple trials help you to ace-like a pro.

3. Analyze your lifestyle

Ranging from clip-ins to professionally handled weft extensions, it has multiple options to offer your false manes. But a smart purchase is preceded by understanding the excellent coordination between the routine you follow and the ease of use for the kind of extensions you choose.

For an evening party, the user-friendly clip-ins are the perfect choice for a quick styling; however, carrying those lengthy manes for multiple months requires a more professional stylist.

4. Binge on quality

While purchasing, a smart-buyer always invests with the idea of the quality of the product. Synthetic based extensions are reasonably inexpensive; however, they are super prone to be easily tangled and differentiated as faux tresses added to your natural hair.

Thus, making these suitable for carrying only for specific occasions. On the other hand, human hair extensions are pretty much viable for all-purpose use, but the pricey tags are a big concern.

5. Prep Yourself for Maintenance 

Similar to your natural locks, extensions demand a high amount of maintenance at your end. Depending on your usage, clip-ins require 6-8 washes now and then. It would also be best if you were extremely careful regarding the products you use for the same.

Similarly, human hair extensions demand specific product usage for their cleansing. And lastly, never go to bed with wet wings.

CONCLUSION

As much of a beauty these hair extensions are, keeping up with a perfect balance between the selection you make and its maintenance is equally concerning. From flaunting heavy luscious manes to experimenting with different colours, hair extensions have sustained all your expectations. They have come a long way in terms of its technology and application use.

Whether it’s the user-friendly clip-ins or the highly professional ones, the simplest of application, the subtlety of such detailing is worth giving careful thought. And especially now that a wide variety of options are available to choose from, an ‘attention to detail’ kind of attitude will be a win-win situation.

So, whether you’re a minimalist at heart or merely looking to don a rather colourful look down your tresses, the charismatic legacy of hair extension is ]\what you need! And their prettiness is undoubtedly going to strike a chord with your ‘Rapunzel-like-hair’ fantasies.

By Arshita Nagpal

She is an fanatical social media freak on a mission to stamp out her knack for content & simply cannot escape the 'pup-arazzi'. When she's not pinning her creativity, you can find her travelling to ogle-worthy treks, fueling herself with scrumptious treats, or hanging out with her pooch.