How to Make Your Hair Poofy

Cleaning Your Hair for Body

Let your own hair be a guide. Depending on your hair's natural oiliness, curliness, and other factors, you'll need to tweak the basic "poofing" process slightly to make sure it works right for you. While the essential process should be the same, pay attention to the way your own hair behaves and tweak the process accordingly. If you have very thin hair, you'll probably need to use a considerable amount of hairspray or other product to get your hair to stay up. If your hair is a lot thicker, you should use less product and tease your hair more. If you have oily hair, most people will need to wash more frequently 4-5 times per week, to make it more poofy. Some people, however, tend to get a little more body the less frequently hair is washed.

Clean your hair using shampoo. You want your hair to be nice and clean when you attempt to poof it up. Massage a pea-sized amount of shampoo into your scalp and hair follicles, then rinse thoroughly with lukewarm water. Get to know your own body and wash your hair as frequently as it needs it. In general, you want to wash slightly less. 3-4 times per week should be enough for most people. Avoid washing in excessively hot water, which can dry your hair out and leave it stringy.

Apply conditioner. Hair conditioner is used to leave your hair feeling smooth, and it can also help to give your hair some body, without tangling it up. If you want to emphasize your hair's natural body, use hair conditioner every time you wash it. Rinse out conditioner thoroughly, running water through a couple of times to make sure it's all gone. If you don't, excess conditioner can make your hair feel greasy and lank after you wash it.

Gently comb through your hair. Tangles might make your hair look a little bigger, but not in a good way. When your hair is still wet, run a comb through it a couple times. Make sure all of the knots, tangles, and snarls are carefully combed through before proceeding to the poofing process.

Blow dry your hair halfway. You can also then put your hair in a bun. Letting you hair dry out in a bun can be one of the best ways of adding a little body naturally, just by letting it dry. Use a hair dryer to get your hair dry enough to work with, then put it up in a tight bun on top of your head. When your hair is dry, remove it. You should have some curl and some body to work with.

Teasing and Styling

Back-comb or tease the hair in the middle of your head. The most reliable way of giving your hair body and poofiness is to back-comb, or "tease" your hair out. To do this, you want to comb up a portion of hair from the middle of the top of your head, and hold it up straight. Take your comb and pull it through down toward your scalp, the reverse of how you'd normally comb when your hair lays flat. If your hair isn't long enough to back-comb, you can still tease it. Use a comb, pick, or a brush and use short, frequent combing strokes through the hair to tease it out. Don't do this with all you hair, just the hair in the direction you want to make look poofy. If you want more body on the sides, tease out the hair on the sides of your head. If you want more body on the top, tease out the hair on top and leave the front and sides alone.

Keep teasing until you have some poof. How long it takes to get your hair poofy will depend on your style of hair. Keep working until it starts to get some body and some frizz. At first, it may look quite frizzy and unsightly, but you can learn to style the hair to maintain this body without looking all ratty.

Lift your hair with your hands and apply hairspray. Now, your hair should be a little poofier, and you can get it to stay in place using a strong-holding hairspray. Use your comb to bring your hair up, or just grab it with your hands. Hold it out from your head as much as possible and hit it with some spray. Again, use less spray if you have especially thick hair. You won't need to use much and it might just weigh your hair down.

Lay your hair back over the poofy area, if desired. To make your hairstyle poofy, comb your bangs, sides, or other hairs you left straight over the poofy area, and style your hair normally. If you poofed up in the middle, comb your bangs back over the top of your head, so those hairs will rest over the teased-out hair, obscuring them, but emphasizing the bounce. This is how you get big hair.