Cutting your own hair - Classic or Dud Man

i've been having my hairdresser friend cut my hair really cheap lately but her cuts are so-so and i find myself daydreaming of a trip to some expensive salon for a wondercut.

i think i think about this hair situation too much.

I can't just have a haircut.

I had the worst experience of my life about seven years ago when I agreed to be a model for a Vidal Sassoon salon. They burnt my hair right into the scalp, the next day my head was blistered and weeping and what hair I had left was stuck to it. I was too ashamed to even visit a doctor and I have a really short chunk of hair to this day as a reminder.

Completely cutting own hair (unless, of course, you are really good at cutting hair): dud.

I did this for years, and my haircuts were always so wonky and uneven looking and it got to a point where I was a bit afraid to actually go back to a hairdresser cos I knew they'd laugh at it. Eventually I bit the bullet and went to a barber and sure enough, the first thing he did was ask me who the hell had been cutting my hair.

i haven't found much of a correlation between expensive and good cuts, though, as proven by what a great job chris the insanely cheap barber does for so little money.

I would like to be able to cut mine own hair, but my hair is so fine that every mistake shows terribly - plus it takes a ridiculously long time for bad cuts to grow out. (My hair grows stupidly slowly.)

All over dye jobs it's really easy to do by oneself, but streaks and highlighting and tabby cat hair like mine (yes! I've been retabbied!) takes quite a bit of expertise and attention to make it look not shit.

I'd be a wee bit scared to dye it I think, but that's probably for the best - I relax it at home every few months and worry enough about the condition of my hair after that.

Man, I'd love to have hair that grew fast. Also hair thick enough to need relaxing would be a plus!

The relaxing thing is urgent and key. Going to a hairdresser is stressing because I worry about how shit I will look afterwards. But it is great to have someone play with your hair for an hour - I really like getting the bits of foil put in, I find it really soothing.

clippers on no. 1 setting def the way forward - i think i've been to a hairdresser's about 5 times in the last 7 years.

My hair is shite.

I’ve just been buzzing my whole head with a trimmer using a #4 stand-off, I wish I could shave my sideburns a little bit closer but I don’t have that skill

That's pretty easy to do, but I can't promise you'll get it perfect the first time. Depending whether your sideburns are high or low, you might try making a scooping motion with the trimmer, kinda rock it away from your head... Or you hold it at an angle so that you're just cutting with the corner of the blade, instead of pressing it flush against your scalp.

My advice would be butcher your sideburns a few times until you get it right. At that length it will look fine in a week pretty much no matter what you do.

I started buzzing my whole head with a 3 guard as a teenager, now I can do really complex layered cuts, ombre color jobs, pretty much the works. If you tell anyone I'll kill you :)

I *highly* endorse learning to cut yr own hair if you have a preferred hairstyle that's reasonably simple to handle. Lord knows how much dough I've saved over the years.

Maybe put like a 2 guard on the trimmer to start. And if you mess up you can use the 3 to blend it. If you have a taper lever put it in the open position.

the first time I buzzed my head, after being driven crazy by hair tickling my ears, I used a #2 stand-off. It was good for the sideburns but felt too short when used over my whole head. the next time I used a #4 which was great for the head but not for the sideburns. my next effort will be using a #2 on the sideburns trying out a gradient with a scooping technique as you mentioned, and a #4 over the rest of my head

Have always gone for a fade at the lower back of my head, but I don’t think I will ever have the confidence to do that myself. The best I’ve been able to manage in the back is using two mirrors to shave the fuzz that grows on my neck below my hair line

The main challenge of doing a neckline fade on yourself is having a very clear idea of exactly where you want it to go before cutting into it, in my experience. How high, how soft, whether you want it tapered around the ears etc. On the occasions I messed it up it was usually because I only vaguely knew what I was trying for.

I like to keep the edges pretty soft, I'll use a 1 or a 0 (1/16") guard to clean up the neck fuzz, or even a 2 if my hair is longer (as it has been for a few years) but never a bare blade or god forbid an edger...

Having the handheld mirror in one hand rules out the possibility of any clipper over comb stuff, unfortunately

I tried to tame my sideburns alternately using clippers and scissors, and halfway through I noticed the top of one of my ears was bleeding? Yikes.

I've got pretty good at the back and sides, and I've even learned to use the 0 to clean up the weird annoying fuzz-trails on the back of my neck, but I have no idea how to handle the top, so I've just embraced the man-bun (about half a dozen previously well-kempt men on my road are currently rocking man-buns post-lockdown so I don't feel so bad.)

a good friend of my who is a personal trainer just posted a work-out video, I haven't seen him for months and was surprised to see he had a bun, it looked good on him.

I gave myself a few haircuts during covid using only a beard trimmer. They came out surprisingly good, better than some barber haircuts. The problem is really the massive mess it makes. I guess I could get tarp and one of those barber cloaks but it’s easier to just go to a shop.

a strategically positioned small garbage bin does the trick for me, esp if you have a wireless trimmer

I don't think I want to go to a haircutting place just yet. Part of my living space has a wood floor and I just do it there, with a mirror, so I can sweep up the hair

I only made it to mid June but my place was relatively safe, they make you wait outside until it’s literally your turn in the chair, had to momentarily lower my mask for sideburns but otherwise everyone was fully protected

I've done this a few times now and I'm getting the hang of it. I have a beard trimmer rather than proper hair clippers, and the guards only go up to 16mm. This was a bit short for my liking on top, so what I did last time was I used a 9mm guard but only cut whatever stuck up when I grabbed hair between two of my fingers. I did my best to fade the sides as well, from 9mm into 12mm into 16mm just as it reached the top. Fading is tough, esp with my thick hair, but pretty happy with the result, on par with barber cuts I've gotten. Wife had to clean up the back though - still can't figure out how to do that myself with the two mirrors, just too tricky.

Amazingly this has not proven a huge transition for me

I bought one of these a Daiso a few years ago, but only recently (well, since Covid) started using it. I bought fresh razor blades and it does the job. I've made some definite errors but they never seem noticeable within a couple days.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/315i7viVzBL.jpg

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hey, timely revive! i cut my own hair for the first time a few weeks ago. scary but it turned out fine

what is that thing? how do you use it?

i dare all ilx guys to start cutting your own hair

It's a razor comb, and hold two of those old-fashioned scary double-sided razor blades

You just comb away and the hair cascades upon your bare shoulders

I've been cutting my own hair since March 2020. Was just thinking of getting it cleaned up by an actual haircutting profesh in case I have an in-person interview soon.

fwiw following my inaugural self-inflicted bad haircut a week or so ago, no one noticed.

Yo I cut my own hair and have since college! 20+ years at this point. Good results if you ask me, but I am biased. I would have a hard time trusting anyone else with this job!

Do you use scissors? Or a trimmer?

I used to use primarily scissors but have in the last few years switched largely over to a trimmer.

I also spent a few years washing my hair with only apple cider vinegar rinse (due largely to a thread here, iirc) and once I switched back to shampoo, I regretted it! Should really go back to it.

I also spent a few years washing my hair with only apple cider vinegar rinse

so what's the deal with apple cider vinegar rinse

keep in mind that my hair is currently bleached + dyed + destroyed, so if this is about restoring essential oils, imagine putting essential oils on a pizza that's been in the oven for 45 minutes

Yeah, I dunno, I thought it felt… simpler than using shampoo? And it felt like it was less apt to dry my hair out.

I bought a Liggett's shampoo bar and won't be going back to bottled shampoo anytime soon

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I cut my own hair for the first time at age 14. I used scissors only. It's easy to remember because it was a couple of hours before my 8th grade graduation ceremony. Over the next five decades I've been to a barber approximately 15 times total. The money I saved on haircuts really meant something during my deeply impoverished years. ofc, I'm so bald now that I just run some clippers around my remaining fringe and I'm done. Nothing simpler.

My wife helps me with a home haircutting kit. Before that I used scissors, once I shaved my head. My hair curls so most cutting errors aren't all that obvious after a week or so.

scissor cuts and water-only washing for about 20 years now. AMA!

aimless what caused you to go to those barbers over the years? lack of scissors? or peer pressure?

maffew do you ever change it up and do different styles? or do you have a particular way that you do it?

halfway my hair is also curly, and grows quickly, so any fuckup should be quickly grown over

just trimmin. Whichever snip is closest dictates the approximate length. I tried clippers once, recently (I'm using them now on the back of my neck rather than futzing around with a razor), but that just made things too darned tidy... avoiding barber-like precision was the whole point in the first place

mostly my wife

i am in a nice mental zone where i think "if i fuck up badly, that'll be kind of cool"

it helps to not have a job you have to go into, and also to just have no friends

if you fuck it up just do it again and it'll look like you meant to do it that way

My wife's uncle came to his brother-in-law's funeral with a big patch of hair shaved off. Everyone wondered, was it some sort of mourning ritual? No, he said, his wife had just been careless with the clippers.

I think the haircuts I've gotten from an expensive stylist over the past several years were my best ever, but that has ended, and nothing beats the satisfaction of just going over my head in every direction using a haircutting razor with a #3 standoff. I have to shave the scruff off the back of my neck in between cuts, but that was always the case

using a haircutting razor with a #3 standoff

thinking of switching to doing this myself... do you have a recommendation for a razor to use?

mine is a Wahl, I bought it decades ago, not sure about new brands

ok thanks... i have a wahl beard trimmer which has been reliable.

an approximate semblance to my most recent self-cut

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I've been cutting my own hair since 1995, which was the last time someone else cut it. Shortly after that I remember walking past a barber's shop and seeing a sign that read 'Cheapest haircut in London - £5' and thinking "piss off, that's 3 pints!". My hair grows unevenly, quite fast, and is reasonably thick, so even when I was paying to get it cut I'd have to trim it myself after a couple of weeks. The key for me is to cut little and often. It's harder to make a mess of it if I'm only cutting off small bits at a time. Also I don't cut my hair when it's wet, because the strands dry back to different lengths so if my hair looks even wet it'll look uneven once it's dry.

I trim bare clippers every week and every few weeks disposable wet razor to the skin