Sick to death of frizzy curly hair?
Been trying all sorts of styling techniques with no luck?
Frustrating isn’t it? Enough to want to keep on straightening those curls of yours and frying your strands in the process.
But wait. Ever tried wet plopping those curls of yours?
Wet Plop Vs Dry Plop – What’s The Diff?
Bet you’re heard of plopping, haven’t you. You may even know how to plop curly hair with t shirts to get bouncy defined curls.
As you know it’s the technique where you wrap your just shampooed hair in a tee shirt or towel to absorb the excess water before either air drying or diffusing. Produces amazing results for tons of curlies.
So that’s the “dry” version. Because it supposed to help dry your hair. Get it?
What you may not have heard of is wet plopping.
Here you’re tucking freshly washed hair into a plastic shower cap to keep it wet. To give your strands time to suck up the water and any styling products applied. All to produce fat, juicy clumps.
And here too many swear by it.
Oh and before you ask, neither is better. They’re just two ways to style curls.
Now pretty much any plastic shower cap will do. To help, that would include something like this, or this or even disposable ones like these.
Tip: Some double up on the disposable shower caps to make sure everything stays where it should be.
Who Is This Good For?
Popular YouTuber Swavy Courtney says it’s good for those
- who have high porosity hair
- with curl clumps prone to breaking up really easily leaving you with a lot of wet frizz
- transitioning to the curly girl method
- who find their hair is reluctant to absorb product
- who want fat, chunky and juicy curl clumps
The drawback is soaking wet hair can take just short of forever to dry. Even if using a diffuser.
That’s where micro-plopping comes in.
As you know micro plopping is where you gently scoop and scrunch wet hair. Nothing too aggressive. No pulsing. Just a very gentle effort to pull the water from your hair into the towel.
So for best results after you slip your shower cap off reach for your favorite smooth micro fiber towel.
You may know these as ultra fine or plush microfiber. Like this one or this one.
How Long Do You Wet Plop?
C’mon you should know there’s no one size fits all answer here. 🙂
Making the best answer this one. Ideally you want to leave the shower cap on for however long it takes for maximum product absorption. For your hair it might be 10 minutes. 20 minutes. Or longer.
Or whatever it takes for your parched strands to soak up what they need.
Of course sometimes our schedules dictate what’s ideal, right?
How To Wet Plop Curly Hair
Here’s three videos that show you how.
A Simple One Product Wet Plopping Routine Anyone Can Do
This take is from one of the curly hair divas on Instagram. For those that love you some leave in conditioner here’s the video for you.
Step 1: Product application
Add a leave in for moisturizing applied using the praying hands method and some raking.
Tip: For her it’s important to keep her mane sopping – so she spritzes on more water if needed
Step #2: Put on the shower cap
For her next trick it’s shower cap time. Her “how long” sweet spot is 15 minutes. Just look at those gorgeous clumps.
Step #3: Micro-plop
Then she unfurls her micro fiber towel or t shirt to gently scrunch her hair to remove the excess water. Micro plopping is meant to be gentle. No hard repeated pulsing. Just slide the fabric into your strands and squeeze the excess water into the towel.
Tip: Flipping your hair from side to side – this helps to keep the hair in back loose and free. Not matted to your head
Step #4: Diffuse
Viola!
A Multi Product Wet Plopping Routine
This video shows that getting thick juicy clumps of curls doesn’t have to be a crap shoot.
She runs through her entire routine. Sharing what products she uses. How she applies them. How she uses her Denman brush for better clumps. And her thoughts on wet plopping.
Oh and for more on how to get curls to clump you might want to check out our article at the other end of that link.
Her routine in a nutshell
- Wet plops right outta the shower
- Applies super hydrating products
- Wet plops again to give the products time to work
- Micro plops with a towel to remove excess moisture
- Diffuses
- Finishes off using an oil to separate the extra chunky curls to aid volume
The entire video is a master class on this technique. But in particular there were three big ideas that stood out.
Big Idea #1: This takes the weight of the lengths of your curls. Which works to keep your curls from stretching out.
Big Idea #2: Keeping the curls contained within the plastic cap actually keeps things nice and tight. Which helps them shrink up. Leaving you with oodles of definition. And that’s before layering on the products.
Big Ideas #3: What you’re really doing is giving your curls a chance to deeply hydrate. While also shaping really tight curls for all sorts of definition. BONUS: All with less frizz.
Tip: Prefer volume over definition? Then you’ll definitely want to break up some of those huge chunky coils this routine produces.
Finally here’s a quick clip from the person most credit with popularizing this.
Wet Plopping for Curly Fabulous Hair
Wet Plopping Benefits:
- Sopping wet sets the stage for the best possible styling
- Helps keeps the frizz monster in check
- Promotes root to ends curl definition
- Prevents your curls from getting stretched out. As they are supported by the cap rather than hanging long and loose.
If you’re one of those girls for whom thick juicy chunky curls are everything then think maybe you should give wet plopping a whirl?
Anyone with curly hair needs to know hacks like this. If you want to stay in the know then you simply must follow our Curls Gone Wild board on Pinterest.
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