I will be very honest with you up front: I don’t do anything special with my hair when I sleep. I’ve tried the pineapple, but pulling my hair up into a pineapple stretches out my waves and curls. I’ve tried a braid out, but that leaves me with misshapen curls. I’ve tried sleeping in a plop, and while the results are alright, the t-shirt never stays on my head.
As a wavy it sometimes feels like the best way for me to sleep is just leaving my hair down and refreshing the flattened waves in the morning. So I was keen to try CurlTalker serasgf’s sleeping method for extra volume when she shared it in our forum and Gretchen wrote about it in an article. We got clarification from serasgf on exactly how she ties this t-shirt turban, and I tested it out myself.
Step 1.
Start with dry hair (this is not a method for drying wet hair overnight”>. Take the bottom of the shirt (the end without sleeves”> and wrap that at the base of your neck. Take the two corners of the shirt and bring them together at the middle of your forehead. There may be some overlap of the fabric, so cross one corner over the other.
Step 2.
Take a safety pin and secure the corners of the shirt at the center of your forehead.
This was my least favorite part, because I was poking a safety pin towards my face without being able to see very well what I was doing. It’s probably the one deterrent for me from using this technique.
Step 3.
Now that the shirt is securely fastened, take the sleeves of the t-shirt and tie them in a knot.
It took me a couple tries to get this step right, because my hair was getting caught in the knot.
That’s it!
Serasgf says “your hair should be sticking straight up and spilling from the front towards your face. I try to keep it tied well above my eyebrows/forehead, whatever feels like it is lifting my hair further from my head.” Remember the goal for this method is volume, so you want to keep the hair lifted at the roots to avoid flatness.
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What I thought of the method
My first impression is that this turban feels very secure. Much more secure than a plop or a pineapple does for me (since you’re only supposed to tie the pineapple loosely”>. I also like that it creates a good amount of lift at the roots, since my personal goal with my hair is for it to be as big as possible. When I took my hair down the curls and waves were pretty much in tact, with just a tiny bit of refreshing and tweaking needed in the morning.
The one drawback for me is the safety pin, I just don’t feel like poking a safety pin towards my face every night. I did try a few other ways of fastening the t-shirt, such as different kinds of clips, but none of them worked in the way the safety pin does. Even though I think this method works, candidly I think I’m too lazy to keep it up and will probably go back to sleeping with my hair down.
If, like me, you haven’t had success with pineappling or plopping, then I would definitely recommend giving this method a try. Chances are you have a t-shirt, and a safety pin, so why not?
If you try it please let me know how it works for you!
Knowing our community, there will be even more innovations on this hack and I can’t wait to see them.
You can learn serasgf’s full nighttime routine, including the products and she takes before and after this turban here.
Read next: I tried diffusing with a strainer, here are my results.
