Since most of us can’t head to the salon right now to get a haircut or even a quick trim, we’re having to become a little resourceful a la Bella Hadid. Cutting your bangs should be left to the pros, but since we’re all living this new normal, an at-home trim is perfectly acceptable, totally doable and surprisingly simple — as long as you have the right tools and know how to do it properly.
The first rule of a DIY bang trim is don’t use the scissors you keep in your junk drawer. Butterfly Studio Salon stylist Vanessa Fernandez advises looking for an inexpensive set of shears you can use at home. “Regular scissors are too dull and will cause hair to become damaged or split.” You’ll also need a ponytail holder or some clips and a comb that has wide to fine teeth to help guide you as you trim. Once you’ve got what you need, simply follow the steps below on how to cut bangs at home. And trust us, it’s way easier than it sounds.
- Make sure hair is totally dry and styled as you normally would to avoid any mistakes that can occur with wet hair. “If you try cutting when hair is wet, you may end up cutting too much or too short since hair is longer when wet and shorter when it’s dry,” says Fernandez.
- Separate bangs from the rest of your hair and gather your hair into a bun so that it doesn’t get in the way or accidentally snipped.
- Comb bang area forward or to the side, depending on the way you usually wear them. “Be careful with your elevation — if you bring the bangs out, you will graduate the bangs resulting in a layered look. If you bring bangs down closer to the forehead, making them flat, the look will be more blunt,” advises Fernandez.
- Use your index and middle fingers to separate subsections within the bang area and pull the sections down one by one as you begin to slowly snip small lengths of hair, keeping the shears at an angle.
Depending on the results you want — straight, blunt bangs or shorter/longer ones — pay attention to the way you hold down hair. Fernandez notes: “If you want a blunt look, go straight across, starting from the middle outward (on each side). If you want a more piecey look, hold scissors more vertically and cut using sharper movements going across from one side to the other, but keeping movements up and down so that the pointy part of the scissors is always pointing up.”
Now that’s pretty simple, no?
