How an old-school hairstyle became the unexpected cure for my split ends

There are mornings when the mirror shows more than tired eyes. It shows hair that somehow lost all the shine you so carefully tended to the night before. It took me a long time to realize the real culprit wasn’t the salon treatments I kept postponing, but what was happening while I slept.

If you’re not sleeping on a silk pillowcase, the rough pull of cotton or, even worse, polyester can do real damage. I felt it often. My freshly washed, deeply conditioned hair would turn into a dull, dry texture by morning, its fragility visible from across the room.

It’s that feeling that the pillowcase has soaked up every natural oil that keeps your hair alive. Switching to silk was my first step toward recovery, a change that helped both my hair and my skin. But the real transformation happened only when I brought something old back into my routine: a bedtime braid.

Photo: Alina Matveycheva

A nighttime hairstyle that protects your hair

Whether you braid one soft, loose plait or a few of them, this simple style turned out to be surprisingly effective. A recent trichology checkup, including a close look at my ends, confirmed what I’d already suspected. Four months without a trim, yet my ends still looked as if I’d just stepped out of the salon. Under the microscope, they were almost untouched, firm and healthy.

Later, when I finally went in for a haircut, even my hairstylist was stunned. My hair felt soft and unexpectedly healthy. When I told him about my new habit, sleeping with loose braids, he just nodded with that familiar smile experts get when a small but powerful secret comes to light. He confirmed it was an excellent way to preserve the hair’s health.

Why do braids work?

A loosely braided style keeps the hair protected. It doesn’t snap, it doesn’t rub against the fabric, and it doesn’t tangle overnight. And when I add a few drops of cold-pressed almond oil, it becomes an overnight treatment that feeds the hair for hours. My thin, breakage-prone hair, the kind that usually splits just days after a trim, finally got what it had been missing for years: gentle, consistent protection. The combination of a silk pillowcase, almond oil, and soft bedtime braids turned out to be the perfect match.

Photo: Daniil Kondrashin

The morning result of a split-end prevention routine

Most mornings I wake up with soft, natural waves, that romantic no-effort look I try to keep whenever I can. And when I need something neater and smoother, I just run a blow-dryer and a brush through my hair to polish it a bit.

For anyone with fine, fragile or dry hair, this is one of those small, almost forgotten tricks that actually makes a difference. A reminder that you don’t always need long, complicated rituals. Sometimes it’s enough to braid your hair gently every night and let the hours of sleep (and a little oil) do the work for you. The split ends on my hair are getting fewer, and the soft, healthy strands are growing. It turns out that some of the most effective modern hair rituals are the ones that existed long before us.