Over the last couple of months, a number of people have given up on the natural hair life and sought to texlax their hair. Because truth be told, natural hair care is quite taxing. Between four-hour wash days and detangling almost weekly, natural hair sure takes up a lot of time to manage. This is not, in itself, a bad thing. It just depends on your priorities and how much value you attach to your hair. In short, there’s no right or wrong way of doing things with hair. It just depends on your preferences and how much time you are realistically willing to spend taking care of it.

Texlaxing is applying a relaxer to your hair and intentionally underprocessing it by not leaving it on for the recommended time. For example, if the relaxer is supposed to stay on for 25-28 minutes and you only leave it on for 8, it’s a texlax. Some women also texlax by adding oil to the relaxer. Women who choose to texlax do so to loosen the curl pattern while still keeping texture, not resulting in bone straight hair.

Essentially, texturizing and texlaxing both involve chemicals. Texlaxing was coined in hair forums and is done more or less the same way as a texturizer in that it aims to loosen the curl pattern of natural hair except that it uses a relaxer chemical instead of a texturizing one to achieve the result.

Here are the pros and cons of texlaxing your hair

Pros of texlaxed hair

1. Your hair remains healthy

Relaxing your hair may ultimately lead to it becoming thin and unhealthy. Texlaxing, on the other hand, is beneficial in that your hair remains healthy. This is because when you are textlaxing, the relaxer is left on the strands for a shorter period of time, or in some cases, it is diluted before it is applied to the hair. Thus resulting in less damage caused by a relaxer to the hair strand and undoubtedly healthier hair.

2. Your hair remains thick

If you have seen before and after pictures of people who texlax their hair, you have seen that the hair actually remains thick. This is most definitely, unlike the case when you fully relax your hair. So if you love your thick natural hair but find it too tedious to deal with, you can literally have your cake and eat it too. If your hair is already thin, this is a huge plus. Besides, who doesn’t love thick full-bodied hair?

3. Your hair is versatile

When it comes to texlaxing your hair, you experience versatility. You can straighten your hair without fear of heat damage or shrinkage from humidity. On the other hand, you can also rock a wash and go. It is the best of both worlds. Your hair will be more full-bodied and have a little texture making it a playground for all sorts of styles. Defined twist-outs, Bantu knots, braid-outs, whatever your hair desires.

4. Your hair retains moisture

One of the best advantages of having texlaxed hair over fully relaxed hair is that your hair is able to retain more moisture. This is because the protein bonds are not completely broken, unlike relaxed hair. Moisturized hair breaks less than dry hair. Meanwhile, relaxed hair is very dry and takes more effort to moisturize it and make it stay moisturized.

5. There is less breakage

With relaxed hair, you are more likely to see more hair falling off. Your hair is more brittle. The advantage of having texlaxed hair is that there is less breakage. This is because there is still a bit of the natural texture of the hair left, so it has better elasticity and is not as brittle as relaxed hair. Texlaxed hair is hair that has been subjected to less internal and external damage, so it is not as weak as relaxed hair.

Cons of texlaxed hair

1. It takes a long time to detangle

While texlaxed hair is glorified for being easier to manage, it takes a long time to detangle. When you are weeks and weeks post texluxing your hair, you are literally dealing with two different textures – the growth, and the texlaxed hair. This can be a bit time-consuming and cumbersome.

2. Uneven textures

Texlaxed hair pretty much looks like the in-between of relaxed hair and natural hair. Some strands are more straight than others. On top of this, different textures on the hair require different needs. Even with extreme precaution, you are bound to end up with some degree of unevenness in the beginning.

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