Professional Stylist Teaches Cutting Men's Hair At Home

Jun 09, 2020 by apost team

While some professionals might beg you not to touch your hair, here's a stylist who wants teach you how to do a basic men's haircut. After all, quarantine, social distancing, and temporary business shutdowns have meant that some people might not be able to get to their favorite salon or barber often enough.

Kate Bryan is a professional hairstylist. She has experience cutting and styling hair, and she has great tips in case you need to learn in a hurry how to cut men's hair. In this video, she demonstrates a basic men's haircut while cutting her husband's hair. You'll need sharp scissors, hair clippers, a comb, and a cape or towel. Any sharp scissors will do the job, but hair cutting shears can be easily found online or at most beauty supply stores. Electric hair clippers will be used to cut the lower section of the hair; scissors will be used for the top part of the hair.

Briefly, Bryan discusses whether to cut hair wet or dry. She says that if you use a spray bottle to dampen the hair, the cut hairs will be less itchy when they fall. But wet hair will shrink as it dries, so it can be harder to tell how the hair will look, and exactly how short it is. Because of this, many people prefer to cut hair when it's dry.

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Bryan recommends starting conservatively. Cut off less hair than necessary. You can always cut more later, but you can't add hair after it's cut. So, start small. Begin with a larger, longer guard on the clippers so that the clippers cut off less hair.

Use the clippers (with the plastic guard) to cut the hair from the bottom edge up to about the temples. The clippers demonstration mostly involves cutting straight up, but due to the contours of the head and hair, some diagonal and sideways swipes seem to happen as well.

For the top of the hair, Bryan uses scissors to cut a "mohawk section" from front to back. Comb and hold a section of hair straight up. Sandwich that hair between two fingers of the hand that's not holding the scissors. Snip the hair above your fingers. Pull the next section up, one behind the other, and cut to match the hair sections that came before them.

After cutting the middle section of hair from front to back, begin a new section a little to the side. Again, you'll work from front to back, combing the hair straight out, and cutting it to match the length of the previous scissor-cut section.

After working front-to-back on each side of the center, begin the blended part of the haircut. On each side will be an area of hair that includes some of the scissor-cut part and some of the clipper-cut part, with some uncut hair in between. You'll trim that uncut area smoothly with the scissors. You'll trim off any "corners" or "stair steps" in the hair.

Finally, using clippers without the guard, or using a beard trimmer, you'll carefully trim the very edges of the hair to make the haircut neat. Bryan ends her demonstration with some tips for finishing touches.

Throughout the demonstration, Bryan and her husband share fun memories of other times she has cut his hair. They've got some fun stories, and it's likely that anyone who tries their hand at "quarantine haircuts" will have some memories to share one day, too! What do you think? Who do you know who'd love to give this a try? Tell them about this video!