Blending Your Leave Out: How to Make Your Extensions Look Natural

We have all seen it before; a young lady has long, luxurious bundles curled to perfection, but either the color of the extensions is off, or her leave-out isn't blended well.

When wearing extensions, the hair should look like it is coming straight from your scalp.

No one should be able to tell where your natural hair ends and where your extensions begin. This is why it is so important to blend your leave out.

Keep reading for tips on how to execute a natural-looking sew-in.

Before bundles of Virgin Indian hair were readily available to the everyday customer, packaged hair was the only go-to option.

We could tell the quality of the weave and how long it would last by the brand and sometimes the price. We always knew if the pack was under a certain amount of money there was no need to stretch the style longer than two weeks because the hair was going to tangle and matte.

Even now that packaged hair is no longer everyone's go-to, the same principle applies to
premium extensions. The best way to stop this from happening is to take care of your weave just as you would your natural hair.

Be sure to condition it to keep it wearable and heed any warnings of heat or color damage due to improper styling techniques.

There is always a possibility that you could buy a bad batch of hair. Low-quality hair will leave you with styles that do not last.

For basic sew-ins, we usually have some leave out , which is essential when creating a natural-looking basic sew-in because it covers up your tracks. When doing a sew-in with leave out, the color of your leave-out and the color of, at least, your bundle roots need to be the same.

Keep in mind that no one color chart is the same.

The "natural black" 1b can vary between different hair brands. Even if that variation is slight, it can be the difference between a color match with your leave-out and a line of demarcation. If you are not planning on coloring your real hair to match the extensions, do a color match before purchasing your bundles.

Pay close attention to the coarseness of your real hair vs. the texture of your bundles! The two need to match.

Try to buy your bundles based on the texture of your leave-out post styling or manipulation.
For example: if you are buying the Private Label Private Label Body Wave hair, do not tightly braid your leave-out to give you the pattern or texture of our Deep Wave texture.

The concept of blending is the key to natural-looking hair extensions. Blending may be more difficult for women trying to achieve a straighter look but have natural hair. However, you have options!

Hair brands have various textures of straight. If you know you will have to use excessive heat when trying to blend your natural hair with a silky straight texture, try kinky straight! A coarser texture like "kinky-straight" can give you the straight look that you are looking for and provide a seamless match to your leave out.

Tying your hair up at night with a silk scarf can help the process. You can use rollers to stretch your hair and add barrel curls to the length of your extensions to make the curls uniform.

If you have short hair that fails to blend with your extensions, you can add twists or braids to your crown as a decorative element to your style. This will help hide the differences in length.

Adding layers to your install would have the same camouflage effect. Lace-fronts are also an option to eliminate leave-out altogether.

When wearing extensions, we never want to hear, "I can see your tracks." An exposed track is a dead giveaway that you are wearing extensions. That said, your hair extensions should be installed by a professional.

When getting a sew-in, ensure that whenever a track is laid, you cannot see the one laid down before it. You should do the same if you are doing your sew-ins yourself.

Also, ensure that you have just enough leave-out. You want to leave out enough hair to cover the tracks but not so much that blending is impossible. A trick is to place a comb under the hair you want to be left out; if you can see the comb, you will be able to see the tracks.

A lot of the time, this will depend upon the thickness of your hair after manipulation.

 
There have been times when a friend of mine would say that her stylist misjudged the thickness of her hair. Usually, this would occur when their hair was wet or in its natural state. This resulted in her not having enough leave-out to cover her tracks after it's straightened. This mistake can be a waste of time and money. Sometimes you can glue a track to fix this error in judgment, but sometimes you can't. This is why finding a great stylist in your city  is very important. 

If you use the tips above, you can execute a natural look while wearing hair extensions. Leave a comment below sharing any other tips you use to help others achieve the same great results!