12 Hair Mistakes Everyone Makes At Least Once

Bad hair days happen to everyone. Sometimes you wake up in the morning, and it seems like your hair has taken on a mind of its own, and other times you thought you were trying out something really cool, and it turned out terribly. (You still have no idea what exactly happened to your bangs that one time you tried to curl them.) That is why you have a special oversized hat for such occasions. The majority of the time, hair makeovers come out looking amazing, but there are those few times you’ve really messed up your hair.

(Related: 13 Makeup Mistakes Everyone Makes At Least Once)

These are the hair mistakes that everyone has made:

1. Holding your curling iron in the same spot until you smell burning hair.

You want perfect curls and know that it takes a few seconds for that curl to form in your hair. You know it doesn’t work to re-curl your hair, so you try to hold the rod in one spot for as long as possible. This results in you smelling burning hair more frequently than you would like.

2. Religiously blow-drying your hair every day but never remembering heat protection.

You always, always remember to blow-dry your hair, but why do you only remember the heat protection after your hair is perfectly dry? You bought the spray months ago, and the only thing it seems to protect is the space in your bathroom cabinet.

3. Attempting to trim your own bangs and making a total hack job of it.

Who needs to go to the salon for a bang trim? You can do it yourself. You took your nail scissors and a comb and carefully snipped away a few pieces. You kept on trimming more and more to even them out. A cow chewing your hair would have produced better results than the uneven fringe you ended up with.

4. Insisting on getting a specific haircut even if your stylist says it won’t work with your hair texture and face shape.

You brought that photo of that cute lob haircut to your hairdresser, and you are going to have it, no matter what. What does your hairstylist know about what suits you and what doesn’t? It’s your hair. You demand she cuts it. Only when she is finished cutting do you realize she was right.

5. Getting a haircut once a year, maybe.

You love your hair, and all of the products in your bathroom cabinet are proof that you look after it. However, frequent trims don’t factor into your beauty routine. How are you supposed to grow your hair if you are getting it cut every six weeks?

6. Using so much mousse that your hair looks like crispy noodles.

You were going for beachy waves, but what you ended up with was dried-out noodles. You think mousse will give you those cool surfer girl waves, so you load it on and scrunch away. It looks decent from a few minutes, but when it dries, your hair is so crispy you could snap a piece in half.

7. Waiting until your hair is two distinct blocks of color to retouch your roots.

You figured that a bit of regrowth is fine. It gives you a bit of edge, and you thought that it made you look a bit like Kate Moss. The visible roots quickly turned into a couple of inches of regrowth before you contacted your hair salon to say you needed an appointment ASAP.

8. Glitter hair gel.

Do we really need to elaborate more? There was a time when you thought there was absolutely no such thing as too much shimmer. You wanted glitter on every inch of your body, including your hair. If the hair gel had rainbow sparkles, it was the best.

9. Choosing an elaborate updo that looks like a weird sculpture for an evening out.

When you go out, you put on a fancy dress, so you need a fancy hairstyle to go with it, right? “Fancy” somehow always ends up meaning “complex.” Instead of a chignon, you go for a hairstyle that is twisted, pinned, and gelled into an elaborate style. Is it gravity-defying? Yes. Is it flattering? Probably not.

10. Fighting your natural hair texture by frying it with every heat tool you own.

You always want what someone else has, especially when it comes to your hair. That is why they invented heat tools to tame your hair. You use every contraption you can to tame your hair into the desired style, even if it means you end up with a tamed, damaged mess.

11. Using way too much dry shampoo and ending up with weird gray patches.

Dry shampoo is a lazy girl hero product, but it can be tricky to apply. If you use too little, you still look like a grease monster. If you use too much, you can end up with weird gray splotches that you never realize are there until someone kindly points them out.

12. Vigorously detangling wet hair with a brush because a comb takes too long.

It wouldn’t be so bad if you were gentle with your brush or used a special Wet Brush, but when you have a bunch of knots in your hair, and you have to leave for work in half an hour, you have to get them out ASAP. There’s no time to gently prod them with a wide-tooth comb. Come to think of it, do you even own a comb?