Messy Hair is Back: How to Get Tousled Hair
/ 5. DEZ 2025
Reading Time: 3 Minutes
Index
Beautiful, feminine, and dishevelled. These aren’t necessarily qualities that you pair with one another, but that said, don’t be fooled by the carefree appearance that you keep seeing on the runway. Messy, tousled hair may suggest a certain “I don’t care” attitude, but it’s also not about looking lazy. Instead, it’s meant to paint a picture of the type of woman who is always in a hurry, someone who’s life is way too exciting to waste time in front of the bathroom mirror. She’s the kind of woman who’s danced the night away and doesn’t have time to go home before going to the office. If you’re a fan of the imperfectly perfect look – whether it’s a messy bun, rockstar girlfriend layers, or a beachy lob that looks like you woke up on the right side of the bed – this is your guide to styling the ultimate cool girl tousled hair.
How to Tousle Hair: A Step-by-Step Guide
1. Wash and Dry Your Hair
This style works best on washed hair, so take the time to shampoo and condition first. However, you need to go easy on your fav conditioner or you’ll end up with heavy curls and that will make them less bouncy. The aim is to create a really light and loose style that allows your clip in hair extensions to mimic the natural movements of your head.
2. Spritz with Spray
Once you’ve roughly towel-dried your hair, flip it all over so that your head is upside down. Then, take a high-quality salt spray or silky spray and spritz it all over the ends. Take care not to protect the roots and keep them dry while you’re doing this as you want the ends to be coated with texture. The motto is: less is more.
3. Pick Your Curl
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You can take your tousled look one of two different ways from here. You can either keep things really natural and relaxed or go for a bolder, bigger voluminous vibe. This also depends on whether you’re wearing clip in or permanent extensions. To create the latter, you need to blow-dry the hair as opposed to letting it dry naturally. As you do this, use your fingertips or a pintail comb to almost backcomb your tresses and introduce extra volume while you dry.
4. Grab Your Curling Iron
The next step involves digging out your curling iron. If you’re planning to wear hair extensions with this style, make sure that they are of high quality. Low-quality extensions have a tendency to burn. You can pick up salon-grade human hair extensions in a huge variety of different lengths and colours.
5. Start Making Waves
Take sections of hair – they can be different sizes – and wrap each, in turn, around the barrel of the irons for approximately four seconds. Once you’ve curled all of your locks and clip in extensions, you can leave them in a relatively well-defined state or you can amp up the curls and tousle them some more. All you need to do to achieve this is run your fingers through the curls or use a wave comb and gently blend them together.
6. Finish with Hairspray
The final step is a generous application of long-hold hairspray. This will keep the waves and curls in your clip in or permanent hair extensions in place all evening long while you catch up with friends or dance the night away. If you're wearing clip-in hair extensions, remember to take them out before you go to bed - as knots, friction, and frizz will be your hair extensions' number one enemy the morning after!
Conclusion:
Whether you have a go at textured hair, locks tied into messy braids or bed hair accessorised with headbands, ribbons and headpieces – the verdict is officially in: messy hair doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a mess, it just means you’re more stylish than the rest of us. Break free from perfectly manicured waves and say hello to your hair’s more, rebellious younger sister. Here’s to unbrushed hair in 2026!
