Practicing Your Cornrow

If you are cornrowing your hair yourself, and you are a beginner, you will want to practice on a doll’s hair first. Practice dolls can be found in any toy store. Or, if you would like a professional practice doll, you can go to a beauty supply store and ask for a “practice head”. You may use the search function under this article to locate a beauty supply store near you by entering “beauty supplies and (enter your city here)”. Once you have found a beauty supply store that is close to you, visit it with a swatch of the type of hair that you will be cornrowing. If the hair that you will be cornrowing is kinky then the practice doll’s hair will need to be kinky

The Difference Between Cornrowing Hair and Braiding

When we see a delightfully intricate hair design, we are often fascinated. Most likely the design has taken hours to complete. But, as an onlooker, it is difficult for us to determine where the design begins and ends. To us, it often simply looks like a very beautifully crafted work of art. As a stylist, one of the questions that I get the most is, “What is the difference between cornrowing hair and braiding hair?”

Do you know the difference between cornrowing and braiding? If not, don’t sweat it. Because most people do not know the difference between cornrowing hair and braiding hair.

Basically, the difference is a slight one in that cornrowing IS braiding (often called plaiting), but a braid is not always a cornrow. Lol. Don’t worry if I have confused you, let me clear this up…cornrowing is braiding the hair close to the scalp in a continuous design…like a row of corn. Get it?!

When someone says, “I’m going to get individual braids”, generally the hair is sectioned into less than 1 inch sections and braided away from the scalp. So the braider would section the hair starting at the scalp, then continue the braid away from the head.