Why are cotton t-shirts okay - but cotton pillowcases are not!?

The advice to avoid cotton pillowcases when sleeping 💤 but to use cotton t-shirts on wash day to protect your natural hair can be a bit confusing! 🧖🏾‍♀️ Keep reading below to learn more about when to use cotton on your natural hair!

STOP 🛑 Cotton for Sleeping 
Cotton happens to be an absorbent material. So when you lay your moisturized hair on a dry, absorbent cotton pillowcase, you’re allowing your pillowcase to leech that precious, necessary moisture away from your hair. 

In addition to the drying of your hair strands… Did you know that the average person moves about 13 times per hour while sleeping?! 🤯  All that tossing and turning, in addition to your hair becoming dry and brittle from the removal of your hair’s moisture, can lead to some serious damaging effects.😩 Even worse, your hair can begin to roll around on itself, causing the cuticles on the hair shaft to lift, which may lead to split hair shafts and breakage. So, in order to protect your hair while you sleep, we recommend wrapping your hair with a sleek, smooth satin head wrap, or utilizing satin or silk pillowcases at night instead! Because they’re slippery in texture, and less absorbent, your hair can slip and slide freely, without getting caught, and it’s able to retain its moisture and health come morning.

GO 🟢 Cotton for Wash Day

After taking the time to carefully detangle,➰  cleanse,💧 and condition your hair,🧴 it’s important to follow up with proper drying techniques to keep your hair protected, and frizz and knot-free! Using cotton to dry your hair works in this instance because of its ability to absorb moisture... Unlike while you’re sleeping, after washing, you’ll need a material that can collect all of that excess water from your strands. However, not all cotton materials are created equally! 💯✨

Your average fluffy cotton bath towels are great for absorbing excess water on your skin–not so great for hair. ⚡️ Regular bath towel material contains deep grooves that can latch onto your curls, leading to friction, knots, and even breakage. So, when drying your curly, coily, kinky, or wavy hair, we recommend using a cotton t-shirt instead! 🤗  The material within cotton t-shirts is sewn flat and smooth, without the deep grooves that you find in bath towels! Because of this, the potential for hair to snag and break on the material is minimized! 🎉

So, to sum it all up, you do not want the cotton at night [via pillowcase] to reduce the moisture from your hair, making it dry and frizzy in the morning.  However, you do want cotton [via hair towel] after washing your hair, to soak up the excess water… while also remembering that the cotton material you use matters greatly when it comes to tangles and frizz. 

We hope that helps, MelaninBae!

And be sure to try The NEW Melanin Haircare LUX T-shirt Towel! It’s made of soft, stretchy, and SMOOTH t-shirt material that’s thick and super absorbing! It also features chic double-sided dalmatian print and enough fabric to secure your towel into a turban or wrap for longer, hands-free wear! Grab yours TODAY exclusively on the Melanin Haircare site!