Beauty at Home: Simple Tips to Maintain your Style During Lockdown

A lot of things in our lives have been put on pause – including our usually scheduled beauty and wellness appointments. No routine is the new routine. There are some things you only trust your service provider with, but there are things we can be doing in the meantime to maintain our style before our beloved storefronts open back up! Here are a few simple tips on how to maintain beauty at home. 

Hair Care

Hair Health – When it comes to washing your hair, less is more. With frequent washing, you strip your hair of its natural oils and proteins that actually help keep your hair healthy! Take advantage of not having to do your hair every day and give the everyday-washing a rest. Three times a week is ideal! Have dry shampoo on hand? This is a great go-between when you’re trying to put off a wash. 

Hair Color – Okay, so maybe you were due for a root touch up last week…or the week before. Regardless, we are all in the same boat. What can we do to best maintain our color? 

• Believe it or not, the temperature of your shower water makes a difference. Heat can cause your hair cuticle to swell, which loosens and washes out the color molecules. 
• Piggybacking off the first point, take it easy on the hot tools. Frequently applying heat to your hair can also open up cuticles, which causes the color to fade. While your quarantine hair may not be your look of choice, this new routine can be tremendously helpful to the health of your hair. 

Hair Length – We know long grown out bangs and split ends are hard to sit with, but we’d recommend leaving the cut for the professionals. In a true state of desperation, jumping on a Zoom call with your stylist who may be offering online services is an option. Otherwise, resist the “it will grow back” slogan in this time of desperation! 

Nails

While it’s near impossible to duplicate that salon-fresh manicure, there are still ways to perk up the nails from home. If you were on the books every two weeks, you’ve probably got a nice grown-out look right about now. The urge to chip your polish off comes way too easy, but don’t do it! Here’s a little IGTV video from one of our Chicago nail artists, Jenilea Heath, on how to safely get your gel manicure off without tearing your nails paper-thin.

If you’re not down for the bare-naked look, here are the steps to get those nails looking spunky:

• Remove existing polish: Take off your polish with acetone, or with the video linked above if you’re wearing gel.
• Trim, file, and buff your nails: With the long salon break, your hands will probably need some TLC. Clean up the cuticles, even out your grown nails, and buff those babies to a spick and span surface.
• Prep for Polish: Wash the “dust” off your hands and soften with some lotion.
• Get Colorful: Prep your nail beds with one coat of base coat, add at least 2 coats of your desired color (more if you want a deeper hue), and top with (yep, you guessed it!) top coat!

Hair Removal & Skin Care

As we take passes on our monthly, bi-monthly, or even weekly appointments, we may start seeing our unwanted hairs pop up. For the time being, these can be cleaned up with razors or cosmetic scissors for trimming.  Another option to help hide our unwelcome friends is hair bleach. You can lighten unwanted hair with Sally Hansen’s Bleach Kit in as little as 8 minutes. We’d recommend leaving the waxing and/or threading to the pros. Your at-home method may not look perfect, but it will keep you sane while waiting for our favorite businesses to re-open.

When looking into skincare beauty at home, there are lots of options to treat yourself. Amongst all the craziness and uncertainty, you deserve a little pampering. You know your skin best, so when it comes to choosing the products you use on your face, use what you know. We recommend using what your salon professional uses on you, or what you’re used to at home. If you don’t have any products on hand, the best place to go is, conveniently, your own kitchen! From honey, to avocado, to egg whites, you probably have some effective (and free!) remedies in your cabinets. Find some great homemade mask recipes here.

If you get facials regularly, reach out to your professional to have them walk you through one at home. Make sure to check if your professional is now offering online services on their Booksy profile. This way, you can book an appointment as you normally would, and then receive a Zoom link to click into at the scheduled time. If your service provider offers online services, you’ll see the circled label below on their Booksy profile.

Beauty at home doesn’t have to be boring! While we won’t ever be able to mimic the skills of our beloved and missed beauty professionals, they’re still only a phone call (or a Zoom call) away! We all have to get creative at home as we are locked in to keep our communities safe. Share your beauty at home ideas with us by tagging @booksyus and @booksybiz on Instagram!