In general locks are considered a permanent style. It is hard and tedious to try and take them down. But some day you may choose to take them down and if you do you don’t have to shave your head to do it.

How you started and maintained your locks will greatly affect how possible or impossible it is to take them down. If you are considering taking down your locks you may want to do some test locks to see what you are up against. Try to take out a lock in the very back of your head one over your ear and one in the front. Those are the places that mat the worse so the will give you a good idea of what you will have to do.

You will want to saturate your lock with conditioner and really work it through the lock. If your hair has been locked for a while you may need to clip off a inch or two at the bottom. Now you’ll want to use some thing very pointy but blunt so not to damage your hair any more that you have to. The back of a rat tail comb works well so do hair pins and tiny sock knitting needles.

Now you will need to gently start to pick out the shed hair starting at the tip and working your way up the lock. This will take a while depending on how long your hair has been locked and how long your locks are.

I interviewed a beautician who did this for a client who had but long pencil thin locks. He didn’t cut them. It took him four 8 hour days to undo her hair. He has vowed never to do it again but he testifies that it can be done.

I have had two sets of locks and I took down both with out cutting my hair. I had the first set when I was in school so it took me about a month working on my hair two to three hours a day to get out my first set of 80+ three year old six inch long locks. They were started with twists and maintained with single twists, then double twists and then interlocking. All together I think it took me about 70 hours to take down my hair and that was with help. I didn’t know about the power of lots of conditioner then. I had a lot of split ends and general hair damage.

The second set was a little later they were started with braids and maintained by interlocking. I had over 450 tiny braids in my head. I only had them for about four months. Still, it took me three days working almost non stop to get them down. But the conditioner helped a lot. I would have one section soaking in conditioner while I was picking out another section. I had some split ends but all in all my hair came out ok.

You results will depend on how badly you want you locks out and how much you want to save your hair. If you don’t have time or patience you only option may be cutting them short (er) or cutting them off.

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