Hair styling
Hair styling is the temporary or lasting shaping and arrangement of hair, using techniques and products to create or maintain a chosen appearance.
Hair fiber: The keratin-based strand produced by a hair follicle, with a cuticle, cortex, and sometimes a medulla. Its structure and condition determine how readily strands bend, stretch, and retain a style.
Haircut: The cutting or trimming of hair to change its length, shape, or balance. A haircut establishes the underlying form that styling arranges and emphasizes.
Ancient Egyptian hairstyles: Hair arrangements worn in ancient Egypt, including natural styles, wigs, braids, and elaborate adornments. Archaeological evidence shows styling and wigs served practical, social, and ceremonial purposes.
Hair coloring: The alteration of hair color using dyes, bleaches, or other coloring agents. Coloring changes appearance through pigment alteration rather than primarily through shape.
Hair setting: A process that shapes hair while wet or warm and fixes the form as it dries or cools. Water and heat temporarily alter bonds in hair, allowing a new shape to hold.
Blowout (hairstyling): A hairstyle created by drying wet hair with a blow dryer and brush, often for smoothness or volume. Blow-drying with tension is a common route to polished, shaped hair.
Wig: A covering made from natural or synthetic hair and worn on the head. Wigs have long extended styling beyond the wearer's own hair and enabled elaborate forms.
Hair care: Practices and products used to cleanse, condition, protect, and maintain hair and scalp. Care supports hair condition, while styling chiefly arranges hair into a chosen form.
Heat styling: The use of heated tools to reshape hair, typically by changing its temporary form. Flat irons and curling tools reshape strands through controlled heat.
Braiding: The interlacing of three or more strands into a woven structure. Braids arrange hair into a durable form without requiring heat or chemical alteration.