Thinning Scissors Damage

Hairdresser holding thinning scissors — Photo: Bigstock

Q: My hairdresser insists on using thinning scissors on my hair. She says that my hair will look better and less boring when I let her thin it out, but I’m afraid that the thinning shears will damage my hair. What do you think? Should I let her do it? My hair is just below my shoulders and blunt cut.

A: This is always the most interesting thing to me… Clients so easily and often stress about any kind of "damage" that can be done to their hair by thinning scissors when they're at the salon. In reality 99% of damage to their hair is done at home by applying color or bleach themselves, or over-styling their hair with heat tools such as hair dryers, flat irons and curling tongs. In any case, lets get down to your question about thinning scissors.

No, thinning scissors do not damage your hair any more or less than normal cutting scissors. I'm really not sure why people often have this misconception about thinning scissors. I think that it may have something to do with the fact that some hairdressers and most apprentices don’t understand how to use thinning scissors properly due to lack of knowledge or lack of experience.

When cutting hair with thinning scissors, you have to keep in mind how the hair falls and its natural structure. You have to thin the hair out in the direction of the hair-fall, while keeping in mind whether the hair curls or has a kink. If you plainly use thinning scissors without thinking about these factors, you might very well end up with hair that looks frizzy or broken after you've finished with the thinning out phase.

The hair isn't actually more damaged than before using the thinning scissors. The hair's structure has just been cut at such an angle and direction that it now looks scraggly and broken, since the thinning out scissors creates lots of slightly different lengths of hair.

If the ends of all these hair strands end up each standing in its own direction, it looks bad and unhealthy. Thus, if your hairdresser has always used her thinning out scissors on your hair and it looked fine afterward, she probably knows how to use the thinning out scissors and it's not damaging your hair. You can rest easy.

The things that do have the potential to damage your hair at the salon are scissors that have become blunt over time, and the stylist is procrastinating to replace them. This is because blunt blades basically "chop" through the hair, in contrast to sharp blades that neatly "snip" through the hair strands with speed and precision. Blunt blades basically break through hair strands, which will probably cause eventual split ends and broken hair. This is the case for cutting scissors, thinning scissors and especially razor blades normally used for texturing and thinning out hair.

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See also:

Is it safe to cut hair when it is dry?

What will give the best results: dry haircutting or wet haircutting?

Caring for your haircutting shears