Synthetic dreadlocks are usually temporary (i.e., can be removed with no damage to your own hair), and can be quite expensive because they take much longer to attach than other types of extensions - this is why it's well worth trying to do your own dreads if you have the time and the patience. Most dread extensions are possible to do at home, so read through the following page to see what you think is best for you.

Oh so many bits in this section now! So I've put a couple of page jumps in to make it easier to navigate.

[hairpolice dreads] [wrapped silky dreads] [dread pictures] [attaching single dreads] [attaching double-ended dreads] [adding synthetic dreads to real dreads] [making dreads from fake hair] [making dread hairpieces] [dread effects] [washing dreads]

Be wary of anyone trying to do 'starter dreads' using synthetic hair - when your own hair starts to grow in at the roots, it may well be a lot thinner than the dreads, even when it becomes dreaded, so you might have a distinct tidemark between the synth dreads and the real.

"Hairpolice" style dreads. Lux's dreads were put in for her by the Hair Police. Thanks to Bridget for clarifying this method: the client's real hair is 'pinchbraided' - this involves braiding synthetic hair into the real hair whilst incorporating a piece of thread. The thread is then knotted around the braid to secure the synthetic hair, and the synth hair is then teased and steamed into dreadlocks. [Rae of Hairalchemy has created an excellent illustrated guide to pinchbraiding which you can find here.] The real hair is not incorporated into the dreads. Thanks to James for sending a close-up picture of his pinchbraided dreads, which shows this method really well! When you're fed up of the dreads, you just snip the thread that attaches them to your real hair, and take them off. This method allows the same dreads to be re-tightened and re-attached, without damaging the real hair. Total cost: around $475, but expect more in salons - though with an increasing number of Hairpolice affiliates, prices are dropping to between $300 and $400 for a full head of dreads. The Hairpolice are based in Minneapolis and NY, with a salon in Amsterdam, though other people such as Lana in Portland, Oregon, who did Jessie's hair (lanaland2@hotmail.com) use the same technique. The Hairpolice keep a list of all the people they have trained on this page, so have a look to see if there are any affiliates near you.

Lux Lux Chrissy Jessie Angelicka Angelicka James Angelicka Heather

Aconite Sara Nef Foxy Faux Dollie Sara Foxy Faux Atropa* Jonna Foxy Faux

This method involves braiding the client's hair, then wrapping each braid round and round with synthetic hair and sealing into place with heat and/or glue. Strictly speaking, at this stage they are known as 'sticks', but are also termed 'silky dreads'. For more realistic dreads, the surface of the wrapped 'stick' can be teased to give a more matted appearance, or, the piece of wrapping hair can be backcombed before it is wrapped round the underlying braid. You can either braid all your own hair first, then use separate pieces of hair to wrap around the braids, or, you can use just one piece of looped-over extension hair to make the entire dread (see the explanation of this method in the section below). If your own hair is quite short, you can simply have synthetic hair braided into your own hair until it's as long as you want the dreads to be. This method, like the hairpolice method, involves no damage to your real hair, since it remains tucked away inside the dread. When you get fed up of the dreads, you just snip the end of the synthetic part off, unwrap the dread and unpick the braid underneath. The biggest drawback with this style is that it can be painfully heavy - wrapped braids = a lot of hair! These can also be the most expensive style of all. I was quoted £450+ ($700+) for bum-length dreads this way. It doesn't just damage your bank balance either - when I had my blue dreads in, they pulled quite a lot of my own hair out of the sides of my head. It's only now, two years later, that my hair is returning to its former thickness (not that it was very thick to begin with). If you've got weedy hair like me, but you really, really, really want dreads, I would advise trying the Hairpolice style dreads, or double-ended dreads, which only take half as much hair to create as the wrapped style do. Please note, the picture of Dollie is © Heathcliffe 1998, and is reproduced with his kind permission. Don't nick it. Or the clowns will eat you. * - Go and visit Atropa's site if you haven't done so already. She has the most astonishingly wonderful range of extensions, and her site is constantly updated too! This is how you do wrapped silky dreads yourself, using one continuous piece of hair: You start with the extension hair looped over at about a third of the way along it's length, and braid the shorter length into your own hair, for the whole length of your natural hair. If you can get friends to help with it, box-braiding is the best way to do it, but a 3-way braid still works well. You leave the other 2/3 of the extension hair hanging loose at the top of the braid. You need to have this extra length, because you need approximately twice the length of a braid in wrapping hair to completely cover it. You then backcomb all of the loose hair at the bottom of the braid, and, you loosely backcomb the part of extension hair that you left out. Dab a bit of spirit gum on the top of the braid for the first inch- and try to just dab it on the synthentic hair, which makes it easier to remove the extensions when you take them out. Then wrap the part you left out tightly round and round the braid, working downwards, until you run out of hair to wrap round. Provided your own hair isn't too long, you should be able to cover up all of the braid so that all you can see is synthetic hair. The more you backcomb the loose hair before you wrap, the 'snarlier' the dreads will be. If you want smooth hair wraps, don't backcomb at all! Dab some more spirit gum at the bottom of the braid and finish wrapping over the spirit gum. Then backcomb the end of the loose hair, and the hair at the end of the braid together, into each other. If you backcomb enough, then the ends shouldn't come undone. Then twist the whole thing round and round, right down to the very bottom, until it's one long twisty stick of hair, and blast it with a hot hairdryer. My poor little travel hairdryer is too wimpy to do this, but a 2000 watt hairdryer will do a nice job - the heat from the hairdryer doesn't quite melt the hair, but it does fix it into shape. Trim any long or straggley ends off. If your own hair is very long, I would advise using two pieces of extension hair to make each dread with; one piece to make the underlying braid (along with your own hair), and one piece to do all the wrapping with. You can use a crochet hook or a latch-hook hair tool (available from Dr Locks) to pull the loose hair for-wrapping-with through the braid at the top, before you start to wrap the hair. This is easier than trying to anchor the loose end of a section of hair down at the top of the dread.

Chocolate Bodypaint	Dreadfairy	Kaytea	Kathryn	Diana	Dreadfairy*
Tristessaede	Julia	Sara	Lisa	Angelicka	Vibrata Chromodoris*
Richard	Emmelinemay	Kohl Eyes	Plastikhaar	Silveria	Feisty One

What type of hair?
Whichever type of hair you use is up to you. Silky hair (the sort you'd use for loose extensions) is easy to backcomb and to keep tidy while you work, but can be pricey. Yaky and jumbo braid are cheaper, and melt very easily (especially if the packet says Kanekalon or "hot water use" on it), but can be messy when you start backcombing... though their slightly crimpy texture can take a bit of the backcombing work out it for you.

If you aren't sure what to use, and it's your first try, use Kanekalon hair. It'll say 'Kanekalon' somewhere on the packet, and online shops refer to it as 'KK' hair. If you're happy with the results, great! If you aren't too happy, try the silky monofibre hair instead, and you may find you have more success. Really cheap synthetic hair (what's called 'PP' or polypropylene fibre) doesn't make very good dreads because it doesn't react to heat terribly well. If you can't get the hair you've tried to heat-seal into shape, chances are it's the fibre that's at fault - try again with a different type of hair.

I have found from my own experience that you can make reasonable dreads from any type of hair, but the differences lie in the way they feel, and also on what method you use to seal them into shape.

If you're using a hairdryer, your dreads may turn out rough and snarly, and can stick together a bit. Hairdryered dreads have a smoother appearance than steamed dreads do, because the hairdryer seems to do a better job of blasting stray bits of hair into the dread, which steam doesn't do. If you want to soften hairdryered dreads up, boil them after you've made them. then they won't feel so rough.

If you're using steam to seal your dreads, all types of silky hair and also certain types of jumbo braid (such as Kanekalon and Toyokalon jumbo braid) make lovely, soft dreads, but it can be a bit hit-and-miss because some types of jumbo braid don't seem to react to steam at all (i.e., 'super silky jumbo braid'). Most hair that I've tried that says 'Kanekalon' on it seals into shape OK. Steam heat also tends to make hair shrink more than hairdryer heat, so your finished dreads may be less fluffy, and more dense and firm than hairdryered dreads, which means using more hair to get thicker dreads (so ultimately, they may be heavier than hairdryered dreads).

I've also tried the Toyokalon 'pony' hair (the shiny stuff with a large flick curl at the bottom) and had a lot of success with that - it melts better than anything else I've tried and doesn't go crunchy like jumbo braid does, even with a hairdryer. If you're really not sure what other types of hair will work well for making dreads, then try this stuff.

Why backcomb?
Backcombing is a key part of making dreads that stay dreaded. You can twist un-backcombed jumbo braid round and heat it, and it will keep its shape for a while, but not permanently - though you do get nice smooth 'stick' type dreads this way. Twisted-type dreads also tend to be quite heavy, and will weigh about twice as much as the fluffed-up backcombed variety. The fact that they're heavier, they don't stay twisted, and that they require more heating because they're so dense means that I prefer the backcombed type of dreads.

You need to make sure you backcomb evenly - if the matted bits are dotted throughout the dreads before you twist and heat it, you'll get lumpy dreads. If the whole lot of hair is equally matted, you'll get more uniform, slightly neater dreads.


MAKING A START

Backcombing.
To make single dreads with a loop at the top:
To begin with, Loop the top of the hair round a static object like a doorknob or the top of a chair. I tend to use a metal wire coathanger, and put my legs through the main triangle of the coathanger, so that I can attach the fake hair to the top hook.
To make 'double ended' dreads:
(Double-ended just mean that you take a folded piece of hair and dreadlock each side of it, giving you a 'pair' of dreads, joined at the top).

You need to anchor the hair to something before you start trying to dread it. Bulldog clips are handy - some people use their feet or toes - personally I do a 'larks head knot' round the hook of a metal coathanger using the top loop of the synthetic hair, then put my legs through the coathanger and work on each side of the hair. Once you've made the dreads, you can then slide them off the coathanger hook.

Don't use too much hair - this is fairly important, because if you do use too much, the dread won't stay in place and will unwind. Dreads are only fat and thick because they've been fluffed up to that size - your starting piece of hair should about the size of a pencil. Also, consider how you're going to seal them into shape - steaming or boiling them will make some types of hair shrink quite a lot, so you could end up with skinny dreads where you may have wanted thicker ones. Play about and see how much hair you need to use to get dreads of the right size which keep their shape. This is not an exact science and you will need to experiment!

The key to making realistic dreads is backcombing - literally, combing the hair in the opposite direction to which it 'grows' (or would if it was coming off your head). You should use fine hair, and a fine comb, then attack the former with the latter! Any old comb will do, but metal flea combs (the sort you use on pets) are really good for this. You can get the hair very ratty by pulling the hair apart with your fingers after each 'round' of backcombing, i.e., once you've backcombed your chunk of hair, pull it all apart widthways, then backcomb again.. then pull apart again. Eventually (hopefully) it'll be one big long piece of very ratty hair, and it'll be hard to pull apart widthways because of its rattiness.

Twisting
After working some serious knots into the hair (think: big fluffball with a diameter of 3 inches), twist it round and around - this will alter its shape from tangled mass or hair into more of a dread shape. Start at the top of the dread, and as you twist the hair, smooth it down with your hands. This should take care of any big loops of hair that are hanging about - if you smooth as you twist, it all gets incorporated into the dread. Keep twisting and smoothing and you work down the dread towards the tip.
Twisting by hand can be a bit laborious and give you sore fingers, so if you've got one of those Conair quick braiding tools, you could put it to use on twisting your dreads.

Heating
Finally, fix the dread into place using heat:

Hairdryer and direct heat: crimpers or flattening plates work OK, as does continous blasting from a hot hairdryer along the length of the dread (you might have to keep twisting it while you apply heat, to get it to hold its shape better). As mentioned above, it needs to be a good hairdryer, at least 1500W, and preferably more powerful than that. I use mine with the vent attachment on it, which makes it easier to concentrate the heat along the dread. I hold the hairdryer right against the dread, not just near it, and do about 3 or 4 passes along its length, taking about 15 seconds to do each pass.

Steam heat:Some people have find that spraying the hair with water before heating can also help form better dreads, which makes sense, since steam is hotter than the air that comes out of a hairdryer. You could improvise and use a steam iron, or a kettle (but for Christ's sake be careful - steam burns are worse than hot water scalds) but clothes steamers, or steam cleaners, seem to do a better job than anything else, if you can lay your hands on one. This type of heating is good for the sort of hair that gets rather scratchy with a hairdryer.
I recently bought one of these - and it's very good for making dreads. It comes with some useful attachments which allow you to run a jet of steam along the length of the dreads, so you can seal them in two passes with the steamer. There are a whole load of these little steam cleaner handheld doohickeys on the market, most of which seem to do the job (though, they don't last forever). Use deionised/distilled water in your steamer to keep it alive a bit loger.
As with the hairdryer, I have had the best results by holding the steam right against the dreads - they get slightly wet, but will dry off in a few hours.

Hot water: Using hot water can be fiddly, but produces good results if you can be bothered. Darktigerlily suggests anchoring the top of the dread to a tap, then pouring boiling water over it, so the sink below can catch the hot water. Nyssa243 suggests forming the dread, then wrapping it round with plastic-coated wire to keep its shape before submerging in hot water for about 10 seconds. Mskittie13 suggests making the entire hairpiece, securing at the top and bottom to keep all the twisting in place, then lying the whole thing in a bath before covering in hot water.
The key seems to be to find a way of keeping the dread twisted while it's submerged without burning your fingers with hot water or the steam that rises from it. Hairclips, barbecue tongs, rubber bands, chipclips, pliers.. these are all handy implements if you plan to boil your dreads.
With all use of hot water, the dreads don't need to be in hot water for very long, perhaps 10 or 15 seconds at the most. Once they've come out of the water, you need to let them dry before you can use them. Boiled dreads tend to be quite soft, even if you use the sort of hair that goes velcro-ey with a hairdryer. Boiled dreads also shrink a lot more hairdryered dreads.

Finito!
All of this should give you a single dread with a small loop at the top (or a pair of dreads with a little undreaded section between them, if you're making double-ended dreads). If they've got straggly ends that you don't want, just snip them off - I use a heat clamp to singe them off mine, which looks neater than just using scissors.

You can then attach these using the methods listed above.

How many dreads can I make from one packet of hair?
This is a difficult question to answer, because it depends on the length of the dreads you make, how thick they are, whether they are single dreads or double-ended dreads, how much hair is in the packet (some packs are 2.5oz, some 3.5oz), whether they're steam-sealed of hairdryer-sealed...

As a rule of thumb, though, 2.5oz pack of hair will make 7-8 medium (15" folded) length double-ended dreads, or 6-7 long double-ended dreads - or, about 15 medium single dreads, and 12 long single dreads. The chunkier 3.5oz packets that some brands sell will obviously make a few more than this. If you're making short dreads, you can cut the hair in half at the top where it folds, and get about 15 pairs of double-ended dreads out of one packet, or, 30 or so single dreads.

Extending real dreadlocks with synthetic dreads

Kohl Eyes has adapted the double-ended dreads method for use on real dreadlocks. She has explained this on her site, but it's worth repeating here because it's quite ingenious. It's similar to the the way you use double ended dreads, but the difference is that instead of dreading up both side of a piece of folded hair to make a double-ended dread, you only turn one side into a synthetic dread, and leave the other half of the hair loose. You then split the loose end of the hair into two and use the two sections as two stalks of a 3-way braid - the third stalk of the braid will be one of your own real dreadlocks. You braid until you get to the end of your real dreadlock, then turn the remaining loose hair at the and of the braid-and-dreadlock into a synthetic dread, using your usual backcombing/twisting/whatever method. This does mean that you have to make some of the dreads on your head, but it's an excellent way to add length and colour to existing dreads.

Kohl also came up with an alternative method using single dreads with a loop at the top: it's been a while, but i finally got a chance to whip myself up the new dreadies i'd been planning for months i decided against using double ended dreads [as i did with my last dready style] - i'd found them a bit bulky and heavy and wanted to aim for something a bit more manageable, so i made up a batch of single dreads in hot pink, aqua, magenta and pink/aqua swirls. there's some wire coiled randomly around most of the dreads too, although i don't think the pics show that particularly well. think i'll add even more actually! To to pop the fake ones in, i pulled each real dread through a fake dread's loop, twisted the loop, pulled the real dread back through etc. until it was held securely in place. T his time i also wanted to try leaving my real dreads loose underneath instead of braiding fake hair into them but, although it looked alright, my dreads aren't quite long enough yet to sit happily, and they started poking through and generally annoying me! i wanted to avoid braidy bits though, so i latch-hooked fake hair through the bottom of each real dread and dreaded that up to extend them. it was a very last minute thing, so i just grabbed some magenta hair that doesn't match my hairdye - it does make it look like the dreads blend into a darker pink though, and worked very well as a quick method of extending them

An excellent method of permanently extending real dreads was devised by Vibrata Chromodoris and you can find a page with step-by-step pictures here.

Making dread hairpieces:
I had a bit of a play about myself, and took pics at each stage to illustrate each part of the method.
I wanted to make a short dread hairpiece that I could wrap round my own ponytail.
I bought a pack of blue and a pack of black silky hair (total cost, about £5/$8), then spent about an hour making a basic, short loose hairpiece by attaching lengths of the hair to a piece of lace. I cut the hair in half lenthways because I only wanted a short hairpiece, not a long one. You can use different hair like Yaky or Jumbo braid if you wish, I just find silky hair easier to backcomb properly. I use lace because it's quite rough and scratchy, and grips hair well when you tie it on.

Tie the lace between two static points (like the back of a chair, or tape each end to the edge of a table). This gives you a firm anchor, which is half the battle. Once the hair is attached to the lace, you can pull it as much as you like, and therefore backcomb better.

Loop the hair over the top of the lace. You can keep the length even on both sides for a shorter, thicker dread, or keep one side much longer for skinnier, longer dreads. Remember not to use too much hair - start with half the the thickness of a pencil, and see if that produces chunky enough dreads for you.

Keep a tiny section of the hair separate, and plait the rest of the hair for about an inch. It doesn't matter if this is messy; it all gets covered up anyway. If you don't want to do a wrap (i.e., the picture below), then at this stage you just plait all the hair (no little left-out bit) and squidge on some latex hair glue, or hot glue, which will hold the braid - though it might look a bit messy round the base of the hairpiece. It's up to you, really. You don't have to do the wrap bit, it just gives it some height. I suppose you don't really have to use glue if you don't want to, it's just easier to backcomb if the hair is anchored to something rather than just looped over it.

Wrap the small, left-loose part of the hair round and round the plaited bit so that you cover all the plait, then squish this wrapped part between the flat plates of a crimper of straightener. If you have a very hot hairdryer (or a heat gun) this might also be hot enough to work. This creates a little inch-long tight hair wrap, which helps the hairpiece stick up once it's on. Remember, you don't have to do the wrap if you don't want to :)

Backcomb the hair with a comb (not a brush). Keep hold of the very end of the hair, and roughly comb the rest of the hair towards the wrap at the top. It doesn't matter how messy it gets - the messier, the better.

When you've done a few minutes backcombing, the whole length of the hair should be snarled and messy. Usually the hair gets thinner towards the end, because you'll have ratted the hair at the end into the middle of the section.

Twist the backcombed hair round and round in one direction. The hair will become more like a stick of twisted, dready hair, and stop looking like the demon child of cookie monster. At this point, blast with a hairdryer or steamer. You need to keep the heat moving, and hold is against the dread, not just near it. When done, the dread will probably untwist a bit, but will still hold its dread shape. If it's too thick and unravels, just pull it apart into two dreads, re-twist and blast with heat again.

brabajagal made this 'flame' dreaded hairpiece using three different colours of hair. This graduated effect was acheived by backcombing orange and yellow hair together first, then twisting and steaming it into place. Shorter lengths of red hair were then backcombed lightly and wrapped around the top half of the yellow/orange dreads - then all three colours were twisted together and steamed again. This would be an excellent way to blend your natural hair colour in with a dread hairpiece - start with dreads which match your natural hair colour at the top, then have them blend into a contrasting colour at the bottom.

If you find it a bit tricky to mix the colours of your dreads up in one hairpiece, you could always make a few one-colour dread hairpieces, then wear them one on top of the other to get a mix of colours. Vainvixen made the hairpieces to the right; you can see how they look worn together by clicking on the picture. This way you could make some dreads that match your natural hair colour as a base piece, then add different colours on top of those, depending on how you feel that day!

Taking care of your dreads
Regardless of the type of dreads you have put in, at some point, you'll need to wash them.
The instructions for washing are very much the same as for braids, so it's worth have a look at that page.
Basically, your dreads will become very heavy when wet, and the only part of your hair which really needs to be washed is the scalp. You should therefore try to keep the lengths of your dreads held up and out of the way when shampooing. Try tying them all together loosely on top on your head then tip your head upside down and use one hand to shampoo, and one to hold the dreads out of the way. Alternatively, cover the lengths with a plastic bag (but some water may still run down the lengths when you rinse).

• Mix up a dilute shampoo mixture in an old bottle.

• Wet your scalp with a showerhead or jugs of water.

• Pour the shampoo mixture all over your scalp.

• Work into a lather with your fingertips, then rinse your scalp. Rinse well, because residual soap suds may give you an itchy head.

• Wrap the dreads in a towel to soak up excess water, then replace the towel with a clean one when it gets too damp.

• You can use a hairdryer on a low setting if you wish.