Choosing between cutting your long hair short or growing out your short hair can feel stressful.
Hair only grows about 0.5 inches (1.25 cm) a month, so even growing 1 inch takes around two months. That is why cutting your long hair short can feel risky. If you don’t like it short, it takes a long time to grow back.
On another note, if you have spent months or even years growing your short hair long and it turns out long hair isn’t suitable for your style and daily life, it will ruin all of your effort.
So, if you’re thinking about a drastic hair length change, consider some of these important factors that could help you decide between short hair and long hair.
Long Hair or Short Hair: What to Consider
Consider these important factors first when deciding what hair length is best for your face shape, lifestyle, and environment.
Face Shape & Hairstyle
If you’ve bought into the myth that short hair doesn’t suit everyone, then leave those assumptions at the door! We’ve all seen celebrities with short hair or even friends and family who’ve cut their hair short and didn’t look as good afterward.
But this has more to do with the cut itself than the length. Face shape plays a huge role in what kind of cut will look best on you. So if you’re considering a short haircut, find a few specific styles that speak to you and determine whether or not they’re a good fit for your face shape and characteristics.
In general, the most flattering haircuts balance out our faces and call attention to our best features. So if you have a naturally long face, shorter hair can help balance that, while the opposite is true for round faces.
Maintenance and Lifestyle
There’s a common misconception that short hair is easier to style and maintain than long hair. In reality, the “easier” option depends entirely on your styling habits and lifestyle.
Short haircuts are generally low-maintenance, but if your style requires pomade or hairspray for hold, you will still have to spend time washing it frequently to avoid buildup. Likewise, short haircuts require trimming every 4 to 6 weeks (typically costing $30–$60+ per visit, depending on your location) just to maintain their shape, which will significantly increase your annual salon budget.
Long hair is perfect for those who love changing up their look and don’t mind dedicating extra time to washing, drying, moisturizing, and styling. It is incredibly versatile for styling. You can throw it up in a quick bun or let it flow freely for a cool, messy look.
So, when making your decision, ask yourself if you prefer committing to an extra daily care routine in exchange for more styling options or enjoying less daily styling time while accepting frequent salon visits and fewer styling options.
Cold Weather or Hot Weather
One very real influencing factor that most people overlook is their environment. Do you live in a hot or cold climate? Long hair can be a pain in humid environments, while short hair isn’t always the best for cold areas.
Keep that in mind as well when planning for seasonal haircuts; it’s best to try a shorter cut for summer and keep long hair in the winter.
Even if you pick the perfect short haircut for your face shape, if you time it improperly, you might feel exposed and colder during the winter months when you could have really benefited from the lightness during the summertime.
So consider the climate you live in and, if you decide a short haircut is for you, try to time it well to match the season you’re heading into.
Personality
Overall, your haircut and style need to match your personality above all else. We’ve all gotten a haircut at some point that just made us feel like we weren’t quite ourselves.
On the other hand, a good haircut that matches our style, even if it is a drastic change for us, can make us feel like an entirely new person in a good way. The biggest drawback is that, often, you never know until you try.
But this is where waiting comes in handy. Pick a flattering hairstyle, make an appointment ahead of time that times it correctly in regards to the season, and then wait for a while. If you get more and more excited about the prospect, then go ahead with it.
However, if you start to second guess yourself and dread your incoming stylist appointment, then it may be your gut telling you that it would have been a hasty decision, and another style will suit you better and make you happier in the long run.
How to Decide Between Long Hairstyle and Short Hairstyle
So how do you take all of the above factors and combine them into a process that helps you decide whether long hair or short hair is best for you?
Thanks to technology and social media, you have a whole host of resources at your disposal to help you make informed hairstyle choices.
Try a Hairstyle Try-on App
Don’t let this be the overall deciding factor because not all of these apps are created equal! But if you’re considering a drastic change and are having a hard time imagining how it will look on your face, try a hairstyle try-on app.
These apps let you upload a photo and see different styles and colors superimposed onto your picture. They’re not always the most accurate or realistic, but they can help you get a rough idea about what shape and length of hair will be most flattering on you.
Do a Celebrity Match
Another helpful and maybe slightly more old-school way to try a hairstyle is finding a celebrity look-alike. Even though not all of us have a celebrity twin out there, you can find celebs with similar skin tones, face shapes, and facial characteristics as you.
Since celebrities change their hairstyle pretty often, there’s a decent chance that you can Google a particular celeb and find them wearing a variety of hair lengths and styles. Once you know your face shape, it’s not very difficult to find a celeb surrogate and potentially learn from their haircut mistakes!
Examine Old Selfies
The most tried and true method is to bring it back a little closer to home and pull out some of your own old selfies. While you probably won’t find a wide variety of hairstyles modeled on yourself, this is a good way to analyze what has worked for you and what hasn’t in the past.
Don’t stop at deciding whether you like the overall effect of a particular hair length you wore at the time: do some detail-oriented analytics to decide what components of your hair length worked for you and what didn’t.
This will help you choose what components you can replicate and which you can pass on when it comes to hair length.
Wavy Hair Vs. Curly Hair: What Are the Differences?
At the end of the day, hair does grow back, but it’s important to feel confident and at home in your own skin, regardless of the length of your hair.
So carefully choosing which length is best for you by considering these factors and using these methods can help ensure that you choose a length that you’ll want to keep and enjoy in the long term.