You guys know I work out a lot.

I’ll usually hit some sort of fitness class anywhere from three to seven times a week.  With working out comes having my hair tied back and with tape-in extensions that can get a little difficult.

I’ve had my Philocaly Tape-In extensions since October 2018 and I absolutely love having hair extensions since it adds major volume and a little bit of length into my natural hair.The only annoying thing about tapes is that when you put your hair up they tend to show.  At first I made more effort into hiding them, but when you work out as much as I do, all that effort goes out the window real fast and I just stopped caring. With that being said, I also couldn’t do certain hairstyles like wearing my hair half up.

Anyways, when I saw that my fave hair extensions brand, Philocaly Hair, came out with hand-tied extensions, I was instantly intrigued.

In case you aren’t familiar with Philocaly (you can read my original post here), they are a hair extension company based out of Saskatchewan that provides Russian single-donor remy hair.  So why Russian compared to the usual Asian or Indian hair you ask?  If you are caucasian like me, hair from a Russian person will be a better match for my natural hair texture compared to thicker, coarser hair like Asian or Indian. It’s also single donor, meaning that your set of hair will come from the same person, not a mix of people.

Anyways, when I got my hair done this past June I made the switch to their new hand-tied extensions to see what all the hype was about and to see if I would like them more than tapes.

Okay, so how the hand tieds work is you purchase a number of wefts, which is a row of hair that is sewn together at the top. The stylist then adds beads onto your natural hair that is connected by a string and then they sew the wefts of hair onto the beads.

I get my hair done at Fifth Hair Lounge & Beauty Bar in Winnipeg, who are actually certified in  Philocaly Hair’s method (Amanda did my colour and Alison did my extensions).  The brand sent over 12 wefts in total (they range in price from C$69 to C$82 and Fifth ended up using six of the wefts in my hair.  The application process for the hand tieds is definitely more time consuming since there is more work involved, so be prepared to spend at least two hours in the chair for the application.

I have two rows in my hair, with two wefts on the bottom row and then four on the top. If you were to just look at where they were placed on my head though, one is near the nape of my neck and the second is about halfway up. We could have added a third row, but since my hair is pretty long to begin with, we thought that two rows would cut it. Plus, it’s nice that I can freely touch the top of my scalp and not get my hands tangled in the tape ins.

Okay, so now that I’ve had them in for a month it’s given me a pretty good idea of the wear of the extensions.  These are more comfortable to wear (they did have that normal tightness when they were first installed, but nothing too different from the tapes) but I do find they are a little more high maintenance.  Since it’s essentially held in by a string I’m very conscious when washing and styling the hair since I don’t want the thread to break. Also, compared to tapes, with the hand tieds, if they do break then you’ll have to go back to the salon, whereas if a tape fell out, I had the extra adhesives so I could stick it right back in.

I was told by the ladies at Fifth that these will last longer since typically for tapes the part that wears out is the tape part that holds the hair in. Since these are hand tied, they said that they could last years.  They also mentioned that I could go longer before getting them moved up, up to even 12 weeks.  I feel like that is a long time to go without moving them up, but only time will tell. For the tapes I would get them moved up every six to eight weeks.

One thing I do love about these though is they are more comfortable to wear and when you wear your hair up you wouldn’t even know I have extensions in. So which method do I prefer more? Hard to say. I love the hand tieds but I do feel like I need to be more careful and gentle, whereas with the tapes I didn’t have that issue.  Overall though, I would go with the hand tieds since you purchase them by weft (make sure you go to your stylist for a consult!) and they are definitely more versatile and will last you longer overall.

Do you wear hair extensions? What method is your favourite?

Please note, products provided by PR. All opinions are my own.

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