It doesn't look right

What's the main problem with how it looks?

• It's lopsided or one side is higher than the other

  What kind of unevenness?

  • The sections are visibly different sizes

    Do this

    Use her ears and nose as centre guides

    Take it down. Find the midpoint between her two ears at the crown, feel for it rather than guessing. Draw the parting from that point backward. From the front, her nose is the midline: the parting should line up with the tip of her nose when she looks straight ahead. These two reference points together get the parting accurate.

  • The sections looked even but the finished style isn't

    Do this

    One side was gathered with more tension. Match your hand height

    Take it down. When you re-gather each side, hold the hair with your non-working hand at the same height from the scalp on both sides, check this by feel. Uneven finished height almost always comes from one hand holding the section further from the scalp than the other, which pulls the hair higher on that side.

• It's too loose, flat, or shapeless

  Do this

  Re-gather with your holding hand right at the scalp

  Take it down and re-gather with your anchor hand right at the scalp, at the point where the elastic will go. If it still looks flat, the gathered section may be too thick: try a slightly smaller gather.

  Holding tension

• The shape is right but there are flyaways or loose bits

  Where are the loose hairs?

  • Along the hairline at the front

    Do this

    Dampen the hairline before you start, not after

    Wet your fingertips and smooth the front hairline hairs flat before beginning the style. They'll cooperate for long enough to work. For a cleaner finish, clip them back temporarily while you do the rest of the style, then release them and smooth over the top once it's in. Tucking them in afterward once the style is set doesn't work as well.

  • Floating across the surface of the style

    Do this

    One light pass with a soft brush over the surface

    Don't take the style down. Take the soft-bristle brush and make a single smooth pass across the outside surface of the finished style, skim it, don't push through it. This catches floating hairs without disturbing the structure underneath. One pass is enough; a second pass starts working the style loose.

    See: Soft-bristle brush