I love having curly hair, but I’m not a big fan of using heat to get it. My love of Titanic inspired me to try pretty much every method of heat-free hair curling around. Foam rollers, straight bendy foam rollers, rag rollers, and finally, pin curls. The foam rollers left me with strangely cylindrical Shirley Temple style curls, while the rag rollers left me looking, well, also like Shirley Temple.
So, pin curls are awesome. They’re all precise and lovely. And not at all like Shirley Temple. Much more like Rose. Which is exactly what I wanted.
All you’ll need for pin curls is a stock pile of bobby pins, a spray bottle of water, a comb, a big hair clamp/clip for sectioning off your hair, and even more bobby pins.
Starting at the back of your head, separate off 1cm sections of hair. Comb it out, squirt it with a bit of water. Starting at the roots, wrap the hair section around two fingers. Shimmy the wrapped hair off your fingers and pin it down. And repeat. Sleep on it, take the pins out, et voila!
i’ve been doing my curls like this for a long while now, and they turn out awesome every time! the thing that is a bother is how the bobby pins can get spread out after a couple uses, especially the ones used on the back of your head where the curls are larger. i go through way too any bobby pins!
but it’s so much fun to do, because it’s like magic and makes mornings to much more fun when you wake up to pretty curls!
Despite the high bobby pin mortality rate, I do find I still prefer pin curls to all other overnight curling methods. I have seen special pin curl clamps for sale, but from the looks of them, their hinged bit would really hurt to sleep on, and would probably also come open if you pressed on them (as I usually press my head to a pillow while sleeping, this seems to be a major design flaw!). Pin curls are easily the easiest overnight curl to sleep on, so I’d probably prefer them, even if the curls weren’t so perfect!
My grandma used pin curls every night. Been using this method on my daughters hair and it works beautifully. Much better than the foam rollers my mother used!
I agree! Foam rollers are so incredibly uncomfortable to sleep on, and I don’t like the curls they give very much—very Shirley Temple esque, making them really hard to do much with. I should really put in some pin curls soon… I just love them!
It’s been a couple years since I found this post, and I lost it until I ran across something of yours on Pinterest. I’m so glad I did! Now I can thank you from the bottom of my heart for bringing pin curls into my life!
You see… My hair won’t hold curl-by-heat at ALL unless there are two cans of hairspray, 3 curling irons, 4 hands, and about 6 hours involved… Ok, maybe not that long, but it seems like it. Not exaggerating on the hairspray though. I wanted to do something different with my hair for a Renaissance festival, rather than leave it strait or twist it into a bun (not very fairy-like). Then I found rag curls.
They took half the time and hairspray that a curling iron required, but still… Disastrous. They held all day and looked fine for what I wanted them for, but they turned stringy with the sweat and the dancing and the little girls touching them. I used the saved time from curling my hair trying to untangle it. Nevertheless, I used them again for the next festival, and then I started looking for an alternative, which led me here.
Pin curls are amazing. They take half the time and a quarter of the hairspray that rag curls take, they’re all sorts of silly fun to take out in the morning, they style better, they hold even when wet, and somehow they don’t tangle much at all. And because of you, this is the ONLY way I’ll curl my hair anymore.
Thank you.
Hi Anny! I’m so thrilled you found my blog again—yay Pinterest! It sounds like you and I have similar un-curl-inclined hair, and I’m so glad you’ve fallen in love with pin curls! That reminds me… I should go pin curl my hair sometime soon 🙂
Hallo Marie!,
Will pin curling (VERY often) damage my scalp? I have severe anxiety and depression that does cause me to lose lots of hair (despite my fabulous maintenance). I would LITERALLY lose an arm just to have glossy ringlets that stay for around 2 days. I wash my hair every other day so I wouldn’t be pin curling every night, but most likely every other. I have medium thick hair that falls just past my shoulders. I take SUPER good care of it despite the past damage I have had (bleach, scalp hair loss from stress). Looking forward to your reply and THANK YOU SO MUCH for writing this article! God bless dear author 🙂
Good morning Kaitlynn!
I don’t think that this would make you loose any additional hair. You’d have to be careful though of your hair breaking though which might cause you to think it is falling out more than usual.