In this short hair cut fine hair video tutorial, you'll learn how to address fine hair and make it look thicker. While the end result is a short haircut with soft layers this is more of a technical deep dive into techniques for cutting fine hair, not necessarily thin hair.
These techniques can apply to a short bob, short hairstyles and even longer hairstyles. Short haircuts are better suited for fine hair and especially thinning hair as the hair is not weighed down as much. When you create the right structure for the haircut, it puts less reliance on styling to make hair more voluminous.
Watch this short hair cut fine hair techniques tutorial and follow along with the transcript.
Short Hair Cut Fine Hair Techniques Tutorial:
Welcome back to Jatai Academy. I'm Russell Mayes, Director of Content. Today we're going to show you three essential techniques when you're cutting fine hair and fine textured hair.
I'm going to show you number one, how to maximize the bluntness of your bob. I'm going to show you the optimal type of graduation you can get so you get the most stack and the most volume with the most solid shape on fine hair.
We're going to show you the optimal way to layer hair to get the most even amount of fullness all over the whole head. Without further ado, let's get started.
Technique 1: Cutting Everything Blunt
Alright, so trying to make fine hair appear thicker. The first technique we're going to cover is cutting everything completely blunt. When I cut a section completely blunt in one length, like a little bob, it makes finer hair look the thickest that it can.
A lot of times I will see people comb the section down, turn their fingers up, go through and cut everything like this. Now, what I'm actually doing when I flip my fingers up, I'm cutting the top of the section shorter than the underneath of the section. So that hair on top is not going to end at the same spot. It's going to be a little shorter.
There's also the inverse of that. If I have someone with a lot of cowlicks and I'm trying to encourage it to cup under, then I will take this section. I will comb it down and then I'll roll my fingers under, pick it up, cut that.
Now, what I'm actually doing is cutting the underneath slightly shorter than the top. By doing that, it encourages the hair to cup under. But in order to make this as thick as possible, I need to pay attention to the pitch of my scissor blade.
And I am using my Jatai Tokyo Scissor. It's got a nice long blade with a good pointy, with a pointy tip that's not going to poke me when I go through and cut. It's not that pointy, not that tight, but it is very clean and very sharp. And this is probably my most used scissor from Jatai.
Going through, I'm going to comb this section straight down, comb everything clean and leave my fingers perpendicular to the head. I'm not flipping it up. I'm not cupping it under. I'm keeping it perpendicular to the section of hair I'm cutting.
So now when I go through and cut, I want to make sure that my scissor angle is perpendicular to the hair that I'm cutting as well. I'm not flipping it up and I'm not flipping it under. I want to keep everything really clean and perpendicular so that when I let that go, all of that hair ends at the same point.
On a mannequin head, I'm going to comb this down with my scissors and my comb, and I will cut that straight across. What are you doing in there hiding? Get out of there. I got a little piece hiding there. There we go.
Scissors are perpendicular to the section so that when I comb that down and cut that, everything is ending at the same spot. So now I go on to the next section. Comb everything clean from the parting all the way down. Everything perpendicular to the hair.
Thick hair, I probably will never do this because I want things to shift under or shift up or not be quite so blunt because if I did this type of technique on someone with really really thick hair, it would end up looking like a broom. But on finer hair, this is the optimal way to cut one length.
Technique 2: Creating Finger Length Graduation
Second idea is if they don't want something blunt and they want something a little fuller, we're going to minimize the bluntness by stacking it with some graduation just like I did before.
And I'm going to use the same kind of methodology I was doing when I was cutting everything one length. Comb everything down into my fingers. Roll my finger. Cut everything as perpendicular to the hair as possible to get rid of any kind of graduation.
We're going to comb that down. Cut that without changing the pitch of my scissor. I want my scissor perpendicular to the hair. So, if the hair is here, I want my scissor right there. I don't want to cut any angles on that. Cut that straight across.
Everything's cut nice and blunt. Now we're going to go through take about 3/4 of an inch, maybe a finger width. The next section I will use the guide from underneath, but instead of just one finger, I'm going to put two fingers in.
This is going to give me another finger length of elevation. There's my guide from underneath. Still cutting blunt and perpendicular to the head. Combing this straight down. I got two fingers in there.
Now there's my guide from underneath. Cut that perpendicular to the hair. Comb this one down again. Two fingers. There's my guide. Cut that straight across perpendicular to the head. Now, you're going to start to see a little bit of graduation popping up in my sections because I've elevated it one more finger angle.
So, guess what we're going to do now? We're going to go one more finger length as I go up. Now, I did the first one at a one finger, the second one at a two-finger. Now, I'm going to do a three-finger elevation. So, I'll go through, take my section from underneath. I've got three fingers. I'm elevating. There's my guide from underneath. Cut that through.
Come through here. Three fingers underneath. There's my line. Cut that through. I want to make sure that I'm not changing my finger angle or the angle of my scissor. Same thing I was doing before. There's my guide. Three fingers. Boom.
So now you start to see a nice beveling of our line. So it's giving it a low angle of graduation which is going to stack perfectly on fine hair to give it that fuller type of graduated shape without over graduating it to where it just becomes a bubble shape. This will still maintain a nice angle of graduation and still maintain a bob shape. It won't bevel it out like a little bubble.
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Now we should be above the occipital bone. We got three sections below the occipital. Now we got our first section above the occipital. So now I'm going to lay my comb right there at the parting. That's going to show me the angle of elevation that I have.
Where's my guide? There's my guide. right there. Cut everything perpendicular to my section. I missed two hairs there. Now, we're going to go through. Same thing here. There's my line underneath. Cut that through.
Cut that through. Perfect type of graduation. It's a low graduation which gives me really the most amount of volume in a graduated shape and it works excellently on fine hair.
If I want to maintain my one length shape, everything else gets pulled to the exact same elevation that this was pulled. So now everything pulls to here and I can continue my bob shape around.
Now I know what you're saying. At this point you're saying, "Well, my client doesn't want a bob. She doesn't want graduation. She wants a bubble. She wants everything to be full layered with as much volume as possible." Okay. Well, we can do that.
Technique 3: Use the Correct Elevation
The thing you have to watch out for, which brings me to technique number three, is that whenever you lay your hair, every section that you take has to be held at the same elevation.
The minute that hair starts getting over-directed to one area versus another, you start pulling hair out. What it does is it introduces length. It introduces shorter where you're pulling it to and longer where you're moving it from.
And so because you're having that increase of length, it diminishes the amount of volume and a fullness that you can have.
So I want everything to be layered exactly 90 degrees from the head. And that looks like this. Alright. So I got my center section. I'm going to take the comb and lay it against the head.
And where it's flat, that determines the size of my section. Because if I take for instance these two sections, this is 90°. This is 90°. So if I hold them in the middle, this one's being under-elevated. This one's being over-elevated. So I want to make sure everything is the exact same elevation. So I have the exact same amount of weight and I can keep everything as full as possible.
So, I'll pull my first little flat section out. Determine what length that I want. Cut that blunt across. I'll take a small piece as my guide. Now, I take my next flat section. I hold it to 90. There's my guide from the front. I cut that all exactly the same length as the head. Take a small piece as my guide.
Now I will take my next section where it's flat. Comb that straight up 90 degrees from the head. There's my guide from the front. I'll go through and cut that blunt. I want to make sure that this is not only cut blunt like it was when I was doing my one length bob.
And I'm not curving and making one side of this longer or shorter. I also want to keep it the same from front to back. Everything, pitch of the scissor is the same. Everything is blunt and as smooth and as even as possible.
By going through and cutting everything as even as possible, that gives me the maximum amount of volume with the maximum amount of density per layered section.
From here, I'll take a parallel section to the first section. So, now I'm going to take my original guide and use that as the guide. I'm going to take my next section, hold it into the center of both of those two sections. Comb this straight up and out.
There's my guide. I'm going to cut this perfectly blunt and across. Watching the pitch of my blade. Watching the pitch of how I comb the section. I want everything as blunt as possible.
Small piece as my guide. There's my next section. Comb to the center of both of those two sections. Cut that straight across.
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Next section. And follow that all the way down and through until I run out of hair. Now I'm going to take my third section on this side. We're going to take the third section where it's flat. Follow my previous guide. Take this as parallel to that original guide as I possibly can.
Now I'm going to comb section two and section three to the center of both of those two sections. There's my guide from underneath. Cut that blunt across.
Take a small piece as my guide. My next little flat section into the middle of both of those two sections. Small piece as my guide. And continue this all the way until I run out of hair. And until I run out of sections on this side. Then go through and do the exact same thing on the opposite side.
Final Results
I just realized I styled your hair like Axel Rose's mom. Alright, here's our end result. And I think this really, though this style is very kind of generic. It's just basically round layers with a blunt little nape because of the graduation that we put in it.
This was really an exercise in showing you three key techniques to make finer hair fuller and thicker looking. So, her hair is not as thick as some of the other mannequin heads, but the technique shows you how to do it.
You can get a nice even full layering. This is without me round brushing, me just shaking my hands through it. And then we got this nice kind of stacked fullness in the back that if we feel like it's too low of a graduation, it's very easy to change and just go through and change our angle on it.
But this gives you the maximum amount of heavy graduation for finer hair to still keep it solid and blunt looking. You got a nice little round layer through there that's evenly distributed and it doesn't add to any sort of collapsing technique by over-directing anything one side to another.
Check these techniques out. Please practice them. Add them to your repertoire. They can really add a lot to your technique when it comes to cutting fine hair.
Check out the Jatai Academy. There's all kinds of fantastic information on there that will make you a better hairstylist and barber. Let us know what you'd like to see in the future. Thank you so much for watching. We will see you next time.
Using techniques for cutting fine hair can help you address challenges with fine hair. Whether you're doing a short cut such as a pixie cut, giving regular trims, creating a French bob or simply putting in bangs, your fine hair clients will want these styles to also give volume.
Women often have more desire for different styles and want their hairstyle to compliment their face shape. Incorporating these three techniques should help you achieve that.