The Spiral Perm

Along the rod, not over itself

In a croquignole wrap, the rod lies across the section and the hair rolls over itself, so the bundle thickens as it climbs. In a spiral wrap, the rod lies along the section. The hair is secured at the scalp, then wound down the length of a long barrel at an angle, like the stripe on a candy cane, travelling from the root end of the rod to the tip end.

I want to be plain about the direction, because the trade is not. On a spiral you start at the scalp and work down. That is what makes the root end of the strand sit on the barrel at full diameter, and it is the whole reason the technique exists — a wrap that begins at the tips has already spent the bulk of the section before it reaches the root.

Nothing overlaps. The hair lies side by side on the plastic, one layer thick, from the first turn to the last.

Two consequences follow, and they are the whole page. Because the hair is one layer thick, lotion reaches every strand at the same time, so saturation is fast and processing is quick to run away from you. And because every part of the section is bending round the same barrel, the finished curl is the same circle at the scalp as it is at the ends — a true corkscrew rather than a taper.

Level of change

The teCsture Scale runs from 1, the tightest pattern, to 10, poker straight — one ladder, ten rungs. What a treatment does is move you a number of rungs. That distance is the job, and it is what the work should be priced on: the level of change, not the bottle.

A long rod wound scalp to ends puts more bends into a given length of hair than any other technique here.

The arithmetic that decides how loose you can go

Hair has to travel round the rod at least two and a half times to form a complete S. Below that, no amount of chemistry produces a curl.

On a spiral this is easy to picture, because you can see it happening: the hair is one continuous helix and you can count the turns on the barrel. Fewer than two and a half of them and there is no repeating wave — just one long, lazy bend that will read as a slightly odd blow-dry and be gone within a fortnight.

The arithmetic bites where people least expect it, which is at the loose end of the range. A larger barrel has a larger circumference, so each turn eats more hair. Ask for the big, soft, uniform coil that photographs so well and you are asking for a barrel whose two and a half turns may want most of the length you have. The rod cannot be chosen from the photograph. It is chosen from the tape measure.

So the honest sequence in a consultation is: measure the length, work out the largest barrel that length can complete two and a half times, and only then talk about the look. If the answer is that your hair is not long enough for the coil you have brought in, that is worth hearing at the desk. See measuring hair length and rods: size versus shape.

Why it takes so long

A spiral head carries far more rods than a flat-wound head, and the reason is structural rather than fussy. On a croquignole wrap, one rod takes a broad, shallow panel — a lot of hair, not much of its length. On a spiral, one rod takes one long, narrow section and carries the whole of its length down the barrel. Narrow sections mean many sections, and many sections mean many rods.

You will see rod counts quoted for this service. I am not going to print one, because the figures in circulation contradict each other and none of them survives contact with a real head: the number depends entirely on how long the hair is, how thick it is, and how wide a section that particular barrel can carry without the hair doubling up on itself. What is reliably true is the relationship — a spiral head takes considerably more rods than the same head wound flat, and every one of them has to be wound at even tension.

That is the labour, and it is why the service is priced the way it is. It is also why a spiral perm is nearly always a booking of several hours rather than one.

The first perm was a spiral

When Karl Nessler demonstrated the first permanent wave in London on 8 October 1906, he wound long Edwardian hair from the scalp downwards — a spiral, with heavy brass heaters clamped over it. The technique came first and the shortcomings came quickly: the heaters sat close to the scalp, and there was no version of it that worked on short hair. See Nessler and the first perm.

When the bob arrived after the First World War, the spiral became unusable overnight and the ends-to-scalp croquignole took the trade. The spiral then sat dormant for half a century, kept alive mainly in training material, until length and volume came back in the late 1970s and hairdressers rediscovered the obvious: twenty inches of hair wound over itself makes a bundle no lotion can penetrate. They went back to Nessler’s geometry with modern plastic rods, and the result was the corkscrew silhouette of the decade. See the 1980s perm.

It has not really changed since. The rods are longer and lighter, the chemistry is gentler, and the arithmetic is exactly the same as it was in 1906.

What happens, and what goes wrong

1. Elasticity, section by section. A spiral holds the whole length under tension for the entire service, so any weak point anywhere along the shaft is loaded for hours. On long hair that weak point is often years old — an overlapping tint band, a patch of thermal damage — and the client has genuinely forgotten it is there. See can your hair take a perm.
2. Sectioning. Long, narrow panels, vertical or diagonal. Wider than the barrel can carry and the hair doubles up, which reintroduces the overlap the wrap exists to avoid.
3. The wind. Secured at the scalp, then wound down the barrel to the tips with an end paper at the finish. Even tension, and even spacing between turns, all the way down.
4. Lotion. Fast and efficient, because there is nothing to soak through. That is a benefit and a hazard in the same sentence: processing is quicker here than on a flat wrap, and it is easier to overshoot.
5. Rinse and blot. Long rods hold water. The blotting is tedious and the neutraliser will not work properly without it.

Who this is not for

Longevity, and how to keep it

Longevity belongs to the rod, not to the technique. A tight coil on a small barrel holds six to eight months. A classic mid-size barrel gives four to six. A large-barrel wave gives two to three, and nothing has gone wrong — movement is inherently less durable than a coil, and every bit of curl you soften is a bit of longevity you spend.

The grow-out is the kindest in the library, because the curl pattern is identical down the whole length. There is no line where one shape becomes another; the coil simply starts a little further from the scalp each month.

Living with corkscrews is mostly about not brushing them. Dry brushing shatters a uniform coil into frizz in seconds. Comb only when the hair is soaking and full of conditioner, and let it dry undisturbed. Long hair also carries years of history through hard water, and mineral weight is what pulls a heavy spiral flat first.

If you want this done rather than explained, it is the wrap behind Wavement Cold on long hair, and behind Wavement Hot where a heated rod is the better tool for the texture.

Questions