20 Curly Hair Boy Ideas I Saved for Kids
A saved photo is not a plan, it is a photo of somebody else's curl pattern on its best day. These are the twenty I kept, along with the four questions I now ask before any of them reaches a barber.
In this article · 27
- How I Filter a Saved Photo Now
- How to Choose Yours
- The 20 Ideas I Saved
- 1. Low Taper With Curls Left Long
- 2. The Skin Fade
- 3. The Broccoli Cut
- 4. The Long Curly Mop
- 5. The Curly Mullet
- 6. The Middle Part
- 7. The Textured Crop With a Curly Front
- 8. The Burst Fade
- 9. The Curly Bowl
- 10. The Faux Hawk
- 11. The Hard Part
- 12. The Two Block
- 13. Curly Curtains
- 14. Bleached Tips
- 15. The Top Knot
- 16. The Picked-Out Afro
- 17. The Curly Blowout
- 18. The Nape-Only Trim
- 19. A Week-Four Photo
- 20. The Rule I Ended Up With
- Styling and Upkeep
- Mistakes to Avoid
- FAQ
- Final Thoughts
I have a folder of saved haircuts and for a long time it was useless, because I was saving photographs rather than saving decisions.
Every photo shows somebody else's curl pattern on its best day. Usually styled, usually shot in week one, and usually on hair that behaves differently from my son's.
So the folder now has a filter attached. Four questions, applied before anything gets shown to a barber, and roughly half of what I save fails at least one of them.
How I Filter a Saved Photo Now
Does the pattern match? A cut only produces that silhouette on hair that behaves that way, so the texture in the photo matters more than the shape.
How much of it is product? Shine, separation and height are almost always cream and a diffuser rather than the haircut.
Does it depend on a fade? A skin fade blurs in one to two weeks, which is a standing fortnightly appointment for as long as he wants it.
What does week four look like? Every cut works in week one, and only some of them survive to week four.
How to Choose Yours
Save the ones that need nothing. They are the only ones that will look like the photo on a school morning.
Prefer tapers to fades unless you are committed. The difference is three or four weeks against one or two.
Check the fringe. Anything cut straight across curly hair dries uneven, so the photo is showing you a moment rather than a shape.
Save a week-four photo when you find one. They are rare and worth more than ten week-one shots.
The 20 Ideas I Saved
1. Low Taper With Curls Left Long
Passed every check. The clipper work stops at a #1, the top needs nothing, and the shape reads the same in week one and week four.
2. The Skin Fade
Kept, but flagged. It is genuinely the sharpest option here and it needs redoing every one to two weeks, which is a decision about your diary rather than his hair.
3. The Broccoli Cut
Saved with a note about pattern. It depends on loose, springy curl that stacks upward, and tighter coils build a denser rounder shape from the same cut.
4. The Long Curly Mop
Saved and then reconsidered. The photo shows nothing of the nightly detangling that this length requires, and that work lands on a parent rather than a child.
5. The Curly Mullet
Passed on the product test. Length at the back hangs under its own weight, so nothing has to be applied to make it read the way it does in the photo.
6. The Middle Part
Saved with a cowlick warning. A middle part on a boy only holds when both sides fall with similar weight, and a strong whorl at the hairline defeats it within days.
7. The Textured Crop With a Curly Front
One of the safest saves in the folder. The textured crop has no stage of growing out where it looks wrong, and on a child who resists every appointment that is worth more than any amount of sharpness on the day.
8. The Burst Fade
Passed the week-four test unusually well. On a burst fade over curl the gradient radiates from behind the ear with no straight line anywhere in it, so growth blurs it evenly.
9. The Curly Bowl
Saved with an edit. The round shape suits a young head, but the perimeter has to be broken up rather than cut clean or it reads as a helmet.
10. The Faux Hawk
Passed. Curl does the standing up on its own, which is why this version needs none of the product the straight-haired equivalent depends on.
11. The Hard Part
Saved with a timescale attached. An etched line takes about six weeks to disappear, so it is a commitment rather than an experiment.
12. The Two Block
Passed on curl specifically. The longer top falls over the disconnection and hides the hard line, which makes it far softer than the same cut on straight hair.
13. Curly Curtains
Saved with a length note. The shape needs enough length to fall either side of the face, and shrinkage removes about a third of what you measure.
14. Bleached Tips
Kept but demoted. Bleach dries the strand and dry curl loses definition, so the colour is paid for out of the pattern itself.
15. The Top Knot
Passed, with an unexpected benefit. Gathering at the crown keeps the length off the nape, which is where friction from collars and pillows builds mats.
16. The Picked-Out Afro
Saved with a daily cost. It needs lifting at the root with a pick every morning, which is about ninety seconds that somebody has to actually spend.
17. The Curly Blowout
Flagged heavily. Almost all the height in these photos comes from a diffuser rather than the cut, so the same haircut air-dried looks like a different style.
18. The Nape-Only Trim
The idea nobody photographs. Three minutes on the hair below the occipital bone removes most of the matting and changes nothing about how he looks from the front.
19. A Week-Four Photo
The rarest thing in the folder and the most useful. It shows the state a haircut spends most of its life in, which is the only fair basis for choosing one.
20. The Rule I Ended Up With
If the photo needs product, a fade or a straight fringe line, it goes in a separate folder. What is left is short, and every item in it has worked.
Styling and Upkeep
Take the photo to the barber rather than describing it. Words like short and textured mean different things to different people.
Ask for the cut dry. It is the only state in which the finished length is visible on curl.
Photograph the result in week one. It becomes the reference for asking again.
Water in the morning, nothing else. Ten seconds resets the clumps the pillow flattened.
Keep a satin pillowcase on the bed. A child sleeps ten or eleven hours a night, so cotton gets far longer to work on his hair than it ever gets on yours, and the pad it builds at the nape costs more length than any trim.
Mistakes to Avoid
Saving a photo of a different curl pattern. The same cut on tighter or looser hair builds a different shape.
Ignoring how much of it is product. Shine and separation are almost always applied, not cut.
Committing to a fade without the diary for it. One to two weeks is the honest window for a skin fade.
Saving only week-one photos. They flatter everything and predict nothing.
Asking for a straight fringe from a photo. Curls dry to different lengths, so the line will not hold.
FAQ
Will a saved photo work on my son? Only if the curl pattern in it behaves like his, since the cut alone does not make the shape.
Why does it never look the same? Most of what you are admiring is product and a diffuser applied minutes before the shot.
The most useful check? Ask what it looks like in week four rather than week one.
Final Thoughts
Save fewer photos and attach a note to each one saying what it will cost you. The folder becomes far shorter and far more useful, and the haircuts that come out of it start matching what you expected.
For shapes children choose themselves see cool curly hair boy ideas, and for the full catalogue read curly haircuts for boys. More in Men's Haircuts.
