Sleeping with locs

People talk endlessly about what to put on their locs and barely at all about what happens to them while they sleep. That is a third of the day, every day, and it leaves marks.

Cotton is the problem. It pulls out the moisture you just gave your hair and it catches the fibre. On young locs the nightly friction undoes the salon's work and works lint into the loc.

Satin or silk settle it, as a bonnet, a scarf, or simply a pillowcase if you cannot stand anything on your head. The pillowcase is the easiest to keep up over time, and keeping it up over time is the only thing that matters here.

For long locs, tie them loosely. An elastic pulled tight in the same spot every night eventually weakens exactly that spot.

The most important is the simplest: never wet locs in bed. It is the one mistake on this list that can genuinely cost you.