Whether you’re yearning for longer hair or your stylist just missed the mark, don’t worry, we’ve all been there, trying to wish our hair growth up a few weeks.

Fortunately we’ve put together 20 DIY methods to try at home that will ensure your scalp is in prime shape to pick up the pace and pump out some hair.

Take a look at the list below.

Some are changes you can make, some are tips.

All of them are easy and they’ll leave your hair healthier and stronger.

Realize Hair Care Doesn’t Always Mean Shampoo

The truth is, unless you live in an area with heavy pollution or you routinely get sweaty, your hair really only needs to be washed every few days at the most. This allows your natural hair and scalp oils to do their job, which is to create an environment to grow long, natural hair.

Shampooing can strip these oils, especially when harsh sulfates are used. Shampooing too much can also damage hair follicles by drying out the scalp, leading to irritation, flaking, and hair fall.

Condition Yourself to Condition Your Hair

For some reason, many people don’t condition nearly enough. There’s a misconception that shampooing is more important than conditioning but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Dry hair strands, especially when they’ve often been shampooed but not conditioned, tend to taper toward the ends. This creates weak hair that’s prone to breakage. Conditioning every time you get in the shower can lead to faster hair growth by keeping your hair strong and your scalp healthy.

Let Your Ponytail Roam

Putting your hair up in a tight ponytail can wreak havoc on your hair strands and follicles. It puts a constant strain on your scalp while also trapping in moisture that would normally be allowed to evaporate, increasing your chances of pesky, itchy bacteria.

If your day calls for your hair to be up and out of your face, move your ponytail or bun to a different spot each day. There will still be strain on your scalp but relocating your pony’s placement will keep it from being consistent, which leads to the most trouble.

Let Hair Growth Supplements Lend a Hand

Supplements can be a great way to make hair grow faster because they fill in the gaps in your diet. When left unchecked, lacking the right nutrients can cause your body to stop its hair production. Here are a few deficiencies that can cause hair loss:

• Vitamin A
• Vitamin C
• Vitamin D
• Vitamin E
• Iron
• Protein

Taking herbal supplements for hair growth can be a safe, all-natural way to give your body what it needs to grow hair fast. Even better, the rest of your body will benefit, too.

You’re Brushing Hair, Not Pulling Weeds

Stop brushing your hair like you’re doing yard work. It can be tempting to tug and pull your knots into submission, but doing so puts undue strain on the hair strands and hair follicles. This causes unnecessary damage to the area, especially while your hair is wet and at its weakest.

Here’s an alternative to grow natural hair faster: start by brushing the bottom few inches of your hair and work your way up. This will clear a path to working your tangles out gently and gradually while also keeping the area healthy enough for new hair growth.

Switch to Silk Pillowcases

This is one of the easiest DIY methods for faster hair growth because it’s essentially a three-step process:

1. Buy a silk pillowcase
2. Put the silk pillowcase on your pillow
3. Go to sleep

Using a silk pillowcase for hair growth is an effective method because of how harmful cotton and other standard fabrics can be on your hair. While your hair strands slide off a silk pillowcase with minimal friction, cotton has tiny fibers that grip your hair while you’re sleeping, effectively pulling your hair and putting stress on your follicles when they should be resting. And no, your five-digit thread count won’t help. Instead, switch to silk.

Finish with a Cold Rinse

Showering with hot water heats up the natural oils on your scalp and hair, making them softer and more malleable. Unfortunately, this allows the oils to be wiped off post-shower, especially if you towel dry.

Rinsing your hair with cold water before you get out instead cools and strengthens your oils quickly, allowing them to form helpful, protective layers. Even better, this fortifies your hair strands and allows them to put up a fight against environmental factors like the sun and pollution.

Unwrap Your Best Gift: Your Hair

Chances are you’ve been wrapping your hair for as long as you’ve been washing it. It’s long been the go-to, post-shower technique for anyone needing to delay their hair drying. But this method is just as harmful to hair care as the ponytail.

After a shower your hair is at its most vulnerable. Wrapping it up with a towel pulls your hair at its roots, especially when the coarse, grabby fibers of a bath towel are involved. Allowing it to air dry, on the other hand, fosters faster hair growth by alleviating the pressure on your follicles and roots.

Your Scalp Loves Massages Too

While you might consider a good massage relaxing, it has a way of coaxing your scalp into action. Some gentle rubbing helps spark healthy circulation while strengthening the hair follicles and roots. Plus, it helps to evenly spread your hair and scalp’s natural oils, which can be particularly helpful for those who are trying to figure out how to grow hair faster since it helps combat damage and dry spots left over from over-washing. It’s certainly not a surefire cure, but it’s helpful enough that you shouldn’t feel guilty about dedicating a little “me time” to your scalp.

Trim Regularly for More Hair Growth

We get it—seems totally counterintuitive. How can cutting your hair be a hair growth secret? But by trimming just around ⅛ of an inch every few months or so, you can keep your ends strong and intact.

This method is really about the long game; by keeping your hair healthy as it grows, you’ll avoid the problems that cause you to lose inches in healthy hair down the road, like split ends and breakage. Your hair often dies from the end up, so think of it like trimming dead limbs from a tree. Above all, don’t freak out—your hair still grows a half inch every month.

Say Goodbye to Your Hair Ties

Using a hair tie to put your hair up may be convenient, but there are few things more harmful to healthy, natural hair. If you’ve noticed a slowing in your hair growth, it may be due to your hair ties choking your hair strands. This can create a barrier for nutrients and oils that are meant to travel all the way to your ends. Even worse, using a tie in the same spot repeatedly can actually cause a chemical cut, which essentially breaks the hair at the point where it’s being choked. Many hair care experts recommend using butterfly clips or hair pins as they’re less intrusive.

Switch Up Your Hairstyle

If you’ve followed our advice and are moving your ponytail around each day, great! If you need to pick a new pasture for your pony every single day, however, you may want to think about getting a different hair style.

Going with a do that better fits the demands of your job will give you one less thing to worry about each day. Plus, you may find a style that you can leave down during working hours and alleviating that pressure is a great way to ensure your hair keeps growing.

Let Your Hot Tools Cool Off

Just like people, hair strands tend to fall in line once they start feeling the heat. And just like with people, the heat probably isn’t a good thing.

Whether we’re curling, straightening, or drying our hair, intense heat can be very damaging. It saps the area of moisture and strips our strands of healthy cuticles and oils, all of which will slow hair growth. Experts recommend going heatless whenever possible, which includes air drying and using old-timey curlers (don’t worry, we won’t judge!).

Start Using a Weekly Hair Mask

If you’re trying to figure out how to kick-start your hair growth, keeping your hair and scalp moisturized is a great place to start. The goal is to reverse the damage done by chemical treatments, products, heat, and everything else you do to that area. And there aren’t many ways better to do that than with a hair mask.

There are countless DIY hair mask recipes but we recommend starting with an oil high in fatty acids, which will lock in moisture and patch damaged portions of your hair strands. Here are some popular all-natural hair mask ingredients:

• Egg
• Honey
• Jojoba
• Coconut
• Argan oil
• Castor oil

We also recommend using essential oils to grow hair faster. Adding the right ones can give your hair growth a jolt. Tip: Look for oils that block DHT like rosemary oil, peppermint oil, tea tree oil, and lavender oil.

Extensions Are for Deadlines, Not Hair Growth

Opting for your natural hair and avoiding extensions all together is the best move. The problem really comes from the extra weight. Extensions can slow hair growth by constantly pulling your hair away from the root.

We also understand they’re a great addition to a special occasion. So, we recommend using sparingly and choosing a clip-in option.

Give Your Do a Day Off

One of the best things you can do to your hair to ensure some extra hair growth is . . . nothing at all. You know those days when you lounge around and burn through an entire season of a show before realizing the sun has gone down? Well, your hair needs these every once in a while, too.

Pick a day to take all the pressure off you hair. Then follow three simple rules:

• Air dry only
• No ponytails
• No hair products

You give the inside of your head a break when it needs it. Why not do the same for the outside? This is a very simple, but effective, way for your hair and scalp to recover from the beating you put them through the whole week. Besides, you can always use another excuse for a couch marathon.

The Root of Your Hair Growth: Diet

Hair growth itself is a complicated process that relies on a lot of different chemical reactions. Almost all of them depend on us eating the right things for them to happen. Unfortunately, they rarely appear on a value menu.

What’s great about this is that sticking to an overall healthy diet should be all you need to have a great head of hair. After all, a balanced diet will provide the tools your follicles need to be productive. But if you are experiencing unexpected hair loss, here are a few easy-to-add foods that can help fight dietary deficiencies:

• Spinach: Vitamin A, iron
• Eggs: Vitamins A and D
• Avocados: Vitamins C, E, and B-6
• Peanuts: Magnesium, protein

Save the Bleach for Stains

There are few things that will hold back healthy hair growth like bleaching your hair (no color treatments are great for your hair, but bleaching is particularly hazardous). Bleaching your hair strips it of its moisture and will lead to breakage and split ends. This causes your scalp to work overtime as its oil is pulled down the shaft to replace what was bleached away.

If your hair is already fried, try some egg. The yolks in particular are loaded in fatty acids and protein, which will help repair the damage and coat your hair in nourishing oils.

Hair Growth: Easy as A-C-V

Apple cider vinegar has become one of those ingredients known for being good at everything, from aiding digestion, clearing up your skin, lowering cholesterol, and, you guessed it: hair growth. ACV gently cleanses the skin and kills bacteria, making it the perfect DIY dandruff cure. Plus you’ll get C and B vitamins, making it a must-add to your hair care routine.

Most experts recommend using no more than 5 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar at a time and mixing it with water. Apply after you shampoo and condition, and rinse out after a few minutes.

Heat Up Your Hair Growth with Ice

Using ice to reduce swelling is probably one of the first things you learn in med school and it’s a great method to use on an irritated scalp, too.

Applying ice or a cold compress to a swollen scalp can reduce inflammation caused by bacteria, sunburn, and other conditions that slow your hair follicles’ production. It’s also a great way to relieve the areas along your hairline that were pulled too tight by your all-day ponytail.

What Does It All Mean?

If you’ve noticed a few themes throughout these DIY methods, you’re right.

Keeping your hair and scalp hydrated and nourished is key to growing your hair quickly and so is treating your hair gently and eating the right foods.

These aren’t high-dollar solutions, but they are all effective. Give your hair some credit as it goes through a lot in any given week.

Giving it what it needs to do its best is hardly too much to ask for.

And so now you have 20 ways to try to grow your hair faster.