How to Do a Waterfall Braid

The waterfall braid gives a cute twist to a normal french braid. It looks great on its own, but you can also curl it, swoop it to the side, do a ponytail, or create a bun!

Hair style was done by Sharelle Loudd at Beautique Salon in San Jose, CA. She was awesome enough to demonstrate this technique while we documented the process. Any mistakes are ours.

Beautiful photography by audreyobscura!

First of all, I have pretty long hair. You do not need really long hair for this.

Smooth the hair from front to back. You can use a dime sized amount of Biosilk for hold.

Start with a 2 inch section at the crown of the head, near a center part. You are going to start by sort of following the hairline.

Separate into three strands and start your braid. Take the strand closest to your face; put it underneath the top strand. Take the strand closest to the top of your head, and do two turns. So, braid the hair normally for about a half an inch to an inch.

Okay, here is where the waterfall comes in. Take a strand of hair from the top of the head and feed that into the braid with the hair. Bring it into your braid like you would normally, but then bring it all the way through and let it hang down. Another strand from the braid is going to go on top of it and hold it in place.

So as you braid what you are doing is grabbing from the top and bring that through to hang down, and then to continue the braid grab hair from below the braid and add that to the braid to replace what you dropped. (so much braid talk!)

The GIF below shows the method really well.

You will be doing this trick of bringing hair from the top and letting it hang down every time you go to grab hair from the top of your head to feed that into the braid. As you can see there is a strand hanging down every time you grab hair from the top.

In this first image, you can see the hair you took from the top and is now hanging down. You can also see the other strand of the braid that is holding it in place.

As you work, take the middle strands you just brought in from the top and throw it over the back of your hand to get it out of the way and get a clear view of the hair you are grabbing and adding to the braid from underneath.

Continue braiding along the head swirling the braid along your head down to your opposite ear.

As you can see in the images, the braid was started at the crown of my head and swooped down around the other side until we almost reached my ear. Once you get it as long as you want it, braid it for a few more inches and then tie it off. You want to be able to hide the end under your hair so go a little ways until you think you can hide it.

Wrap around the back of your head and secure with bobby pins and you are done!