Holiday Hairstyles: 10 Looks That Hold Until Midnight

The best holiday hairstyle is the one still standing at midnight, and that has almost nothing to do with which style you pick. It has to do with when you washed your hair. Freshly washed hair is slippery, and pins, twists and waves slide straight out of it by the second drink.

So wash the night before, not the morning of. Then pick a look that suits your length. Below are ten holiday looks, the rule that makes each of them hold, and the mistakes that flatten a party updo before the food comes out.

The one rule: wash your hair the day before

Day-two hair has a thin film of your own sebum on it. That film adds friction, and friction is what a bobby pin actually holds onto. Wash at 6pm the night before, rough dry it, sleep on it, and by the following evening your hair has exactly the grip an updo needs. The same rule decides whether an everyday updo holds past lunch.

If you genuinely cannot skip a wash, fake the texture. Dry shampoo at the roots and a texture spray through the mid lengths gets you most of the way there in two minutes. Mousse before drying does the same job for fine hair.

The second half of the rule is heat. Every one of these looks holds better when the hair is set warm and cooled fully before you touch it. Let curls cool in the clip. Let a blowout cool before you brush it out. The American Academy of Dermatology is blunt about the trade-off: use the lowest heat setting that works and always use a heat protectant, because excessive heat damages every hair type.

Pick by length: what actually holds

Length decides more than face shape here. A sleek high ponytail is spectacular on long hair and impossible at chin length. Find your row.

Short hair: chin length and above

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Short hair wins the holidays because it needs the least work and falls apart the least. Do not fight it into a tiny updo. Make one strong decision instead: a deep side part, one side tucked flat behind the ear, a crystal clip or barbed pin holding it there. That asymmetry reads as deliberate in a way a half-hearted pinned bob never does.

For a layered bob, skip the tuck and go the other way. Smooth the ends under with a flat iron, part it in the middle, and let the shine do the work. A short textured pixie takes a clip above one ear and nothing else.

Mid-length: shoulder to collarbone

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This is the hardest length to dress up, because it is too short for a proper chignon and too long to leave alone. The answer is a half-up style: twist a section back from each temple, join them at the crown, pin them under each other so the pins disappear, then wave the bottom half loosely.

The variation that photographs better is the halo braid, one braid wrapped all the way around the head. It takes longer and it is worth it. If you are between cuts and unsure what your length can carry, our guide to shoulder length haircuts covers what sits well at that line.

Long hair: past the collarbone

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Long hair gets the two most striking holiday looks: the sleek high ponytail and the low chignon. Both live or die on the surface. Brush with a boar bristle brush, a pea of smoothing cream through the top only, and no product anywhere near the ends.

For the chignon, gather at the nape and not the crown. A knot set high reads as a gym bun no matter how neat it is. Leave two pieces out at the temples and push one pearl pin into the knot at an angle. More on what suits this length in our roundup of hairstyles for long hair. The same nape chignon is the most reliable pick for a wedding party too, which is why it tops our list of bridesmaid hairstyles.

Old Hollywood waves: the one look worth the extra 20 minutes

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Every other look on this page is a good party hairstyle. This one is a different category. Old Hollywood waves are the only holiday style that makes people ask who did your hair, and they hold longer than any updo because the shape is set into the hair rather than pinned onto it.

The trick that everyone misses: the wave must be one continuous S from the part to the ends. Curl every section in the same direction, clip each one flat against the head while it cools, then brush the whole thing out hard with a bristle brush. Brushing feels wrong and it is the entire technique.

If your hair is shorter than the collarbone, run the same method and stop after the brush out. You get a soft vintage bend rather than a full wave, which suits a bob better anyway.

10 holiday hairstyles, easiest first

One variable across all ten: how long it takes. The first tiles are ten minutes in front of a mirror. The last ones want half an hour and a set of pins. Everything else is held constant so you can see the shape, not the styling.

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What goes wrong at a holiday party

Four failures, in the order they actually happen.

You washed your hair that afternoon. Covered above, and it is the cause of most of the rest. Clean hair will not hold a pin, a twist or a curl past a couple of hours in a warm room.

You used hairspray as the structure. Hairspray sets a shape that pins are already holding. It cannot create hold on its own, and a heavy spray turns a soft wave into a helmet that photographs badly under warm indoor light.

You pinned into the surface. A bobby pin pushed flat along the head slides out. Open it, scoop a small section, and push it back in against the direction the hair wants to fall. Two pins crossed in an X hold more than six laid parallel.

You did the whole thing three hours early. Heat, dancing and a coat collar all work against you. Set the shape early if you like, but leave the final pinning and the last mist until twenty minutes before you go.

Holiday looks on textured and natural hair

A festive style on coily or curly hair is not a smoothed-down version of a straight style, and treating it that way is how people end up with heat damage in January.

A sculpted updo works beautifully: gather the coils, pin them high into a rounded shape, lay the edges, and let the texture be the texture. Our guide to styling 4c hair covers the products that hold that shape without crunch. If you are wearing braids, a half-up bun or a crown wrap on knotless braids gives you the same party silhouette with none of the heat.

For sparkle, skip the plastic clips and add hair tinsel instead. Tied in at the root, it catches light from across the room and survives a whole evening.

See the look on your own face first

Here is the part no gallery solves. A halo braid on a stranger tells you nothing about a halo braid on you, because the thing you are actually judging is how the shape sits against your hairline, your jaw and your neck. Standing in front of a mirror with a curling iron at 7pm is a bad time to discover the answer.

Upload one clear photo and see the look on your own face before you commit an hour to it. The first try-on is free and does not ask for a card. Paid plans start at $9 a month if you want the full catalog, and you can cancel in two clicks.

Pick by length, wash the night before, and let everything cool before you touch it. That is the whole method. The ten looks above are ranked by effort for a reason: the ten minute options hold just as well as the thirty minute ones, and on a night with a coat, a warm room and four hours of standing up, holding is the only thing that counts.

If you only try one, make it the Hollywood waves. It is the only style here that looks better at 11pm than it did at 7.