A Beginner’s Guide To Laying Your First Lace-Front Wig

This article is produced in partnership with Arabella Hair.

I never scroll past a wig install video on TikTok. I’m sure I’m not the only person who has lost hours of their life watching black women trim, pluck, spray, dry, glue and position their wigs. But when the styling strip is whipped away to reveal a laid and slayed fresh install, it always feels worth the time investment.

In theory, I should know how to install my own wig by now, but I am a lace frontal wig baby – perhaps even a lace frontal wig foetus – and honestly too scared to try. I feel like I’m too old to go through the inevitable right of passage that is your wig lifting and shifting throughout the day as you get to grips with the install process.

And don’t even suggest visiting an IG professional who wants me to come with my hair washed, stretched, product-free and speaking French, or face a £20 add-on fee for the privilege of having them run a blow drier through my hair. Plus, we are in a cost of living crisis and like most of you, my grooming budget is always under severe scrutiny.

But if you’re like me and still wanting to give lace front life a spin without being intimidated by a 20-step process or the cost, then stick around because I’ve got the cheat sheet for you. Because wearing your first wig doesn’t have to be stressful or daunting. It could be as easy as one, two, three…

But first, the foundation

So from lurking on WigTok, the base of a laid and slayed look needs to be your own hair. If you falter with this step, you could be fighting a losing battle because to avoid that ‘dome’ look (come on, you know exactly what I’m talking about) your foundation needs to be flat.

The easiest way to do this is with cornrows. But – as I discovered – your cornrows don’t even need to be that good! As well as being a wig-foetus, I am a cornrow-toddler. Luckily, I attended a Black Ballad cornrow workshop a few months ago, so I know the basics of a good cornrow, I’m just still in the early stages of creating a good cornrow.

After washing and conditioning my hair, I applied a leave-in hair mask, parted my hair into eight and cornrowed away. It’s important to remember that if a protective style is going to be truly protective then we need to give our natural hair a good amount of TLC before it disappears under the wig cap. Also, did I already mention the flatter the better? Damp hair plus a conditioning leave-in product really helped get my hair flat-flat.

I’m so out of practice that my finished cornrows looked like they had already been in for six months, but my hair was flat with minimal tension on my edges – so a win is a win. And a glueless wig (more on that later) means I can just whip it off my head and re-do the cornrows as needed.

Onto the install

The plum-coloured Arabella Hair Pure-Luxe™ wig that I was sent came pre-plucked, pre-cut, with 13x6 transparent lace and the promise of a five-second install. This sounded too good to be true.

Yes, not having to cut or pluck or blend or ‘melt’ the lace feels like that’s most of the wig install steps avoided (and no need to put my armchair TikTok learning to the test, thank goodness) but was it really as simple as flipping the wig onto my head, positioning it, securing with the combs and I’d be good to go?!

So I gave it a shot and it took…yeah, it really was that simple. I forgot to time it exactly, but I spent half of the time repeatedly asking, “Is that it?” as I looked in the mirror and fluffed my hand through the waves.

I feel like I need to pad out this section with more details, but there’s nothing else to say besides the fact that the ear-to-ear lace and v-shaped side burns gives a comfortable, undetectable fit. I keep doing that thing where I lift up the wig and reposition it just to see the lace disappear – who says magic isn’t real?!

Aftercare

Getting a good quality wig like this one means that even though the wig is 250% density, it’s not heavy, the hair is very soft and lightweight, so minimal styling products are needed. This means that you won’t have to wash your wig too often – just refresh it when the strand starts to look less dull. And don’t forget that wig stand for storage!

Verdict

I really can’t believe it was that simple. The fact that the Pure-Luxe™ wig is glueless means that my edges get a real break from braids, twists, edge control and all of that. And being glueless also means that, when I’m ready, I easily remove the wig and give those cornrows another shot – practice makes perfect after all. But thankfully, I didn’t need any practice at all to lay this wig right.

Arabella Hair’s Pure-Luxe™ Easy-Wear Glueless Collection is available to buy now.