You can buy a cool looking bike and you can buy cool looking gear, but very little can save you from the widespread epidemic known as helmet hair. As RideApart’s resident hipster, I’m here with a few tips to help keep your mane in check.

Consider Your Haircut

I know, it seems crazy to modify your haircut simply because you ride a motorcycle. I haven’t gone this far, but I have considered buzzing my head a number of times and my hair has definitely gotten shorter as my seat time increased. A helmet-friendly haircut can have long sections that are easy to secure in place, as well as short sections (nothing to mess up), but the medium sections are where you’re going to run into problems. Guaranteed.

Consider Your Hairstyle

Any hairdo where compression helps your style is going to be helmet-friendly. Any hairdo involving lots of gel or spiked parts are not. Have a Mohawk? Plan on waiting to do your hair until you get to work. Sweep your bangs back Mad Men style? No problem, just make sure your hair is tucked in place when pulling the helmet on.

Pro Tip: Pull your helmet half way on, then reach through the face shield opening and sweep your bangs where you want them and then pull the helmet the rest of the way down, securing everything in place.

How To Manage Helmet Hair

Wear a Head Sock or Knit Skullcap

If you absolutely must have a haircut that lends itself to turning into a bird’s nest every time you put on a helmet and you absolutely must have perfect looking hair when you arrive at your destination, consider a knit head sock. You can fix your hair underneath it before putting your helmet on and it should keep your hair relatively close to where you left it.

Wear a Modular Helmet

A modular helmet offers all of the protection of a full-face helmet, but allows you to put it on like an open face helmet. Modular helmets have a surprising amount of give in them, allowing you to pull the two sides apart to increase the opening size of the hole you have to stick your head in. When I put on my Schuberth C3 Pro, no part of the helmet touches my head until the last few centimeters.

How To Manage Helmet Hair

Shave Your Head

Riding motorcycles is way cooler than having hair. If we all unite, we can make being bald look cool. No? It was worth a shot.

Quit Riding Motorcycles

Just kidding.

All jokes aside, decreasing helmet hair is a real issue for those of you trying to commute to jobs that don’t involve writing about motorcycles all day. These tips to help you manage helmet hair should go far toward keeping you from looking like Carrot Top at your next morning meeting.

That’s my take on this very serious issue. What’s yours?

Related Links:

Opinion: Why Can’t We Look Good When We Ride Bikes?

Stylish Gear: REV’IT Tailored Technology: A “City Collection” Worth Wearing

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