How To Hold Your Hair Shears For Better Cuts

Gripping Your Hair Shears The Right Way

Holding and using your hair shears correctly will not only improve the quality of your work but will also maintain the health and safety of your hands, wrists and shoulders.

At the beginning of any hair stylist career, when you observe all the best haircuts in the industry, what you will notice is they all had in common was the mastery of their tools, the effortless control and the longevity of continuing to cut.

Scroll forward to see the technique that will help you.

Gripping Your Hair Shears

Begin by holding and balancing the scissors like in the video.

The ring finger is in the finger hole of the fixed blade. The finger hole of the fixed blade should be placed just below the second joint of the ring finger.

Put your little finger on the tip of your shear. 

Place the index finger and the middle finger on the axis of the fixed blade. The four fingers should be relaxed along the axis and tongue.

The applied pressure of the fingers on the top of the fixed blade creates a balance. It is this balance that keeps the scissors stable and controlled during the cut.

The freedom of movement will be limited so that the fingers are wrapped around the shears.

Once you reach this balance, your hair shears will move wherever you want them to go.

It Is All In The Fingers

With your fingers relaxed and fully extended, your thumb should not be able to reach the moving leaf.

Bend your fingers in the base, lowering the movable blade towards your thumb. Once again, it is important to emphasize that we lower our fingers on the thumb by bending the base of the fingers (think of the puppet, not the form of c)

Instead of putting your thumb on the moving blade, push the moving blade to create a tension just below the second articulation of the ring finger. 

An improper use of the scissors is to place the thumb on the movable blade. This limits their range of motion while encouraging "chewing".