Hair Guides
Three names that get used as if they were three separate styles. They are not. Two of them are types of the third. Here is which is which, how long each actually lasts according to four published sources, and how to take them down without wrecking your hands.
Search any of these three names and you will get articles that use them interchangeably, as though "soft locs" and "butterfly locs" and "faux locs" were just regional variations. They are not interchangeable, and the difference is easier to understand than the search results suggest, because it is not a flat list of three. It is one category with two members.
01 / The taxonomy
Put more plainly than anywhere else: soft locs and butterfly locs are both types of faux locs. Faux locs is the general term; the other two are specific variations of it.
So here is the whole thing in order, from the broadest to the most specific:
| Name | What it is | How it is made |
|---|---|---|
| Faux locs | The umbrella term: loc-inspired protective styles that are not permanent | Extensions wrapped or crocheted around your natural hair. Can be done braid-in, or crocheted in for a faster install |
| Soft locs | A type of faux loc: lighter, more flexible, gentler on the scalp | Typically synthetic hair with a softer texture, crocheted in as pre-made locs or wrapped individually by hand |
| Butterfly locs | Also a type of faux loc, described as "soft locs with a twist" | Wavy hair wrapped loosely around braids, so bits of curly loop peek through. That is what gives them the undone, lived-in look |
The practical difference between soft and butterfly comes down to how tightly the hair is wrapped. Soft locs are wrapped to read as a smooth, loc-like rope. Butterfly locs are wrapped loosely and the texture is allowed to escape, which is the entire point of the style.
And the thing that makes all three worth the chair time is the same: they keep your natural hair tucked away and protected from heat, environmental damage and over-manipulation. That is the real reason to book one, not the look.
02 / The number everyone wants
This is the question that brings readers to these pages more than any other, and it is the question the sources disagree about most. We are not going to average them, because averaging four different estimates does not produce a truth. It produces a fifth number that nobody published.
Here are all four, side by side:
| Source | Style | Window |
|---|---|---|
| Bangstyle | Faux locs and soft locs | 4–6 weeks |
| Bangstyle | Butterfly locs, with care | 6–8 weeks |
| Exyhair | Butterfly locs | 4–8 weeks, depending on maintenance |
| Best African Salons | Butterfly locs | 4–10 weeks |
| Regirl | Faux locs, take-down deadline | 7–11 weeks, take them out within this |
That is a spread from four weeks to eleven. All three windows can be right, because "how long do they last" depends on your hair type, how tightly they were installed, how well you maintain them, and how much new growth you can tolerate before the roots start looking tired.
The better rule than any of those numbers
The better criterion, in place of a timeframe, is this: it is more useful than the whole table above: take them out when they start slipping, pulling, or feeling heavy. Those are signals from your own head, and they arrive on your schedule rather than on a publisher's. A style that is still sitting well at week eight is fine. One that is dragging at week five is not, whatever the calendar says.
03 / Care
The instruction here is short and specific, and it is the opposite of how loose hair is normally washed: work the shampoo into your scalp and let the suds rinse down through the lengths. Do not scrub the locs themselves.
Scrubbing the lengths is what causes frizz and what loosens the wrapping that holds the whole style together. If you clean the scalp and let gravity do the rest, the style survives the wash.
Dry shampoo and scalp-cleansing sprays are named as the way to get through the gap between proper washes. On a style you are trying to keep intact for weeks, this is not a compromise. It is the main tool.
Anything that involves working the product through the lengths: heavy conditioners, wide-tooth raking, or wrapping the hair up and squeezing it. All of it pulls at the wrap.
04 / Care
This is the module where the published sources go quiet. No source describes a specific night routine for these three styles, and we are not going to invent one and dress it up as advice.
What can be said is narrower. Butterfly and soft locs are described as low-tension by design. The whole reason they exist is that they pull less than a tight loc install. Sleeping on them face-down, or tying them up tightly enough to compress the roots, works against the one thing the style is built for.
What is not published
No source gives a night routine for faux, soft or butterfly locs, no pillowcase recommendation, no tying method, no protective cap. We are not filling that gap with our own guesswork. If a braider or loctitian has told you how to wear them at night, follow that over anything you find on a blog, including this one.
05 / Care
This section opens with a sentence worth repeating: locs may be low-maintenance, but they are not no-maintenance. The distinction is the whole game. People who treat a loc style as something to install and forget are the ones whose styles look tired by week three.
Something also gets lost in the tension-versus-tightness debate: these styles are genuinely customisable. Colour, beads, cuffs, metallic thread. The recommended ways to wear them matter because they are also the ways that put least stress on the roots:
What is not published in any source is a maintenance schedule: no "retighten every X weeks", no product routine. That absence is itself informative: unlike real locs, which have a whole retwisting culture around them, faux, soft and butterfly locs are not maintained so much as kept clean and then removed.
06 / The hard part
Installation takes a couple of hours. Takedown can take considerably longer, and it is the part that people underestimate. The practical advice:
Not for the hair but for your hands. The source is explicit that oiling your palms and fingers stops them getting irritated, and that it also provides slip, which makes each loc easier to unravel. On a style with a hundred of them, that matters.
Divide the hair into sections first. Working through a whole head without sectioning is how a two-hour job becomes a five-hour one.
Once you have parted into sections, snip the end of each loc with hair scissors, then unravel from there.
This is the one genuinely useful structural detail: if the locs were installed by the crochet method, they have to come out before you moisturise your natural hair, not after. Anyone planning to condition on takedown day needs to know this first.
There is also a recommended deadline. The recommended deadline is between seven and eleven weeks old, and warns against leaving them longer. That is the longest window in the table in section 02, presented here as that source's recommendation, not as a safe upper limit for everyone.
07 / Money
One usable figure exists for these styles: $150 to $500 installed, described as an average across stylists. Two caveats, both important. It is a single source, and it does not say whether that includes the hair.
If you want a fuller picture of how braiding and loc pricing is built, and why quotes so often exclude the hair, how size tiers work, and the same service priced two different ways on one menu, which we covered separately:
How a braid quote is actually built →
One number, one vendor
We are not going to dress a single figure up as a range. $150–$500 is what the published figure says, it does not specify whether the hair is included, and it is not broken out by size or length. Use it as an order of magnitude and get a real quote.
08 / The honest part
We sell hair, so this next section is against our own interest, so it needs to be here.
Look at what these styles are actually built with. The sources list it outright: synthetic crochet braid, water wave hair, Marley braiding hair, afro kinky bulk. The publication that describes faux locs as a category says the extensions are "usually synthetic", and that is not an accident of budget. These styles need a texture that holds a wrap and reads as a loc.
| Hair type | Where it shows up |
|---|---|
| Synthetic crochet braid | Listed in a butterfly locs materials list (a named 18" lulutress-style braid) |
| Water wave hair | Listed at 22" for the wrapping step, the loose, distressed look |
| Marley braiding hair | Listed as optional, 1–2 packs, alongside the main hair |
| Afro kinky bulk | Sold in a human hair version specifically "to make/repair afro hair braids, dreadlock extension, afro twist" |
So yes, human hair versions of this exist. They are sold as afro kinky bulk, and they are described as being for loc extensions specifically.
We do not sell that. Our textures are deep wave, body wave and a tight curl. None of them is a kinky texture, and we have not tested any of them in a faux loc installation. If you want a classic faux loc in human hair, the thing to search for is afro kinky bulk, not us.
Where we fit
One of our ranges is crochet hair, which means it arrives pre-separated in ready-made loops, the format that crochet installation calls for, whether you are installing butterfly locs or anything else on a braided base. Every pack is 100g, so weight stays comparable. That is a format match, not a texture match, and we are not claiming it is the right hair for a classic faux loc. The textures that style actually wants are the four listed above, and three of them are synthetic.
09 / Common questions
Faux locs is the umbrella term for any non-permanent, loc-inspired protective style built with extensions. Soft locs and butterfly locs are both types of faux locs. Soft locs are lighter and wrapped to read as a smooth rope; butterfly locs are wrapped loosely so that bits of curly loop stay visible, which is where the undone look comes from.
Published windows disagree. Butterfly locs can reach 6–8 weeks with proper care, another says 4–8 weeks depending on maintenance, and a salon's care plan says 4–10 weeks. Rather than pick one, watch for slipping, pulling or heaviness. That is the signal to take them out.
Faux locs and soft locs sit at 4–6 weeks, and separately says butterfly locs can stretch to 6–8. Another suggests taking faux locs out when they are between 7 and 11 weeks old and warns against leaving them longer. That is a wide spread, so treat any single number with suspicion, including these.
Yes, and the method is specific: focus the shampoo on your scalp and let the suds rinse down through the locs rather than scrubbing the lengths. Scrubbing causes frizz and loosens the wrap. Between washes, dry shampoo and scalp-cleansing sprays are the tools the sources recommend.
Oil your palms and fingers first. It stops your hands getting irritated and gives you slip for unravelling. Section the hair before you start. Snip the end of each loc with hair scissors, then unravel. If the locs were installed by the crochet method, they must all come out before you moisturise your natural hair, not after.
The published figure is $150–$500 installed, described as an average across stylists. It does not say whether the hair is included, and it is not broken out by size or length. Get a real quote, and expect the hair to be a separate line if you are not bringing your own.
The sources list synthetic crochet braid, water wave hair, Marley braiding hair and afro kinky bulk. Human hair versions exist. Afro kinky bulk is sold specifically for loc extensions. We sell wave and curl textures, not kinky, so we are not the right source for a classic faux loc and we say so above.
There is no answer here, and none will be guessed. None of the sources discusses reusing the hair from a faux, soft or butterfly loc install. Given the hair is usually synthetic and the wrap is cut at takedown, our expectation is that most of it is not reused, but that is an expectation, not a finding.
Neither is better; they do different jobs. Soft locs give you a smoother, more polished rope and are described as gentler on the scalp. Butterfly locs give you volume and visible texture, and the sources suggest they can last slightly longer. If you want the neater finish, soft. If you want the lived-in look, butterfly.
We have no source that answers this, so we are not going to answer it. What we can say is what the styles are for: they are described as protective because they keep natural hair away from heat and over-manipulation, and soft and butterfly locs are designed to be lower-tension than a tight install. If your scalp is sore, red or persistently itchy, that is a conversation with a professional rather than a blog.
This guide draws on four published sources on lifespan plus five more on the styles themselves. The taxonomy, the wrapping methods, the wash instruction and the 4–6 / 6–8 week windows. These come from Bangstyle, a hair publication, read September 2026. It is the only source that states the relationship between the three names cleanly, so it carries section 01.
The 4–8 week window and the afro kinky bulk listing. From Exyhair, a hair brand, read September 2026. Their own product listings are what revealed the human-hair version of this style: a "tight afro kinky bulk" sold for loc extensions, which is not a texture we carry.
The 4–10 week window. From Best African Salons (Wynn), a salon's own care plan, read September 2026. This is the widest published window.
The takedown method, the oiling, and the 7–11 week deadline. From Regirl, read September 2026. This is also the source that flags the crochet-method ordering problem: locs out first, moisture second.
The cost figure and the materials list. From Un-ruly, read September 2026, which lists the actual products used in a butterfly loc install: a named synthetic crochet braid and a water wave hair.
Trend validation. Butterfly locs are covered by Makeup.com, InStyle and PopSugar, all of which appear in the same search results. This is not a niche topic, and one hair brand (LionLocs) holds a top-five position on the lifespan query.
Our own products. Tressifine sells human hair in 100g packs: bulk from $54.99 and pre-separated crochet from $99.99, in 12–30 inch lengths. Our textures are deep wave, body wave and Burmese curly. None of those is a kinky texture, and these styles want one.
What we did not do. Faux locs were not installed, taken down or worn here, and no texture was tested against Marley or water wave hair. No night routine, maintenance schedule or reuse guide is published in any source, and we left those gaps open rather than filling them.
Next step
These styles need kinky or distressed hair. We do not sell that - but if you are building a braided base and want to know what weight of hair it takes, our 100g packs make it comparable.