These TikTok Tutorials Will Help You Nail The Perfect Messy Bun Once And For All

As popular as this hairstyle is, a messy bun is a tricky beast. Anyone who regularly wears a messy bun knows it’s not as easy as it seems. There’s an art to piling up all your hair, wrapping it into a ball with the perfect amount of volume and hanging tendrils, and not coming out of it looking like a Teletubby. After years of struggling to figure out how to do a perfect messy bun (which, I know, sounds oxymoronic), I stumbled upon messy bun tutorials on TikTok that have been absolutely life-changing. Seriously, is there anything that the clock app doesn’t have an answer to?

Despite having hair for, uh, all of my memorable life, I never realized the secret to a solid messy bun can be so simple — or that there are so many ways to do it. Take Quintymijam’s messy bun tutorial on TikTok: In it, you gather up all your hair right on top of your head. Then, you pull the hair tie around the base of the bun and halfway down your ponytail. Next, stick your hand through your ponytail so that it’s in front of the ponytail and your palm is facing outward. Use your thumb to push the tail-end of your hair backward, and then flip it around to the front and pull your hair tie around your bun. Yes, written out, that sounds complicated, but in the tutorial below, you’ll see the process is pretty quick and easy:

TikToker Brittany Johnson had a separate take on the perfect messy bun, using a shoe-tying technique to get a voluminous, twisted look. Other TikTokers use pins or two hair ties to achieve their messy buns. The bottom line is, there are a bunch of different messy bun tutorials on TikTok you can try until you find your new, favorite method. These videos videos are also absolutely transfixing. Seeing these TikTokers’ long hair get wrapped up so tightly and beautifully is something I could watch all day long. If you’re in that boat, too, watch on for the best messy bun tutorials.