How much shorter will my hair be when I dread it?

Twisting
You will barely loose any length, maybe 20% at most.

Actually there are. Here are a few tips.

1. If you have really straight hair you can give it more texture by braiding it for a couple days before you dread or getting a cheep perm from Wal-Mart.

2. Don't use conditioners on it for at least a week before you dread.

3. Get the items you will need to dread a head of time; you never know what could happen at last minute.

4. Bleach or color your hair, but don't use the conditioner that comes in the box. This will make your hair holds the knots better.

You don't have to shave your head. There are a couple ways to get dredlocks out, if you haven't used a dread perm

1. The Easiest way: cut your dreads off a little below root and have about 2 inches of hair. You won't have to spend hardly anytime with this, and if you are not partial to your hair then this is a good way for you to do it.

2. Cut the first half of your dread off, from the tip of the dread to the middle. Then soak the rest of the dread in conditioner and comb the dread out. This will take some time, but you will have cut the strongest part of the dread off, so it will be a lot easier to comb the rest out.

3. You just love your long hair and don't want short hair: I can completely understand this, this is probably the way I would choose if I were ever thinking about cutting my dreads off, but I'm not so I don't have to think about it :) Soak the whole dread in conditioner, and comb the dread out. Let me warn you that this will take a lot of time, probably 4 or 5 times longer than it took you to put them in, but if you love your hair, it's completely worth it. Some people will say that you can't do this, but you can, I know a person who did this, and I helped them take some of them out. I didn't stay the whole time, but I know when I came back the next day, they were still working on taking them out.

You can ponytail, pigtail, or braid them. You can wrap them in hemp, ribbons, and string. You can dye them different colors. Wear a tam, crown, headband, bandana, toque, or those head wraps. You can put beads, peyote stitches, or Pyrex in too.

Elastics are really good for dreads, they help the dreads form the way you want them to and keep loose hairs in. And if you palm roll them while you have them in it will actually dread the hair.