Tabs go inside a safe zone: away from the hairline, off the perimeter, clear of the occipital bone and never where the head bends. Everything outside that zone is visible, uncomfortable, or under enough tension to cause damage. Placement decides more about an install than the tape does.
The adhesive gets the attention and the placement does the work. A well-placed install on average tape outperforms a badly-placed install on excellent tape, every time, and it is not close.
Placement is also the part that decides whether an install is comfortable, whether it's visible, and whether it puts tension anywhere it should not.
The four boundaries
| Boundary | Why it exists | What happens if you cross it |
|---|---|---|
| Back from the hairline | The hairline is the most visible and the most fragile hair on the head | Visible tabs, and tension on the finest hair there is |
| In from the perimeter | A tab at the edge of a section has nothing beside it to share the load | Corners lift, and the weft edge shows when hair moves |
| Clear of the occipital bone | The head bends there and so does anything stuck to it | Bonds that flex constantly, plus discomfort lying down |
| Off the parting and the crown swirl | The hair grows in different directions and lies open | Visible tabs in the one place someone looks at a mirror |
Inside those four, there is a lot of room, and it's the room every well-built install uses. Outside them, the failure isn't usually dramatic. It is a tab that lifts a little earlier, a corner that shows in a ponytail, or a client who can't sleep on one side.
Weight is the second decision
Where a tab goes matters. How much hair is inside it matters just as much. A section too thick to let the adhesive faces meet gives a weak bond and puts the weft's weight on hair that cannot carry it, and tension over weeks at the root is the mechanism behind traction problems.
- The section should be thin enough to see light through before either tab goes near it.
- The weft should be no wider than the section it is sitting on.
- Heavier wefts belong lower, where there's more hair beneath them to spread the load.
- If the amount of hair someone wants needs sections that are too thick, the answer is less hair rather than bigger sections.
Working from the bottom up
- Start at the napeThe lowest row first, so each row above hides the one below it.
- Leave a clean perimeterAbout a finger's width in from the edge of the section, all the way round.
- Stagger the rowsTabs in one row sit between the tabs of the row underneath, so the weight spreads rather than stacking.
- Leave room between rowsEnough that the head can bend without two tabs meeting. Crowding rows is what makes an install feel stiff.
- Stop below the crownThe top section stays free to lie over everything underneath it.
What hides each tab is your own hair falling from above it. If that hair is too short to lie past the bottom of the tab, the tab shows, and no row order changes that. The full row-by-row map is in our tape-in placement map, and which styles hide which rows has its own guide.
How placement changes at the move-up
At six to eight weeks the bonds have travelled down the shaft. Re-tabbing puts them back up near the root, which means the tabs land in slightly different places each cycle. That is deliberate, not incidental, because the same section carrying the same load every cycle is exactly what you want to avoid.
What placement cannot do
It can't make very short hair work. The hair that covers a tab is the hair above it, and it has to be long enough to fall past the tab. On very short hair it usually is not.
It cannot carry more weight than the natural hair has. Fine hair supports fewer wefts, and a good stylist will say so at the consultation rather than at the move-up.
It can't fix an existing scalp problem. Tenderness, flaking or new shedding at the bond line is a stylist and dermatologist question. Nothing on this page is medical advice.
And We don't sell a placement board, a chart or a mapping tool. We sell the tabs, the remover and the tool that presses them.
What we sell for this
Close to this question
- Tape-in placement chart. Teaches how to read a placement chart as a template and what a chart structurally cannot account for.
- Proper tape-in extension placement. Diagnostic: the four placement errors that cause damage, traced from symptom back to cause.
- Tape-in extensions for fine and thin hair. Separates fine hair from thin hair as distinct constraints and sets the limit for each.
- Tape hair extension placement guide. The chronological working sequence of an install session, in the chair and at home.
Questions we get asked
Where should tape-in extensions be placed?
Inside a safe zone: back from the hairline, in from the perimeter of each section, clear of the occipital bone and off the parting and crown swirl.
How far from the scalp should a tab sit?
Close enough to be hidden, far enough that it is not against skin and can move when the hair moves. A few millimetres of gap also buys time against scalp oil.
Why do my tabs show when I put my hair up?
Almost always placement too close to the perimeter or too high at the crown. It is an install decision and it is fixable at the next move-up.
Can tape-ins go on the very top of the head?
No. The top section has to lie over everything else, and a tab there is both visible and sitting where the hair parts.