37 Trendy Permed Mullet Ideas & Styles In 2023

Did you know that permed mullets are back on trend as of this moment? A big shoutout should go to TikTok and Instagram influencers for bringing it back as a popular style!

Even the likes of famous celebrities, K-Pop artists and models these days are complying with mullets with perms because of the flexibility such concepts have to offer.

Because you don’t see very often that individuals are styling mullets in a corporate space, but permed mullet grants you a free pass even in those contexts!

Modern stylists are losing their minds over developing unique & authentic styles in this genre to come out on top over others for understandable reasons.

So, my article today would help you join the flow of the mass population and come out victorious on the other end with a fabulous hairstyle!

What’s A Permed Mullet?

To understand what a permed mullet is, you must separately understand the two concepts before merging them together: a perm and a mullet.

Basically, a perm is a chemical or heat induced procedure that either curls or straightens your hair for a prolonged duration of about 3-6 months.

During this period, your hair strands will resemble the texture you’ve permed it into with almost every property endowed to a great degree.

Mullet is however an older hair trend made popular in the 60s and 70s by the counterculture movement enthusiasts and punk icons.

These hairstyles display longer nape hair, shorter front hair with side hair trimmed down to a very short length.

When you put these to in one hairdo, the mullet mostly hosts permed curls on the entire hair body or at a fraction area.

Jaw-Dropping Permed Mullet Styles & Ideas

I’ll now be giving you some unique ideas on permed mullet styles that are contemporary and live up to the standards of even the most scrutinous stylists!

Mr. Short & Modern

Kicking off my list of permed mullet styles with a very modern take on men’s haircuts! It’s minimal in nature and doesn’t in any way make you look out of place. Yet this cut conforms to the mullet aesthetics without any subtlety. Frontal hair is shortened and combed forward using hair mousse. Permed nape doesn’t dare cross the neck line and the sides are trimmed short at the temple region only.

Glittering Mullet

This concept promises to make you look older than your young self because of the bleached mustache that complements the hairdo. As per mullet rules, sides are shorter but there are a couple of shaved lines that adds some texture to the mundane surface. The perms are crafted delicately with a premium bleaching done beforehand to render the curls as modish looking as can be!

With An Undercut

A haircut like this will always radiate a retro vibe due to the tightness of the curls you’ll be making with chemical treatments. But first, make sure that your clipper does its work to clean out the sides so that the workable hair patch is only down the middle. You don’t need very long hair to nail the look, rather a size that allows you to draw one or two curls should suffice.

Kinky With Burst Fade

It’s time for you to step up your A-game by increasing the curl’s coiliness to mimic a kinky outcome. Do you know how burst fades work with mullets? Basically, an oval area surrounding your ear is faded down with around an inch of spread. Rest of the hair needs to go through the treatment vigorously. You are free to toy with the length variance, but keeping it seamless tends to generate fine designs.

Wavy Overflow

Ones who don’t prefer tight curls as they can often be overwhelming in terms of management and maintenance, waves can serve you just right. It’s ideal for you to have longer hair to make the waves apparent, otherwise shorter lengths won’t have the room to flaunt the texture you just created. Very short trim at the temple’s feet lets the remaining hair to overflow in either direction to make you look dashing!

A Casual 80s Look

Let’s pay a tribute to those 80s mullet styles that based their concept upon natural curls with prolonged locks. You can’t deny the charm such an unkempt hair body emanates to every onlooker around. The distinction between top and side hair is blurred out which contributes more to the untidy aura. Use wax to the curls up front so that they resemble a posh makeover with little hair laying over your forehead.

One With Long Nape Hair

This rendition of permed mullet takes up two different concepts when it comes to distributing the hair body upon meeting the basic requirements. Remember that perming such a length of hair would cost you significantly more than it would with regular sized hair. If your hair isn’t blonde naturally, bleaching is an option you can consider. Expose your forehead on one side and flick over the curls on the other for completion.

Contrastive Textures

You know, permed mullet doesn’t always imply that you’ll have to curl up the entirety of your hair body. Rather, there are routes that enable you to grab the best of both worlds and bring them together – fine & short hair up front with long & permed hair at the nape. Top hair takes a flick and smooths out as it reaches back. Trimmed short sides add another dimension to this already contrastive haircut.

Permed Bangs

It’s an overloaded style for ones having high volume of hair and enough patience to let them grow out of control. Slightly bleaching the hair should lead you to a burnt look that’s fitting for high sunlit localities. Leave out the bottom half of the hair strands and perm the rest of it. This allows you to comb down the hair yet the ends are puffed up with curls, especially the bangs to almost cover up your vision.

Sleek Concept

You’ll be able to land this cut if you have a knack for subtlety and when smooth textures feel alluring. Perming in such a way lets you get away with dense hair because of the way everything is organized on top of your head. Temple region takes a little hit with clippers and the sideburn line is scratched in an angle. The perms make it into a sleek & wavy mullet that’s fitting for every formal occasion.

Exposed Tempe Style

Up until now, most of my permed mullets showed either fade or an undercut on the sides. This one aspires to shave off the hair and leave behind your shiny scalp put on display. Perms can be done after applying some bluish hair dye which should reflect the tone upon being hit with any powerful light. But with such an exposure of skin, make sure to put on sunscreen before heading under broad daylight!

The Punk Design

If you’ve watched Stranger Things, you’d be highly familiar with haircuts as such. It was the trademark punk style back in the 70s and 80s. It looks great with blonde hair and equally appealing with brown tone as well. This cut complies with the original mullet aesthetics by keeping the fronts slightly shorter than the long locks at nape covering up your entire neck. Short sides would be hidden with spilled hair.

Low Temple Fade Mullet

Another mixture of textures to satisfy your tastebuds attracts the men in their 30s because of its easy going nature and striking look. Start with a low temple fade before you head for the perming procedure. Keep that chemical application restricted only to the long napes. Because for the frontal hair, you’ll be going for a pompadour like concept. Growing a beard would be an added bonus for your overall style.

Made With Long Locks

Don’t let your years of patience and persistence with hair go astray! If someone told you that your back length hair doesn’t have many alternatives when it comes to styling them, prove them wrong today! Divide your hair into two sections and keep the frontal part very short. The long locks don’t require any trimming, rather perming is the way to go about. Areas closer to the root can be less curly than the fringes.

Mohawk Shaved Notches

Did you know that mohawks and mullets have a closer bonding that it would seem to the naked eye? As both of these concepts are concentrated on the central portion of the head, fusing between the two is a much easier task than it should’ve been. Remove the side hair in bulks and place a couple of shaved notches there. Guide the top hair to the back by pushing it a little upward to satisfy both concepts.

Light Spaghetti With Long Beard

It’s one of those looks overall that’ll make you drop your jaw with every passing second. No matter where you start your observation from, you’ll realize that all of the portions have mastered suave designs over the other. Shaved sides, permed hair with the top part being short & the back being very long. As the frontal perms are bleached to resemble thin spaghetti, a very long beard pushes it over the edge!

Frontal Side Swept

A haircut that doesn’t only carry varying textures but also different tones is one that requires a pair of expert hands. Shoulder length hair fits the tick boxes for this edition of permed mullet. Temple is clipped evenly and the crown hair is short & swept sideways. Bleach the nape hair completely and top hair partially for highlighting the sweep. Only the back hair receives the perm to promote two textures in one cut.

Back Hair Supremacy

Looking at this haircut makes me feel like I’m standing before a piece of artwork because it’s nothing shy of something of that sort. Everything is crafted with utmost precision – frontal minimal pompadour combed neatly, edged out sides that are short as well as lined up dense beard. And to save the best for last – permed nape with highlights that reflect luxurious curls. It’s the most artsy mullet I’ve ever witnessed!

A Tighter Perm

With your original hair color, creating a tight perm doesn’t limit your styling potentials and let me tell you how. Such a tightness of mullet perm needs to be isolated from the surrounding hair so that they remain as the only point of concentration. Once the chemical treatment is done, either go for hair pomade or wax to shine up your curly hair body. You might have to manually set them for a finer organization.

Blonde Layers

From a stylist’s point of view, retaining the length of your highly volumized hair is to endorse some layers on the dense portions. On one hand, it’ll allow you to style your hair in different ways, and on the other your hair body will seem puffed up in a smooth manner. Perming slightly should create waves rather than curls and it’s important to tone it down. However, bleaching will only push your look further up!

Short In Front, Long In Back

This one is a radical take on permed mullets that plays with length & texture variance the way I suggested earlier in this article. But the unique factor about this cut is the sketchy nature of each section and inspecting each of them individually might seem like they’re part of different styles. Top hair is short & spiked, bottom half of the nape hair is permed, sides exposed and a long beard to fulfill your desire of an authentic look.

K-Pop Mullet Permed

A lot of the K-Pop artists these days are trendsetters in the Korean hair industry and mullet was a very recent favorite among those stars. From the likes of Jung Kook or his fellow artists, a permed variant was popularized all over the internet. This mullet doesn’t extend the nape hair very far and prefers styling in the trademark style – curtain bangs on the forehead but this time it’s made of perms.

The Pink Style

Who says pink is a color only for the ladies to take advantage of? Mixing this tone with one of the manliest haircuts known to human beings should break this misconception easily! Take a different approach with the sides by extending it over to the nape area as well. With bleached and pink dyed perms, let the long curls cover up some of the trimmed areas. Fronts can stay shorter than the rest.

Grayish For Old Men

Even the elderly men can relive their youth with their grayed out hair if they’re audacious enough for a permed mullet. To reduce the maintenance hassle, it’s better to keep the crown hair toward the shorter and fine gradient. Perms can surface only on the nape area with a length that you feel fits your desires. Such hair & texture distribution paired with black & gray tones will instantly upgrade your fashion!

Tapered Long Mullet

A seamless long flow of hair can be converted into a mullet too if you manage to adjust the lengths according to the set standards. One way of achieving that is by tapering the sides with a small dip of your blades. Before brushing everything back, however, you should get the perm done. The variance of curl’s strength adds great value to your hairdo as the ends are made tighter than the roots.

Quiff & Mullet With Zig Zag

I’ll now be ideating a hybrid style to an already fusion concept by merging two haircut concepts into one. Shorten the frontal hair to the level where it’s ready to be formed into a quiff. Apply a handsome amount of hair mousse so that the shape lasts through the day. Back hair is waved up with chemicals to sustain the texture for weeks to come. Zig zag shaped shaved lines on sides are added as a decoration.

Shaved Lines On The Sides

Instead of a small patch of shaved design, why not go big with the entire side portion being placed with a shadow of the USA flag? Box on the corner and parallel lines right outward set the motion for a patriotic approach toward permed mullet. Go for an updo at the front and lay the hair body over your shoulder. The curls need to make themselves apparent at the longer back locks.

Bleached Second Half

When fine hair meets curls, it’s one of the most wonderful concepts men could ever find to appreciate. Top hair requires some deep conditioning to render the textures as feeble as can be. The main part of attraction begins at the hair lying down behind. Second half permed after bleaching resembles noodles hanging down from your scalp. Fine hair up top is able to drape over the trimmed sides.

A Suave Asian Look

As I mentioned K-Pop mullet styles, the evidence that it has spread like bonfire all over Asia is here! This concept I’m discussing is one of many interpretations of mullets done by Asian stylists. The curls are suave as a result of the natural properties that Asian hair strands carry. Hair body is evenly spread over the scalp and frontal spillage manages to cover off the entire forehead portion.

Edgar Mullet

Many regard mullets as a radical hair concept, so why not bring it together with another edgy style that’s approved by men with a distinctive taste? Edgar cut is placed ideally to serve this cause with the sharply crafted bang up front. Line up trimmers can get this effect done perfectly. As per the rest of the hair – most of the nape region is permed and allowed to curl down for as long as you want to.

Volumized & Bleached

If you go through a thorough bleaching procedure, you might end up in Hollywood for a fanciable blonde hair body! Don’t waste your products as they’re expensive, so get done with the side hair as early as possible. After a good perming session, your hair would show an increased volume over certain regions of your scalp. Keeping a beard and dyeing it caramel adds a fine contrast to the look!

Mullet For Receding Hairline

Individuals with receding hairlines can easily be a part of the permed mullet movement. Because mullets don’t necessarily demand you to have longer hair up front, rather it’s often shortened manually to uphold the values. A good trim on the sides can even hide the fact that you’re losing hair. With all that you’ve got, perm it up and allow the locks to remain loose at all times.

Highlighted Tight Perm

Add a breath of freshness to yourself by adapting a springy look in the category of permed mullet. Only the burst fade region is trimmed and not a lot of exposed skin is present in this cut. Your entire hair body needs to go through the perming procedure to bubble up the hair on top of your head. Caramel highlights and refined curls afterward increase the value of this unique hairstyle!

Mullet With Short Bangs

To go out with two haircuts in one is like a dream come true for many men. This can be your reality if the short bangs over your forehead floats your boat. Sides aren’t shortened aggressively and a stubble seems to have grown out from the connected sideburns. Nape hair is treated with a perm and begs for you to be maintained properly. However, it’s still easier to manage than a lot of other cuts of this type.

Smoothly Grown Out

Grown out styles can blend in naturally with a lot of mullet variants, and this one vows to keep the non-perm hair section smoothly textured. A number 2 haircut on the sides should suffice to isolate the top, long hair chunk. First, get the perm done halfway down your nape area. Then, brush your hair toward the back and flatten it out with some application of hair mud or any other cream that suits you the best.

70s Long Perm

I’m sure this haircut makes you remember those 70s fashionable singers with curls flowing over the fringes. If you could lift these curls, you’d see that there’s very little hair left on the sides to deal with. That’s why these regions aren’t as puffy as the top or the nape. Rest the long locks on your shoulders and the bangs halt right before reaching your eyes.

Permed Mullet For Kids

The last haircut I’ll be giving you is a kids variant of mullets. Not a lot of younglings opt for perms but if they’re interested in adding some curls to their style, why not let their thirst be quenched? Keeping the length in check should reduce a lot of trouble in terms of daily maintenance. You can even equip him with some highlights but try to keep it minimum.

How To Do Permed Mullet At Home?

Before getting started with the DIY guideline, I must warn you that trying out perm chemicals by an amateur can cause catastrophe. If you aren’t confident in your ability, please seek help from professionals because that would be the smart way to go about it.

The styling at home is broken down into four stages so that you can easily follow it.

Step 1: Trim The Sides

The first task is quite easy – bring out a good clipper and remove large chunks of side hair. Your options are different types of fades that include bald, skin, burst and so on. Other than that, you can completely shave off the hair or even throw in a numbered cut only on the sides.

Step 2: Adjust Lengths

After step 1, your hair portion allocation should meet with mullet requirements. Although it’s not always mandatory, sticking to the classics will beg you to get a short haircut for the frontal area. The nape hair can be left intact, or slightly shortened to meet your desired size – but preferable at a longer length than top hair.

Step 3: Apply Perm

It’s ideal to follow the instructions that come with your perm solution because it varies from one brand to another. Make sure your hair is still damp with the perm cream while wrapping it around perm rods. Go for your blow dryer if your instruction says so.

Pour lukewarm water on the curls after a certain time. Apply neutralizer. Remove the rods but keep the curls in place. Neutralize again gently. Rinse the hair with lukewarm water. Deep condition the hair. Follow your perm solution’s manual for a guide on time.

Step 4: Refine The Look

Lastly, you must complete what you started. Up front, you are free to place any short haircut using scissors, mousse and combs. If you want some hair color, you should bleach and apply dye before the perming procedure. Put in some hair wax to shine up the curls and hold them in place for longer periods.

If you manage to follow these steps carefully and successfully, you’d be a proud owner of your homemade permed mullet hairstyle!

Maintenance Guide For Permed Mullet Styles

Here are a few things you should follow regularly to keep your permed mullets last the longest time and retain a healthy scalp on top of that.

Wait 3 Days: Perms require some settling in after application. So wait at least 3 days before getting your hair wet.

Shampoo Less Frequently: Applying shampoo on a regular basis can weaken the quality of your perm and you might find your curls falling out sooner than you had anticipated.

Hydrate Hair Regularly: Going for deep conditioning, moisturizing and hydrating your strands as well as your scalp keeps both the perm and the scalp nourished & healthy.

Be Cautious With Heat: Blow drying on permed mullet isn’t completely discouraged, but it’s better to do it safely with proper products. Heat treatments however can damage your strands, so it’s better to avoid those.

Trim the mullet sides regularly and choose the right hair products for your perm. If you can manage to work through all of these, you should have nothing to worry about!

FAQ

Let’s refine our knowledge on permed mullets by addressing a few common queries that deserve some answering.

Q: How long does a mullet need to be for a perm?

A: A rule of thumb is two inches of hair at the very least to be styled into a perm. Because that’s the minimum size for hair strands to be rolled on the rod and be prepped for curling.

Q: Does perm damage hair?

A: It depends on how expert you are at perming and the extent of chemical use on hair. If it’s done correctly, you can even get away with no damage at all!

Q: Can a permed mullet be removed?

A: Well, perm removal isn’t the most pleasant job as it requires some hair relaxation with color removal cream, deep conditioning and hydration afterward. But when it’s paired with a mullet, such a cut can only be removed with application of a shorter haircut overall.

Q: Does perm cause hair fall?

A: Perm won’t cause hair fall unless the procedure manages to damage your scalp. Remember, your scalp’s health contributes to your hair fall and so, keeping it healthy is of utmost importance if you want to prevent your hair from falling out.

Thoughts

At the very end, there aren’t many things left for me to state about permed mullet because I’ve elucidated on every possible aspect already.

I could leave you a few pieces of advice though, to make your investment and compliance into this hair trend worthwhile.

For starters, try & go for unique concepts and promote the styles that hit a string within yourself. It would be the most honest approach and this usually generates the finest results.

Additionally, don’t mess around with perm solutions and follow the instructions thoroughly ONLY IF you have practical knowledge of the procedure.

Lastly, take time and have patience before committing to a style, because mullets can’t be easily reversed the way you can do with perms.