5 Common Hair Drying Mistakes
For some girls, drying your hair may seem like the easiest part of your hair care routine. You get out of the shower, grab your towel or blow dryer and get to work quickly drying your hair. What most people don’t realize, however, is that this simple part of your beauty routine may be the reason for your dull, damaged hair. Read on to find out how to fix these common hair drying mistakes.
The first thing we’ll talk about is what you’re doing with your towel.
1. Drying your hair too rough
You’ve probably seen this on TV where the actress steps out of the shower and immediately starts roughly drying her hair by rubbing the towel between her hair and hand. Don’t do this! Roughly using a towel over a long period of time does a number on wet hair strands and can cause breakage or at least damage them.
2. Don't leave your wet hair wrapped in the towel for too long
It’s fine if you wrap your hair after taking a shower but leaving the towel in your hair for too long as you hang around will damage your hair strands without you even realizing it. As a general rule of thumb, if you pull wet hair up and away from your scalp, there’s a potential for damage such as breakage and hair loss. It really doesn’t matter if it’s a towel or tied with an elastic.
3. The bath towel
The soft fibers of a regular bath towel are completely fine for your skin but can ruin hair strands quickly. The tricky part is that a towel may seem like it’s doing its job by absorbing the water in your hair but it’s the rough texture that will wreck your hair. If you look closely at a bath towel, you’ll notice that they’re made with larger loops in the fabric to aid in moisture absorption. It’s these large loops that can get caught within the hair strands.
4. Not being careful with heat and not using heat protectant products
Whenever you’re styling your hair, it’s always important to know the condition and health of your hair. While everyone wants their hair to look beautiful and shiny through the use of flat ironing or blowing drying, it’s important to make sure it doesn’t come at the cost of healthy tresses. It’s critical that you use a heat protectant spray or cream before using hot tools and to avoid direct contact between your hair and the hot tools to prevent rapidly drying of your hair. Equally as important, however, is to be aware of the right kind of heat protectant that you’re using. Any silicone-based heat protectant can be just as destructive as using no heat protectant at all. It’s a good idea to go through all your different hair products and see the ingredients to eliminate any that will cause damage to your hair. Since we’re on the topic of silicone, it might be helpful to know why its so bad. The first thing to know is that silicone gives your hair an artificial gloss because it’s essentially a type of rubber or plastic so overtime it will weigh down, and cause breakage and eventually hair loss. It’s best to feed your hair from the inside (through the food and hair products you use) and stick to a natural hair routine.
5. How to style wet or damp hair using heat
The number one rule with heat styling is to make sure your hair is fully dry before even touching a strand on your head. If you think about it, if you take your wet hair and bring it into contact with a hot tool that is hundreds of degrees you’re essentially frying it. This is why under no circumstances should you apply a hot tool to your wet or even damp hair. While this warning may seems dubious to some, it’s worth mentioning as we’ve all been in a situation where you don’t have enough time to dry your hair, not being thorough enough, or simply missing a bunch of wet spots that would cause a fry. It’s important to remember to keep hot tools and wet hair far away from each other as possible.
Avoiding common hair drying mistakes.
Let’s now finally talk about how to properly blow dry your hair.
1. Use a microfiber towel (like the ones to clean your glasses)
Just as it’s advisable to use a microfiber cloth to clean your eye glasses, the same is true with drying your hair. Micro fiber cloths have finer threads than regular towels so they can absorb more moisture in the hair quicker than a cotton towel which allows you to reduce your time drying your hair. It’s important to know how to properly use a micro fiber cloth, however. The rule of thumb is to gently squeeze the towel on your hair in an upward motion to use the least amount of force and friction to keep your hair soft and silky.
2. Air dry your hair instead
Often times the best practice for your hair is to simply leave it alone. The reason for this is simple as the less you touch it (whether it’s with hot tools, drying, brushing, etc) the less processing, tugging, and external force the hair has to experience and this in turn leads to healthier, shinier, beautiful looking and feeling hair! You might be wondering how this applies to air drying and it’s simple. Throw your hair up into a loose braid and leave it alone! You can then undo the braids a few hours later and enjoy your damage free hair.
3. Use the right styling products
Perhaps you don’t have time to wait a few hours. No big deal but be sure to use a heat protectant before using any hot tools or blow drying your hair. Another good idea is to use a blow dry spray to help cut down on drying time while also providing heat protection. The neat thing about using this type of spray is that you not only protect your hair strands from damage by blow drying, but you also cut back on the time needed to dry your hair!
4. Always use the correct styling tools
Doesn’t it seem almost magical the way your hair comes out of a salon appointment with so much bounce and volume? It’s true, most women try to achieve the blowout look themselves often spending countless hours but the trick is actually rather simple: it’s all in the hair brush.
Let’s take a moment to talk about hair brushes. There are two common brush types: Round and Metal Barrel each of which serve a different function. Read more on the most suited hairbrush for you here.
The round brush is best for blow drying hair and the way this brush works is that the bigger it is, the most volume you get. A good tip is to use a natural boar brush, which spreads the oils from your scalp all around your hair strands to give you that slick finish you’re after just like from the salon.
The metal barrel hair brush is quite simple in that the perforated metal barrels cut drying time down by heating up the hair and distributing airflow around your hair.
4. Use the nozzle
You wouldn’t think of it, but the tinny hair dryer nozzle is an important component to getting the perfect blowout. The nozzle directs all the airflow to a concentrated area of your hair, to smooth down the hair cuticle and bring out the shine. Some stylists will tell you to achieve the perfect blowout, it has to be attached a certain way, but as long as you point the widest part of the nozzle horizontally and parallel to each piece of hair, the nozzle will work fine.
5. Break down hair drying into different sections when drying
Look, we all know that blow drying hair yourself isn’t nearly as easy as being pampered in a chair at the salon while the stylist does all the work, but if you want to achieve salon quality blowout yourself, it’s going to take practice! An easy way of blow drying your hair without killing your arms and making things easier in general, is to dry your entire head until about 80% is dry just with the blow dryer. Then flip your head upside down to reach the rest of those difficult, tricky roots. Don’t forget, hair styles are best from damp to dry, not wet to dry.
Finally, take a fine tooth comb and section off your hair into different parts depending upon the thickness of your hair. Don’t move on until each section is perfect before moving on to the next to ensure that no moisture is left behind. Top it off with shine-boosting serum or hail oil and you’re finished! Read how to dry hair extensions here:
If you have any questions about Endless Hair Extensions or want to learn more about our company, feel free to email us at info@endlesshairextensions.com or read our story here. We’re always happy to help you!