How to Prevent Heat Damage When Styling Your Hair

Straighteners, curlers, and hair dryers are great tools for achieving your ideal hairstyle. However, using tools that involve heat can damage your hair if you’re not careful. Heat damage can lead to dryness, breakage, split ends, frizz, and other issues that will detract from your hairstyle. Here are some tips to help you prevent heat damage when styling your hair.

Moisturize Your Hair

Keeping your hair hydrated is an important part of protecting it from heat damage. Always condition your hair before applying heat to it to ensure that it’s properly moisturized. A weekly deep conditioning can help keep your hair properly hydrated as well. Properly hydrated hair will help minimize the damage that heat tools can cause.

Apply As Little Heat As Possible

You should limit the frequency at which you style your hair with heat tools. Do not use heat tools daily. Towel dry and/or air-dry your hair when possible. When you do decide to use heat products, keep the temperature low. Your hair will burn at 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Therefore, you should keep your heat tools as far away from that temperature as possible.

Avoid Applying Heat While Wet

You should never straighten or curl your hair while it is wet. Applying this sort of direct, intense heat to your hair will take all of the moisture out of your hair and fry it. You hair will become very dry and brittle which will lead to breakage and other damage. If you need to style your hair after showering, you should towel dry it first.

Apply Heat Protectant Spray

Heat protectant can be a very useful tool to prevent heat damage. Spray it on your hair before straightening, drying, or curling. This spray will add moisture to your hair while locking in your hair’s natural moisture, minimizing the possible damage. Heat protectant will also create a protective barrier over your hair that will keep moisture in and keep damaging heat out.

Use Curlers

Curlers can be a useful alternative to both curling irons and straighteners. To curl your hair using curlers, simply roll pieces of hair in small curlers overnight and remove them in the morning to reveal beautiful curls. To straighten your hair using curlers, you must first wash, condition, and towel dry your hair, leaving it relatively damp. Separate your hair and place it in large rollers, letting it air dry. Once your hair is dry, remove the rollers and brush it out. Depending on the natural curl of your hair, it might not come out perfectly straight. However, it will make your hair significantly straighter, lessening the necessary application of a heat straightener.