Clients are always asking us what they’re doing wrong when it comes to blowing out their hair at home. Everyone wants to look and feel great every day, but daily salon trips aren’t exactly feasible. Although it’s a bit tougher to style your own hair than have someone do it for you, we’ll bet that there are a few things you can do to improve your technique.
- Be kind while towelling off. It’s easy to get in a hurry and rub vigorously when you’re towel-drying wet hair. But if you rough up the hair cuticle in this step, you have that much more work to smooth it again when you’re blow-drying.
- Move the dryer around briskly.Putting the hair dryer on a single section is perhaps the most common mistake people make. Continuously blowing on one section of hair is not going to make it dry any faster, and it can fry the strands. Yikes.
- Use low heat. This is another very common mistake: having the heat and air settings as high as they will go. This is especially bad with curly hair, or near the roots, because it creates the craziest flyaways! If you’re in a hurry, reserve use of the higher heat for the ends of your hair, but we really recommend against it. The end of the hair is most fragile and prone to heat damage.
- Get the right angle. Easy for even the most experienced beauty divas to miss, the angle at which you hold the brush is crucial to the look. The rule of thumb is to keep the brush vertical and the hairdryer horizontal. The look it creates is modern and fresh.
- Hold it taut. Holding hair taut and straight while it dries is perhaps the key element in a good blowout. You just can’t let hair dry any which way it wants, especially if you suffer from cowlicks. Holding firm tension with the brush is going to be the technique that makes or breaks your at-home blowout.
- Get the top right. It’s really the top layer of hair that everyone sees. If you make it sleek and shiny, then the whole look pulls together. To do this, section a 3″-wide “mohawk” on the top of your head. Start styling the front and work your way back. You’ll get the look you want for sure.
What’s your best tip for a salon-perfect blowout?