Air-drying your hair might be worse than blow-drying it
Yeah, you read that right, air-drying your hair might actually cause more damage than blow-drying it.
For all the women who only blow their hair out once a week, or #teamnatural who has sworn off of heat for the rest of their lives basically, we actually may have it all wrong.
For years we’ve been told how horrible blow drying our hair is, so bad that we basically should just let it air dry before styling, but we’ve found out that this might not be completely true.
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A few weeks ago we told you in this article about the phenomenon, and we decided to go more in-depth here.
In a recent study, six dermatologist in Korea tested out this theory by figuring out if hair was damaged in the end more or less by using a blow dryer or air-drying hair. The results were that of course the more we increase temperature in our hair the more damaged it becomes. But in comparison to air-drying, there wasn’t that much of a difference.
“Although using a hair dryer causes more surface damage than natural drying, using a hair dryer at a distance of 15 cm with continuous motion causes less damage than drying hair naturally,” the doctors found. To back this up, we contacted a former Aveda Institute and current hairstylist Yazmin Warren to get her take on this study.
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“When you blow dry hair as long as you’re not having high heat sit directly on the hair and at a particular angle, you won’t damage the hair because it is closing the hair cuticle faster than if you air dry,” Yazmin told Galore. “Air-drying can take hours for the hair to fully dry, and that will only keep the hair cuticle open longer for it to become weak. That’s why a lot of ‘natural’ women that wear wash-&-go’s have to get their ends trimmed more than others because the ends are becoming more and more dead with the use of water and letting it dry all day.”
So there you have it, leaving your hair to air dry for hours actually damages your hair more in the long run. As long as you’re keeping your blow dryer to an angle and keeping a motion throughout your head, your hair won’t be damaged. Also using heat protectant helps protect your hair from heat damage as well.
