Hair styling is where you express your individual style, creativity and personality – but achieving the perfect look shouldn’t come at any cost to the health of your hair.
Unfortunately, though, traditional styling tools like flat iron hair straighteners and curlers have made heat damaged hair an almost expected part of styling: slowly degrading your hair’s texture, strength and shine.
The great thing is, there are many haircare tips and tools to prevent heat damage, allowing you to enjoy a variety of styles while maintaining strong, luscious hair. If you’re already experiencing heat damage, there are also heat damaged hair treatments to rehydrate and rejuvenate your hair.
Keep reading for our top tips to make your hair styling satisfying and free of heat damage with the team at Shark.
What are the signs of heat damaged hair?
Hair with heat damage can present in various ways, and how it looks will depend both on your environment, and on the quality of your current haircare routine.
To notice the changes of heat damage, it’s useful to first understand your hair texture and hair type. Broadly, the common signs of heat damage include:
- Dryness
- Dullness
- Frizziness
- Split ends
- Hair breakage
- Hair loss
- Loss of texture
- More knots than usual
What causes heat damaged hair?
Anything that exposes your hair to high heat can result in hair with heat damage.
Typically, heat damage results from using older hair styling tools – such as flat iron straighteners, curling irons and blow dryers – that can slowly increase in temperature as you use them and singe your hair in the process.
Other common culprits for heat damage are prolonged sun exposure or scalding hot showers. (These causes may also affect the health of your skin as well.) When your hair is exposed to high heat, the protective layers around each hair strand can open up. This allows moisture to escape, leaving your hair dry and brittle.
Excessive heat can also breakdown the protein in your hair, which causes your hair to lose strength and elasticity. To avoid this, it’s important to use no heat damage hair dryers and stylers in your haircare routine.
Shark’s 3 top tips for preventing heat damaged hair
Protecting your hair from heat damage not only cares for your hair – it will make your styling look better, and help you maintain styles for longer.
Plus, with quality haircare and gentle styling methods, you can easily avoid any signs of hair with heat damage. Preventing heat damage is better than repairing it, after all – which is why the team at Shark have compiled our top three tips to help you keep your hair free of heat damage.
1. Use adjustable wet-to-dry stylers
Advancements in stylers have made it possible to quickly dry and style your hair without any heat damage. The Shark SpeedStyle is a no heat damage dryer that intelligently regulates its drying temperature while you use it, so that heat remains at a healthy temperature. With five attachment heads to cycle through, it’s easy to go from wet and frizzy to straight and glossy – even on a wash day.
2. Use versatile stylers on dry hair
For safety and convenience, use adaptable stylers – such as the Shark FlexStyle – for every part of your styling process. The FlexStyle is a powerful styler that has a variety of temperature and airflow settings to stop heat damaged hair. With a simple twist, the FlexStyle goes from an effortless dryer to a powerful styling wand. Use the styling concentrator to dry, and then switch to a variety of accessories to create defined curls or a bouncy blowout.
3. Heat protectant before styling
To be extra safe, it’s always good to apply a heat protectant to prevent hair from heat damage. Heat protectants come in the form of sprays or creams and should be applied after a wash (different products will state whether to apply to wet or dry hair), then distributed evenly with a no heat damage comb like the Shark SmoothStyle. Heat protectants are great for safety and we recommend them in particular for those learning how to style naturally curly hair, as you may expose your hair to more heat while learning.
Tips to repair heat damaged hair
If you already have hair with heat damage, rest assured you have plenty of options to restore your hair. To remove heat damage, you will need to use nutrient-rich haircare that focuses on hydration and moisture retention. Below, we’ll walk you through our top three expert tips to remove or reduce heat damage to your hair.
Nourishing shampoo and conditioning treatments
When it comes to heat damage hair treatments, revitalising shampoo and conditioner is a must. Because heat damage causes dryness, it’s important to wash your hair once or twice a week, allowing your natural oils time to rejuvenate between washes. Choose shampoo and conditioner sets that have been formulated for damaged hair, as these are optimal for imparting nutrients and hydration.
Apply a hair mask
Hair masks are fundamental heat damage hair treatments: strengthening and delivering deep nourishment to your hair, as well as helping to reduce frizz. Better still, hair masks allow you to hydrate your hair after or in-between washes.
To support heat damaged hair, use a hair mask three times a week. It’s most convenient to use a hair mask after washing, and then again one or two days later.
Trim split ends consistently
Trimming split ends is good practice when working with hair with heat damage (or, for that matter, any other kind of damage). Unfortunately, split ends from damaged hair won’t go away on their own and will only continue to tear. So, to maintain your hair and promote repair from heat damage, we recommend cutting your split ends off every six to eight weeks.
Preventing heat damaged hair is made easy with Shark’s range of effective and easy to use hair tools. To get started on styling, learn how to style fine and thin hair types.
