Do You Really Have to Reapply Heat Protectant Every Time You Style Your Hair?
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Michael Douglas is a celebrity hair stylist with a passion for empowering beauty fans to feel more confident with their hair. He is also a regular Live That Glow columnist, answering readers questions on all things hair care. Here, he advises on the best way to use heat protectant. Got a question for Michael? Send it to columnists@livethatglow.com for a chance to have it featured.
I’ve started regularly heat styling my hair using a blowdry brush after washing and then straighteners to freshen up the day after. I obviously use heat protection before using my blowdry brush but I wanted to know how long heat protection works for. For example, if I straighten my hair a few hours after using my blowdry brush will my original heat protectant still be working? And ditto for if I straighten the next day. Or do I have to apply heat protectant immediately before heat styling every time.
Michael says:
This is a great question. When you apply a wet heat protection spray to your damp hair and then blow dry, it essentially evaporates all the water out of the hair leaving behind all the beneficial ingredients of heat protection onto the hair. So in theory the heat protection is now established on the surface of the hair and will be there until you wash it out.
Re-ironing your hair on day two or day three should not in theory need any more heat protection on there. However it is possible that the heat protection ingredients have degraded somewhat after the initial heat process of day one.
If you are worried about heat damage on day 2 or 3 my suggestion would be to apply a small amount of the heat protection spray onto your dry hair and dry it in with either a blow dryer or air dry (but make sure the hair is dry) and then straighten.
This will top up the already existing heat protection ingredients and give you some extra protection.
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