Playa New Day Mist: Sleek Hair without the Heat?

Main image – Irynav/Adobe

While I love the look of sleek, polished hair, a combination of natural laziness and bleach-inflicted damage means I tend to stay away from heating tools as much as possible.

Instead, I’ve spent years perfecting the hair mask/Aquis towel-drying/ridiculous-amounts-of-serum approach to heat-free styling, which generally leaves me with a loose waves look that I can live with. Still, the craving for shiny, straight hair never quite goes away, which led me to try out New Day Mist by Playa. 

 

Playa New Day Mist

Promising hydration, fragrance and heat-free styling in one, this product sounded like the sort of lazy girl hack I needed in my life.

And through a combination of nourishing ingredients and added fragrance, this product definitely delivers on its claims of both hydrating and leaving hair smelling great.

Meanwhile, the agave root juice, aloe leaf juice powder, sugar cane extract (a humectant) and argan oil here help to moisturise hair over time too.

But let’s be honest though, it was this spray’s promises to help relax my waves with no more than the flick of a hairbrush that made me reach for my credit card.

So does it deliver?

I’m very happy to report that (for my hair at least) it really does. 

The Full List of Ingredients

Water/Aqua/Eau, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Extract, Pacific Sea Salt, Betaine, Playa Marine Collagen Complex (Soluble Collagen, Spirulina Maxima Extract, Digitata (Icelandic Sea Kelp) Extract, Kappaphycus Alvarezii Extract, Sea Water Extract), Cocos Nucifera Water, Caprylyl/Capryl Glucoside (Coconut Derived), Cinnamidopropyltrimonium Chloride, Gardenia Tahitensis Flower Extract, Linum Usitatissimum Seed Extract, Salvia Hispanica Seed Extract, Trisodium Ethylenediamine Disuccinate, Sucrose, Tocopheryl Acetate (Vitamin E), Panthenol (Vitamin B5), Propanediol, Glycerin, Citric Acid, Hydrolyzed Adansonia Digitata Seed Extract, Illicium Verum Extract, Manuka Honey Extract, Lonicera Caprifolium Flower Extract, Lonicera Japanica (Honeysuckle) Flower Fragrance Extract, Fragrance

 

How to Use it

Spritzed sparingly through sections of hair before being brushed in, this definitely makes my waves far less pronounced.

While not the same effect as when I straighten hair, and not quite as effective on some of my more stubborn kinks (hello grown-out bangs), overall I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well this spray simulates the results of rough-drying my hair.

In contrast, if I want to enhance the look of any waves, I spray this before reshaping with my fingers and it seriously helps to ramp natural kinks up to curls.

The Takeaway

Overall a fairly innovative and easy-to-use product, which has certainly made my styling life a little easier.

The only issue that I have with this though is that to get the styling I want I need to use quite a bit of this- which makes hair a little damp and tends to make my strands a little fluffy.

Great for: Speedy hair styling. I also enjoy the high proportion of natural ingredients, as well as the fact that it’s SLS, paraben, phthalate and cruelty-free.

Not-so-great for: Frizzy types: since this makes hair slightly damp when used it does make my hair slightly fluffier as it styles.