Straighten Up! Making Unruly Hair Straight As A Ruler

A key first step, if you've got the right product, is to shampoo and condition hair with a smoothing and straightening shampoo and conditioner.  I don't always have the best shampoo and conditioner, but my hair seems to obey better when I wash with products that claim to (and are good at!) smoothing, defrizzing, and straghtening hair.  You can find shampoo and conditioner sets that are just for curly-to-straight hair and these work great for people with curly, coarse hair like me that plan to straighten; I love the Matrix Sleek Look series.  However, I have lately been going cheap and buying Garnier Fructis Sleek Shine Shampoo and Conditioner and while this doesn't work quite as well, it does keep my hair frizz-free after all the heat damage. 

After towel drying and a curl-removing product, it's time to blow dry hair.  There are tons of hair blow dryers out there and it's totally up to you how much you want to research blow drying.  Dryers that have tourmaline claim to dry your hair faster.  I generally stick with dryers that are under $30 and just know that it will burn out within a year or so and that's ok with me.  I do like to have low and high settings as well as cool and hot settings.  I'm not a fan of the "cool shot" button because sometimes I want to dry my hair completely on cool and it sucks to have to hold the "cool shot" button down the whole time.  I use a round ceramic brush to start drying because the air can circulate through the brush and it gets the hair drying faster while allowing me to shape my hair somewhat.  After my hair gets halfway to mostly dry I switch to a large (the larger the better) paddle brush.  The paddle brush pulls my hair straight so that when it comes time to iron I don't have to work quite as hard to fight against the curls.

Once my hair is dry I section it off.  The way you section your hair will entirely depend on you: your hair thickness, how long you can spend on straightening and how straight you hope to get your hair.  I section the front of my hair (beginning at my ears and going up and towards my part) into to sections; my crown to mid-ear level into two sections, and then I let the hair at the nape of my neck hang loose.

Now for the mane event (didja like that?)... straightening or ironing the hair.

Your biggest investment for this entire endeavor might just be the straightening iron itself.  Whether you spend $20 or $150 it is definitely going to be the tool you use most often and for the longest duration during your straightening process.  As with hair dryers you will want to do your research and find what you think will work for you as well as what fits with your hair's needs... and what fits with your budget.

There are a couple things to keep in mind when shopping for your perfect iron: heat settings, width, materials, and potential life span.  I won't go into these things in depth, but will describe them so you can be a better, smarter shopper.  Higher heat settings often make for more expensive irons.  I have very thick and coarse hair and a higher heat setting works better for me; if you happen to have thinner or 'tamer' hair you might not need such high heat.  I always purchase an iron that goes up to about 395 degrees.  The width of an iron directly impacts the length of time it will take you to straighten your hair but you must take into consideration your hair length.  Wider irons are for longer hair and reduce the amount of passes you have to take with the iron, however using a wide iron on short hair exposes your hair to too much heat.  Irons can be made out of several things (gold-coated plates, ceramic plates, aluminum, etc.).  Different materials fight static and protect your hair in different ways, and ceramic is supposed to be the best at this.  Other materials don't offer as much protection.  Finding one with tourmaline plates or tourmaline somewhere in it is even better: tourmaline has negative ions that counteract the positive ones and help seal in your hair's moisture or color (if you dye), plus tourmaline fights static very well.  As for life span, you probably want something that is proven to last and not peter out if you're going to spend the big bucks.  I am a little pickier with my iron than with my hair dryer; I generally spend around $40-$60 and pick something with the right kind of plates, the width I need and that has good reviews.

I set my iron to it's highest heat setting, which is 395.  I currently use a 1-inch width iron because my hair is right at shoulder length, though my next iron will probably be wider, and I'm finding I have to make more passes than I'm comfortable with.  Starting with the bottom-most portion of my hair I take about a one-two thumb width section of hair.  I usually make one pass starting about midway down the length of hair and clamp the iron down then pull it slowly towards my ends.  Then I make one or two passes going from root to end.  After I feel the section is fairly straight I move on to the next section.  After the bottom portion I do the middle and this is where I usually spend the most time: my hair is thicker here and much curlier, and it's also the hardest to see, even with a hand mirror.  The top portion of my hair is last, as working from the bottom to the top allows me to let the straightened hair hang without getting it mixed up with the unfinished sections.

I have extremely thick and unruly hair so it takes me 30-60 minutes to straighten my hair, depending on whether or not it was already dried and brushed/combed out.  My hair has gotten a lot longer suddenly and I would probably cut my time in half with a wider iron width.  After straightening my hair I try not to pull it back with a hairband to avoid the lines it would make, and I also don't brush it too much to avoid static.  If I straighten my hair I usually leave it that way for the entire day, plus the next day, and sometimes part of the next day, too; overwashing (at least in my case) leads to ultra dry hair and that combined with blow-drying and/or ironing my hair can lead to very unhealthy hair.  I also don't hairspray my straightened hair, partly because I want to avoid overloading it with product and also because I would want to wash the product out at the end of the day, but mostly because it just isn't necessary.

I hope this covers it!  Happy and healthy straightening to you.