I have a flat iron and I'm not afraid to use it... If only I knew how :)

So, I bought a ceramic flat iron today. I bought a ‘thermal protectant’ for my hair (I forget which brand but I can look it up later if it’s relevant). I’m going to attempt to straighten my hair sometime in the near future. Tips, tricks, insights?

This is my hair.*

Thanks! :slight_smile:

*No, I am not normally wearing horns and a tail, but this was the best picture that I could find depicting the length and (natural) curliness of my hair.

Blow dry your hair after applying the thermal protectant. If you have one of these, use it. They are amazing for pulling out that curl pattern. Your hair will be frizzy and fluffy when you are done, but the curl pattern will be gone. That makes things much easier.

Take a parting at the nape of your head all the way around. Clip up the rest of your hair with a clip. Apply some smoothing cream (not too much, you don’t want to see smoke.), take a small section of the parting, and slowly smooth the iron down the length of the hair. The trick is to go slowly without letting the iron rest for too long in any one spot. If you let the iron rest too long on one part of the hair shaft, you get those “bends” in the hair. Continue that way all the way to the top. If your flat iron has a comb looking thing on the top of one of the plates, feel free to bend the iron all the way around so the strand of hair threads through that. That helps you curl the ends of the hair up or down as you wish. If you want the ends to hang down without curling up or down, disregard that entirely and just iron straight down.

There’s not much to it other than that. Just remember to NEVER flat iron wet or damp hair. I’ve seen hair break off that way, and it’s not pretty. Do plenty of experimentation to determine the minimum amount of heat you need and use that. Your hair looks curly, but still medium textured, not overly coarse. I suspect you’ll have the most success with a medium heat setting. Good luck!!

Kandee Johnson has a video if you’re a visual learner. She uses a round brush to blow dry instead of one of those picks, but I think the pick is easier. Her “hair wrapping” tip is a good one, though.

So what’s the best way to use the pick? I have one, but every time I try to use it, I just feel awkward. My hair is long/wavy.

Thanks, torie. I’m going to try this sometime tomorrow if I can figure out where my hair dryer is. :smiley:

Second the advice NEVER to do it when your hair is wet.

Straightening your hair takes patience. I only attempt it when I have an hour of prep time available. If you’re not thorough or try to straighten large sections at once, it’s a waste of time. Small bits at a time, take it slow.

Props on the hair lotion stuff. You need that. I’ve known girls who straighten their hair and don’t use a protector and their hair looks like they stuck their finger in a light socket. I use the got2be brand hair protector in the orange and pink bottle and it works really well. Like torie said you should put it on before you straighten but I also put it on during the day when the weather is dry to calm staticky hair.

Accept the fact that if you’re putting this kind of time into it you’re not washing your hair every day. My daughter swapped to a sulfate free shampoo (and convinced me to join her) when she started straightening her hair.

I use a flat iron, and I agree with the “don’t wash your hair every day” advice - my hair is about the length of yours, and I wash it once a week. I blow mine dry with a paddle brush, then separate my hair into small sections and straight slowly, ala torie’s advice.

Before I dry my hair, I use a spray leave-in conditioner. I use Tresemme heat protector, which I spray on my dry hair.

Patience is the key. Try smaller sections than you think you need the first time, then you can get a feel for how long you’ll need for the whole thing. If you have a flat iron with adjustable heat, start lower than you think you need, then if you don’t get the smooth flat look you want, adjust up one level at a time.

The pick feels odd the first couple of times you use it. I kept stabbing myself in the head. :smiley:

Honestly, I only see the pick work well to dry hair quickly and pull out tightly coiled curl patterns as a prep for flat ironing or later styling. If you just have wavy hair, you’re probably better off just using a paddle brush. Section your hair at the nape, and dry while pulling down with the paddle brush. Remember to point the nozzle of the dryer downwards to the hair shaft. The final style is smoother that way.

I find that if I blow-dry my hair before using a flat iron it gets a lot of frizz that the iron doesn’t help. I air dry. Then again, my hair isn’t nearly as curly as yours, so maybe blow-drying really is a better idea for you.

Also, I’ve heard that it’s better to let the just-straightened pieces of hair cool down before running any brush or comb through. It has something to do with hydrogen bonds, I think, but chemistry is not my strong point. Maybe someone else has heard this and can explain the science behind this?

Yeah, I keep stabbing myself in the head! I used to be able to just blow-dry my hair straight, but the older I get, the wavier it gets, so I thought maybe it would be better to use the pick than to use a straightener. I used to have a paddle brush, but my ex-roommate melted it with a curling iron. Maybe it’s time to buy a new one. Oh yeah, I cannot speak enough for leave-in conditioning spray! I really think that is what contributes to my hair being so healthy.

Alright, I did it and here’s the proof. If I were talented enough to take a picture of the back, you’d see that I missed a few areas. However, I’m feeling rather crappy today and don’t have the energy to go back and fix it. Also, I find that I’m going to have to return this flat iron and get a new one. It’s supposed to have the light go off when it is fully heated and it never did go off once the whole 30-40 minutes that I had it on.*

Any suggestions for a good, inexpensive iron?
*It also said that it would be hot in 30 seconds, so I think that the 5 or so minutes that I waited for it to get hot before I gave up and just used it anyways should have been sufficient.

ETA: Spacegirl, I also use a leave-in conditioner. It costs like a bazillion dollars, but I would still think it was worth it even if I only washed my hair and used more than about twice a week.

Wow! What a difference - it looks great! How long did it take you?

I use a Braun flat iron but I only use it for my bangs. I mostly got it because it was dual voltage and I travel a lot.

That came out great. Especially where you have curly hair.

My problem using a flat iron is the back of my head. Basically right at my crown I can’t properly reach to straighten it without burning my scalp. I’ve thought about maybe flipping my hair upside down and trying to do it that way, but I haven’t tried yet.

Has anyone else that this problem? I essentially get a crinkle in the hair close to my scalp because I can’t get close enough to my roots without burning myself, but I only have the problem at the back of my head. The only times I’ve straightened my hair I’ve just had someone else do the back and then it looks fine, so I know it’s possible, but I’m not going to straighten it very often if I require assistance every time.

Thanks, I like it. I didn’t really pay attention, but it probably took about an hour. I think what took the longest was just making sure that my hair was dry. I would agree that the back was definitely the hardest part.

Yea, that looks really really good, especially if it’s your first attempt!

The back is always going to be problemmatic. I basically bend at the waist to be able to reach to the back and back crown. If you’re getting a crinkle there, I’d suggest maybe using a lower heat setting on those areas (if you have an adjustable heat one, which I do).

Hmmm, my Braun iron has a safety edge of about 1/16 of an inch so I can’t touch my skin with it. But it’s only a 3/4 inch flat iron. I wonder if the larger ones don’t have that.

It makes sense. Your hair is just a polypeptide chain arranged in ladder form by various bonds. The hydrogen bond is by far the weakest, and broken by heat and water. When the hair cools down/dries, the bond is reformed. If you have the hair wrapped around a tool, it will reform in the shape of that tool. So it makes sense that if you brush your hair before it’s cooled, you could mess up how those bonds reform and end up with frizz.