Protecting Your Hair from Heat Damage
Protecting Your Hair from Heat Damage
Author: Jenna White | San Francisco Hairstylist
February 24th, 2022
February 24th, 2022
Products that claim to reduce damage to your hair when used during styling with heat tools like blow dryers, curling irons and flat irons are considered heat protection. They can come in the form of sprays, creams, lotions and/or serums. In this post, I break down how to think about the temperature of your heat styling tools and the product ingredients that are best for heat protection.
The Effects of Heat Damage
The diagram below shows how hair reacts to different blowdryer temperatures. A good blowdryer can be judged by (1) how strong the air flow, or blow force, is from the device and (2) how hot that air can get. The cost of a blowdryer can range anywhere from $20 to $250+, with the more expensive brands often offering better quality tooling that produces those effects to a greater degree. Those factors matter because they can contribute to cutting your blowdry time in half, which is a life saver when you have an 8am meeting to get to. However, more powerful tools are only useful if you know how to use them. Often people mistakenly abuse a higher quality blowdryer by overheating areas of their hair, or by not concentrating on certain spots for long enough.
At work and at home, I use a Dyson Supersonic blowdryer. I frequently use the "fast drying and styling" temperature (shown on the diagram below) on my own hair and with clients. The "cooler drying and diffusing" setting is more commonly used on curly hair, while "constant cold" is for smoothing your blowdry with a blast of cool air right after it's done.
When considering the diagram below, imagine what a strand of hair looks like under a microscope (visual here). A healthy strand will appear smooth, while a damaged strand will appear rough and as though jagged shingles are coating the outside. Those jagged shingles are cracks in the hair's cuticle that are caused by overuse of heat and chemicals. I give an overview of the risks of different types of hair damage in my post Hair Challenges: Part I and Part II. In general, with heat damage your hair is more likely to break, tangle, have unexpected reactions to color, and adopt casts of green or orange by soaking up minerals from your tap water. These conditions make it harder to grow and maintain your hair over time.
At work and at home, I use a Dyson Supersonic blowdryer. I frequently use the "fast drying and styling" temperature (shown on the diagram below) on my own hair and with clients. The "cooler drying and diffusing" setting is more commonly used on curly hair, while "constant cold" is for smoothing your blowdry with a blast of cool air right after it's done.
When considering the diagram below, imagine what a strand of hair looks like under a microscope (visual here). A healthy strand will appear smooth, while a damaged strand will appear rough and as though jagged shingles are coating the outside. Those jagged shingles are cracks in the hair's cuticle that are caused by overuse of heat and chemicals. I give an overview of the risks of different types of hair damage in my post Hair Challenges: Part I and Part II. In general, with heat damage your hair is more likely to break, tangle, have unexpected reactions to color, and adopt casts of green or orange by soaking up minerals from your tap water. These conditions make it harder to grow and maintain your hair over time.
Heat Protection Ingredients
Now that we have a little insight on how heat affects hair, let's look at some ingredients that can help create a barrier from that heat. According to L'Oréal, their products are "often formulated to protect hair from temperatures as high as 450 degrees", which means some products are designed to protect from heat all the way up to the "danger zone". There is more to maintaining healthy hair than heat protection alone, but when that is top of mind for you below is a list of ingredients that will help, plus a few to avoid.
Protein: found to prevent cuticle cracking
Oils and Silicones: products that disperse heat, found to prevent cuticle cracking
Conditioning Agents: not found to prevent cuticle cracking
- P/DMAPA Acrylates Copolymer
- Protein polysiloxane copolymer
- 2% glycerin (that is a lot for any formulation)
- Polyquaternium-55
- Hydrolyzed wheat protein
- Hydrolyzed vegetable protein PG-propyl silanetriol
- Hydrolyzed wheat protein PG-propyl silanetriol
Oils and Silicones: products that disperse heat, found to prevent cuticle cracking
- Sodium polystyrene sulfonate (stable up to 576°F)
- Sodium laureth-40 maleate/styrene sulfonate copolymer
- Dimethicone
- Amodimethicone
Conditioning Agents: not found to prevent cuticle cracking
- Polyquaternium-11
- Cetrimonium chloride
- Stearalkonium chloride
- Quaternium 70 (Stearamidopropyl Dimethyl Ammonium Chloride)
- Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine
- Triglycerides, silicones, mineral oils and petrolatum
Sources: How Hot is Too Hot for Healthy Hair? by the Science-y Hair Blog
The Cracking of Human Hair Cuticles by Cyclical Thermal Stresses, Manuel Gamez-Garcia
The Cracking of Human Hair Cuticles by Cyclical Thermal Stresses, Manuel Gamez-Garcia