Blow dryers are essential tools for styling hair, but the dry heat they produce can wreak havoc on hair, damaging it and making it look awful. However, there are ways to avoid this damage and still have lovely blown-dry hair.

Protect Your Hair from Your Blow Dryer

You go to your stylist at the Las Vegas Aveda salon, and after a nice cut, of course she blow-dries your hair. It’s shiny, gorgeous and full of life. You go home and try to repeat the same thing- and after you blow-dry your hair, it looks brittle, dead and lifeless. You could just go to the salon every day, but it makes more sense to learn how to properly blow-dry your hair at home instead.

Watch the Heat

You need a good blow dryer to get good results. It should have adjustable temperature settings as well as adjustable air-stream settings. A blow dryer that only has a “super-hot” setting is no good. In fact, the heat that a blow dryer puts out shouldn’t really feel hot; if you aim the blow dryer at your arm, it should feel comfortable. Applying really hot air during blow-drying is the major cause of dry, brittle hair after at-home blow-drying.

Keep it Moving

As you aim the blow dryer at your hair, keep the device quite far from the actual hair, at least 8 inches. Move the hair-dryer from the roots of the hair to the tip in a smooth, seamless motion. This smooth motion in the correct direction is key to producing shiny hair. Keep the dryer moving at a steady speed and try to avoid drying each individual hair more than once. You may want to pin parts of the hair up out of the way to avoid drying different parts more than once.

Be Patient

If you’re planning to blow-dry your hair, apply a heat protectant product to the hair after shampooing. Wait after shampooing the hair- wrap it up in towels and let it dry naturally for about 15 minutes before attacking it with the blow dryer. These simple steps will allow you to achieve beautiful, shiny salon-quality hair at home.