How Often Should You Straighten Your Hair? Too Much Can Ruin It!

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How you style your hair is a personal choice. If you have curly hair and you prefer to straighten it, you can do it with heat-styling tools like a flat iron

How often should you straighten your hair? However, as much as you would like to straighten your hair every chance you have, there is still a limit! This is because too much use of those heat stylers could also ruin your hair

Generally, most will only advise you to use a flat iron to straighten your hair once a week. That will help prevent your hair from getting damaged due to heat. 


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How Often Should You Straighten Your Hair?

It’s understandable that you want to straighten your hair all the time with your high quality flat iron. However, if you really care about your hair health, then that is something you should think twice about!

Heat stylers like your curlers and flat irons can certainly ruin your hair if you use them often and haphazardly. 

How do you straighten your hair? Do you simply use flat iron on your wet hair? Hopefully not.

Have you ever considered using heat protectants or coconut oil. These will go a long way to protecting your hair, though they can make it a bit greasy.

All these are important in knowing how often you should straighten your hair. It is true that you can straighten your hair as often as you want to… but you have to face the consequences such as having heat-damaged hair.

You can straighten your hair as often as you want to… but you have to face the consequences such as having heat-damaged hair.

How often you should straighten your hair without damage would also vary on how you straighten your hair and your current hair condition. 

Regardless, excess heat will eventually damage your hair. Heat affects the hydrogen bonds so that you can style your hair in the way that you want to. But it also dries up the hair. 

That’s why your hair may look fine at first but if you straighten it all the time, then the damage will be more severe and obvious. 

If you are trying to figure out how often you could straighten your hair, you should be observant whenever you straighten it. Take a look at the results of your hair after the procedure. 

If it looks dry and frizzy, you might want to take longer breaks between using your flat iron. It would be better if you give your hair a day of rest before straightening it again. However, you really want to aim for more like once a week. 

Those who already have damaged or fine hair should seriously consider using the hair straightener once a week just to maintain the straight hair. Using it more than that could increase the risk of more damage. 

Those who already have damaged or fine hair should seriously consider using the hair straightener once a week just to maintain the straight hair. Using it more than that could increase the risk of more damage. 


How To Keep Your Hair Straight

Your straightened hair could look more stylish and sleek when it is freshly done. We get it!

As much as you want that to stay permanent, there are a few daily tasks could make the hair not as straight as it is right after the iron. 

Although it is tempting to straighten it once again, control yourself! You know that you’ll just damage it further.

Instead, you can try other ways to help keep your hair straight without redoing the process. 

Here are a few tips:

1. Use Dry Shampoo

Before you go to sleep, you could use some dry shampoo   on your hair to counter the overproduction of oil by your scalp. By doing this, you don’t need to wash your hair and redo the straightening process again the next morning. 

2. Use Silk Pillowcases

Another thing that you could do is to switch your cotton pillowcases to silk ones. Silk pillowcases are smooth and they reduce friction between your hair and the pillow. 

Silk is also a good material that helps wick away moisture. In that way, you could preserve your straight hair as you sleep. 

3. Wrap Your Hair

Wrapping your hair is another way to help prolong its straightness. You should choose this over tying your hair in a ponytail or bun when you go to bed. Those will just create a crease on the hair that doesn’t look good and can push you to use your straightener. 


How To Properly Straighten Your Hair

It is easy to use a flat iron on your hair to straighten it. However, it is possible that you aren’t doing it right! Bad technique can lead to hair damage and poor results. 

Whenever you straighten your hair, make sure that you just don’t use any flat iron for it. There are different kinds of flat irons for hair and you should select the most suitable one for your hair. 

Choose flat irons that are made of high-quality materials. These materials are able to hold the temperature constant so that you don’t have burn spots on your hair. Burn spots would be weak spots and could break too. 

See Titanium vs Ceramic Flat Iron for materials information.

Also, make sure that your flat irons   have a temperature regulator. Not all people need high temperatures to straighten their hair. You should find the lowest temperature where your hair straightens and use that.

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Using a heat protectant   will also help reduce the heat damage that your hair receives. Combine this with properly taking care of your hair so that you won’t have to suffer from having damaged hair. 

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The damage from heat stylers usually dries up the hair. To counter that, find products that you can use to bring back the moisture into your hair. Regularly use deep conditioners or hair masks to help provide moisture and nutrients for your hair. 

Finally, lessen your hair’s exposure to other damaging factors like too much UV exposure and the use of damaging hair products like bleach and hair dyes. 

Written by Kayla Young

Kayla is the founder of LuxeLuminous. She has worked professionally in the tanning industry for years. She has been interested in esthetics since childhood, and has tried every hair, skin, and makeup product ever produced (more or less).