Your hair gets frizzy and tangled when you use a blow dryer without a diffuser, and you struggle to dry your curls to achieve a gorgeous finish. In this article, I’ll show you how to dry your hair without a diffuser and still achieve little frizz and well-defined curls.
What is your Wash Routine?
Your wash procedure impacts how long your curls dry and how they turn out. You want to ensure that your hair is kept moisturized and hydrated to look healthy.
Here is an illustration of a curly hair wash routine:
Sulfates in shampoo deplete the hair of its natural oils during the cleansing process; therefore, start by washing your hair with a sulfate-free shampoo. During this process, concentrate on massaging the scalp as it helps to promote blood flow, which stimulates the creation of new hair.
A conditioner should be added, working your way up from the hair ends to the root. Use your fingers or a comb with wide teeth to properly untangle and apply the product evenly to the hair ends. According to the product’s instructions, keep the conditioner in for at least five minutes before thoroughly rinsing. Remove extra water by squeezing gently.
We should start drying our freshly cleaned, dripping-wet hair right away.
How to Dry Curls Without Using a Diffuser
A diffuser is a blow-dryer attachment that distributes air evenly throughout your curls and encourages natural air drying. A diffuser is excellent because it reduces frizz, maintains the curl pattern, and produces a lot of volumes.
In the case where getting a diffuser isn’t in the budget or it’s not readily available at the moment. Here are some suggestions for having lovely and defined curls without the aid of a diffuser.
Towel Drying
Do not use a towel to dry out your hair. Instead, squeeze out the excess water from your hair with a light T-shirt, or preferably a microfiber towel. Microfiber towels soak up a ton of water and are completely lint-free. Using a softer fabric reduces friction and decreases the chance of hair damage while with a towel, the hair would be irritated, causing more frizz and hair breakage.
How to place the towel or shirt; Place the towel or t-shirt on the bed or counter. Flip your hair forward so the locks hanging are placed in the middle of the clothing. Fold the towel or shirt over your hair and secure it with a tie so that it stays in place. You may easily achieve dry, tidy curls by waiting about an hour before unwinding the towel.
Apply Products
Add in a pea size amount of lightweight leave-in conditioner to damp hair. A leave-in conditioner doesn’t require rinsing and can hydrate and maintain the health of your hair all day.
After that, let the hair dry for a couple of minutes before putting in the next product. You could add a styling gel lightly to the curls for more definition and a shinier appearance. Something to consider is the more products you add in, the longer it takes your hair dry.
Next, scrunch, you do this by cupping your curls and lightly squeezing them up towards your scalp. This promotes definition and helps the curls clump together.
Air Dry
The best approach to dry your curls without using heat is to let your hair air dry, but if it takes too long, air drying may also be detrimental to your hair. So make sure to air dry properly. You should be aware that how quickly your hair dries is also influenced by how porous it is; high porosity hair loses moisture more quickly due to heat or chemical damage and dries more quickly; low porosity hair takes longer to dry because of its capacity to retain moisture.
Stay in a room with good ventilation, and if you decide to go outside, check the weather first. In humid air conditions, you wouldn’t want to go outside. To prevent your hair from laying flat, move it around and sway from side to side to allow air to reach the roots.
Then, raise your curls before inserting metal clips along the scalp and clamping them shut. This will help with more volume at the roots and speed up the drying process for longer and heavier curls.
Using a Blow Dryer
Starting with a low or medium setting and moving in a circling motion, blow-dry your partially air-dried hair while keeping the blow-dryer pointed downward and toward the roots of your hair from a safe distance. While controlling the blow-dryer, move your head slightly, sway your hair to the side, and hang upside down.
Braiding
On freshly washed hair, you could alternatively create tight French or Dutch braids, dry them with a blow dryer on low or medium heat, wait around 15 minutes, then unbraid them. The inside of the hair might be a little damp. If that’s the case, dry it with cool airflow.
Diffusing with a Strainer
It isn’t the first time we have had to improvise with our kitchen equipment on our curly hair journey and it’s no different this time. It’s very efficient to disperse your curls with a strainer, giving them more volume and body and lessening frizziness.
Start with wet curls that have been properly detangled, and section off your hair afterward. Start with a low or medium setting, move the blow-dryer around in a circling motion, and then, from a safe distance, point it downward toward the roots of your hair.
Put a small section of your hair in the strainer, place it on your head next to your scalp, and blow-dry it for ten to twenty seconds. Then, turn off the blow-dryer and let your hair hang loosely. Switch to a different area till all the sections of your hair are done.
Mistakes to Avoid when Drying out your Curls with a Blow Dryer
1. Avoid touching your hair
Restrain from touching your hair with your fingers as you could remove some of the styling products and also introduce germs, resulting in frizz and disrupting the curl pattern. The general rule when drying curly hair is to keep your hands away because the more you touch, the worse it could get.
2. Start from the Root to the tip
Most curlies I’ve observed directly blow dry the curls with little to no attention to the roots, which is a very incorrect technique that could harm the curls and cause hair breakage.
3. Don’t keep your Blow Dryer in a Section for too long
Frizz may develop as a result of the blow dryer’s continuous motion. I realize that goes against what you’ve undoubtedly heard. But the ideal approach to drying your hair is to move as little as possible.
Instead, concentrate on making small head movements such as tilting your head to the side or back or flipping your hair from side to side. If you must move the dryer, only stay in one spot for 10 to 20 seconds before moving on to the next.