How to Straighten Curly Hair

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Amelia and I'm going to discuss how to straighten curly hair. There are several ways to do it. First there are chemicals. You can use a relaxer and apply it to the hair and it will chemically break down the bonds and straighten the curly hair. The other way is with a straightening balm and heat. Any type of heat and tension on the curly hair will actually pull it straight and another way, a third way is to use the flat iron. With the relaxer you just want to be sure that you don't double up on chemical services. You don't want to have already bleached or colored your hair in order to get the best results. You always want to make sure that that hair hasn't been touched by any other chemical service because that way it will stay the longest and also your hair won't have any breakage. With the blow dryer you always want to make sure that you are using straightening products. In other words a straightening shampoo and a straightening balm. What a straightening balm is going to do is it is actually going to coat the hair. They usually have silicones in them and that actually coats the hair shafts, fills up the holes if you will to prevent frizz and keep the humidity out. What a flat iron is going to do is it is actually going to go in and squish if you will really flatten out these cuticle layers so that way it gets that hair extremely straight and it will stay straight. The only problem with flat irons is a lot of times they are overused so when using a flat iron always make sure that you use some sort of heat protection. Either something you apply wet or dry prior to flat ironing in order to really protect that hair from that heat because that heat just directly on the hair shaft and it is basically like baking the hair so you just want to make sure that whichever one you choose, you always use some sort of protection on your hair."