Drying Your Coily Hair Without Heat: What Air-Drying Is Really Worth

Sunday morning, you let time do its work. Six hours later, the roots are still cold and damp when the ends have already hardened. Air drying seems like it has everything going for it. So why doesn't it work?

This article has long presented six heat-free methods as the right way to dry coily hair. That is no longer our position. In the Rituel Texture®, drying is step 05: it is done with a hair dryer, after La Crème Coiffante, in small sections and with constant movement. Air drying still has a place, a precise and limited one, between two routines. Here is why we have made this decision, and what each of the methods presented as alternatives is really worth. Our step-by-step tutorial details the six steps in order.

Why we changed our position

A wet fiber is a swollen fiber. Water penetrates the cortex, the hair elongates by a few percent, the cuticle lifts slightly, and it remains in this state until it has dried. On dense coily hair, this does not last ten minutes: it lasts half a day. Repeated every seven to ten days for years, this prolonged swelling fatigues the fiber, and it fatigues it precisely where coily hair is most vulnerable, that is, at the bend points.

This is what the most frequently cited comparison on the subject shows: by observing hair dried in different ways, it notes damage to the cellular membrane complex on strands left to dry naturally, while a hair dryer held at a distance and kept in motion limits it (Lee et al., Annals of Dermatology, 2011). The result is surprising, and it deserves to be read for what it says: it is not heat itself that decides, but the duration of exposure to water on one hand, and the immobility of the device on the other.

This obviously does not make the hair dryer a harmless tool. A device placed motionless on a strand cooks it, and hair dried without product is hair that we damage. What protects is La Crème Coiffante applied beforehand, which protects the fiber from heat, and the continuous movement of the hand. Remove one of the two and the gesture becomes harmful.

Air drying and its proper place

Saying that we no longer recommend air drying as a reference method does not mean banning it. Between two routines, it works very well. An athlete who washes her hair with the Shampoing Réparateur in the middle of the week, without a clarifier, has no reason to take out the hair dryer: she applies a little Crème Coiffante, puts up her vanilles and lets it be. The same goes after a swim, or on a very short cut, where drying is chosen according to the desired effect.

The nuance lies in the status we give it. Air drying is a supplementary drying method, not the way a complete routine ends. And it comes with two safeguards. The first: we do not go to bed with soaking wet hair, because a water-soaked fiber is more fragile and friction on the pillow is enough to break it. The second: we do not wet our hair every day to regain the feeling of freshness. A complete routine every seven to ten days holds hydration much better than repeated exposures to water.

Squeezing is not drying

The cotton t-shirt and the microfiber towel have been classified, in this article and elsewhere, among drying methods. They are not. They are squeezing gestures, and they have their place in all routines, whatever drying follows.

The right gesture can be summed up in one word: press. We wrap, we press section by section, we never rub. Rubbing lifts the cuticle and creates frizz even before drying begins. As for the terry towel, its fiber loops catch coily hair like velcro: it is probably the most damaging accessory in the bathroom, and it can be replaced for nothing.

A useful clarification: we do not squeeze until dryness. La Crème Coiffante is applied to damp hair, not to re-dampened hair. Over-zealous squeezing forces you to re-wet, which cancels the benefit.

Vanilles, bantu knots, banding

These three techniques systematically appear in heat-free drying lists, and they have a real merit: they dry hair in a chosen shape rather than in the shrunken shape that water gives it. Vanilles and twists give a stretched wave that is undone once dry. Bantu knots produce a rounder and more voluminous curl. Banding, which consists of placing soft elastics along each section without tightening, stretches without styling.

But they are styling methods, not drying methods. In the Rituel Texture®, it is step 06, the one that follows protective drying and consists of locking hydration in a braid or a vanille. Putting them up on soaking wet hair, without product, hoping they replace drying, is equivalent to accumulating the disadvantages: twelve hours of moisture in the roots, and a definition that does not hold. The detail of each method is in our article on coily hair stretching, and the gesture of vanilles has its own.

Plopping and the diffuser

Plopping consists of placing product-coated hair on a flat t-shirt, then wrapping it in a turban for twenty to thirty minutes. Scrunching is its cousin. These two techniques were developed for already formed curls, which group themselves into spirals when compressed. On coily hair, the strand does not group this way: it flattens, and the result is often flat at the roots and undefined on the lengths. We do not recommend them here, and our article on plopping, scrunching and finger coiling details what happens strand by strand.

The diffuser, meanwhile, always comes up in the conversation as the reasonable compromise. It is not either: it was designed for a curl that holds on its own, and it does not hold the strand while it dries. It is useful in rare cases, and our complete position is in the article should you use a diffuser.

Protective drying, step 05

Here is what we do instead, and what we teach the hairdressers we train. Drying comes after rinsing the mask and the detangling with the Peigne de Man Dol'. The hair is still very damp, and it is the time for La Crème Coiffante: we apply it over the entire length, generously, because it is what protects the fiber from heat.

Then we work small strand by small strand. The hand holds the strand, the device goes down from the roots to the lengths in bursts, in bouncing movements, without ever stopping on an area. Sustained heat that is always in motion does less damage than lukewarm heat motionless for twenty minutes. No brush: it pulls. The tip is held between the thumb and index finger and dried last, very lightly, because it is the oldest and most fragile part of the hair.

The result is not straight hair. It is stretched, supple hair, that moves from the root and on which the hairstyle of the day sits effortlessly. If the goal is a twist out or vanilles, we deliberately keep a little moisture at the ends.

These five points apply to all coily textures, whatever the density. The rest adjusts, and that is often where a professional's eye changes everything.

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Sources

• Lee Y., Kim Y. D., Hyun H. J., Pi L. Q., Jin X., Lee W. S., « Hair Shaft Damage from Heat and Drying Time of Hair Dryer », Annals of Dermatology, vol. 23, n° 4, 2011.
• Robbins C. R., Chemical and Physical Behavior of Human Hair, Springer, 5^e edition, 2012, chapter on the swelling of the fiber by water.