Have you ever wondered why your hair feels lighter, bouncier, and much more moisturized after a session under the hooded dryer, than your hair feels when it has been rapidly blown dry? How can 30 minutes to an hour of domed heat result in soft, luxurious hair, while less than 15 minutes of blow drying leaves the hair feeling hard, swollen, and thirsty?
While no heat is best of all, domed, hooded dryers are simply better sources of healthy heat than hand-held blow dryers for the hair. Though both heat tools have flaws, the blow dryer is much more damaging to the hair overall. When choosing which heat tool you’d like to you use, you should ask yourself, which would I rather for my tresses?
a.) a 20 minute Category 5 hurricane?
b.) a 45 minute moderate breeze?
This article will walk you through the top 5 reasons that hooded dryer heat, or domed heat, is preferable to blow drying:
1.) Blow dryers are the hotter, more direct heat source. Blow drying depletes and removes moisture from the hair strands more violently and rapidly than a hooded dryer. That rapid heating within the shaft ,caused by hand-held blow drying, is extremely damaging and can lead to all types of hair breakage issues. With hand-held blow drying, there is a much greater probability that you will experience splitting, cracking, or peeling of the hair shaft as a result of moisture loss from the blow drying activity.
2.) Hand-held blow drying results in higher levels of manipulation and added stress to the hair. Hand-held blow drying increases damage from manipulation activity because it allows uncontrolled hot air to blow the hair around wildly. Domed dryers do not blow the hair strands all over or cause them to move wildly about. In fact, most hair styles that utilize domed dryer heat involve “controlled hair” where hair is usually set on rollers, rods, or is already molded into shape. Hand-held blow drying, on the other hand, tends to involve hair arrangements that are more random and wild. Much of the damage from using the heat of your hand-held dryer is aggravated even more by the manipulation you must use to tame the hair as it dries..
3.) When styling, typically some other damaging heating implement or tool is used in addition to a blow dryer, especially if you are not using a round brush to style the hair. Most people immediately follow a blow dryer with a flat iron or curling iron to complete the straightening and styling process. The latter two are the worst heat damage offenders. Usually, additional sources of heat aren’t needed when you’ve used the hooded dryer to dry your hair.
4.) Hooded dryer heat offers some protection to the delicate ends of the hair. For those who rollerset or set the hair on any type of rods, blow dryers allow users to protect the ends of the hair from overwhelming heat . Because the ends/tips are rolled and tucked under the hair, only the hair that can take it the most (the “newest hair”= new growth and upper length) get hit with the most heat under the dome. Hand-held blow dryers attack the full length of the strand with the same power.
5.) Just in general, when used as a heat source, domed heat dryers tend to be used less often than regular hand-held blow dryers. Most people who blow dry their hair, tend to do so pretty regularly. There are individuals who fire up their blow dryers everyday or several times a week for styling out of the shower. The same cannot be said for those who use domed, hooded dryers. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who’d whip out a dome like that! Styles set by the hooded dryer tend to be longer lasting, so the use of the dryer may be limited to once or twice per week. Less heat, better hair!
