Marina | January 25, 2014 | Hair |

Sleek straight hair looks very chic and sophisticated. A lot of women go for this look and what’s great about it is that you can achieve it right in the comfort of your own home. You don’t need to go to a salon or call in your hairstylist just to get your hair straightened, unless you want it done semi-permanently or permanently. All you need are some styling products and a hair straightening tool / iron and you can have straight hair any time you want. Here are some tips for straightening your hair at home:

• Watch the temperature – if you’re planning on getting hair iron to use at home for straightening your hair, get one that has a temp control button / dial. Monitoring the amount of heat you expose your hair to is important, especially if you do it often, because too much heat can damage your hair. If you will be straightening your hair often, the maximum heat setting you should set your hair iron to is 325 degrees and nothing higher.

• Get a ceramic flat iron – ceramic coated flat irons are the best ones to purchase if you want to avoid your hair from being greatly damaged. This is because ceramic flat irons distribute heat evenly onto your hair thus lessening the need to run your hair through the iron again and again before you get the perfect straightness and sleekness.

• Always use a heat protectant – upon exposure to high levels of heat, your hair dries out because the essential oils and proteins present in them get burned. This results in dry and unhealthy hair. Make sure your hair stays shiny and soft by protecting it with a coat of heat protectant before you start ironing it. Doing this not only protects your hair from damage but also lets it withstand higher levels of heat.

• Do not iron your hair every day – as much as anyone would want to have straight and sleek hair every day, it would just bring more damage to it. let your hair breathe every once in a while and style it without using heat. At the most, you should expose your hair to the heat of hair styling tools twice or thrice a week. On weekends when you would just stay at home, just let your hair go wild and don’t bother taming it with heat.

• Do not iron your hair wet – yes, there are hair straightening irons out there that claim that they can be safely used on wet hair but even those can’t guarantee you that no damage will be done to your hair. To be safe, never iron your hair while it’s wet. What happens when you iron your hair wet is that you apply direct steam to it and that steam can damage your hair faster than anything else.

• Clean out your iron before each use – this step takes only about half a minute yet a lot of women forget to do it all the time. cleaning your iron before you use it assures you that there is no product build up on it. Product build up on your iron plate can slow down the pre-heating time for your iron and it can also affect the way heat is distributed on your hair.