You’ve Been Drying Your Hair Wrong All Along, But Here’s How To Fix It

My haircare journey has been a long, tedious one. I know I can speak for all of us millennial Indian girls when I say we believed in the “golden rules” for the best hair – a coconut oil massage, a dahi mask, and letting the hair dry naturally. Blow dries were reserved for special occasions only because of how shiny and healthy the hair looked after.

Two decades later, everything has changed. Lots of research later I realised coconut oil doesn’t suit my wavy, frizzy, hair type and instead, leads to hair fall. And while dahi still makes my hair soft, nourishing masks are less messy and travel-friendly. Air drying, however, was the one holy grail I held on to for the longest time – until I was told my belief was wrong, again!

Should I Be Blow Drying My Hair Instead Of Air Drying It?

Ancient myths from the ’90s ( 🥲 ) had me believing that blow drying my hair would damage it because of the intense heat (true), cause the hair to break (false), and ultimately lead to hair fall (false). Conversations with friends led me to understand that I wasn’t the only one conned into believing these things.

Blow-drying my very frizzy hair is the only way I can seem to tame it, without the help of salon treatments such as keratin and hair botox. But is that going to cause my hair to eventually fall out? Dr Stuti Khare Shukla, M.D Dermatologist and Founder of Elements of Aesthetics instantly disagrees. “Blow-drying can be very useful for certain hair types and conditions,” she says. “It can be more effective for thick or coarse hair than air-drying since it helps manage volume and form while shortening drying time. Blow-drying can also help reduce frizz in high-humidity conditions.”

Sooo… I’m not going to go bald because I blow dry it often? “Blow-drying itself does not directly cause hair loss, but improper use can lead to hair damage, which might contribute to breakage. But excessive heat from blow dryers can weaken hair proteins, causing dryness, brittleness, and split ends. Using high heat settings or holding the dryer too close to your hair increases the risk of damage, while frequent use can exacerbate these effects. Rubbing or roughly handling hair during blow-drying can also lead to breakage,” Dr Shukla cautions.

Multiple hair specialists also agree that drying the hair at the lowest speed until it’s around 90% dry is better than air drying since your hair is more prone to breakage when wet. A study conducted at the Yonsei University in Korea further proved this with researchers concluding that the hair’s cell membrane was more damaged in the study group of people whose hair was wet for longer – aka those who air dried their hair.