Skipping all hair drying methods after washing hair, also the towel

[Priska]

Is there anyone, who doesn't dry hair even with a towel but totally lets the hair air dry only? I just started to wonder if that is the reason why my hair has looked so great on our holidays on Italian beaches, because after swimming in the sea I usually don't dry my hair in any way. (I know that the salt in seawater can have some effect to my hair too, but when I do this salt treatment at home, it doesn't have the same effect) And I've heard that in curly girl method some women don't dry their hair at all to get the hair more moisturized this way.

I did some little searching about this from this forum but didn't find anything... Sorry if I just couldn't do the searching right..

[BuddhaBelle]

I have never tried it as I hate the feeling of a wet back from my hair but i’d be intrigued! I read one lady mentioned her hair is more wavy if she doesn’t use a towel

[Priska]

It sure can be more challenging with very thick, long, heavy and healthy hair. Luckily my hair is so fine, thin and dry... 😂

[lapushka]

I wouldn't recommend it. I am wondering if it has the same effect as leaving water on your skin too long will, because that will dry it out (called trans-epidermal water loss). You need to seal in moisture to the skin, hence cover it with a moisturizer.

Also, how long will it take, and is it realistic?

[MusicalSpoons]

I have read of people doing this, usually with shorter hair (like APL/BSL, though that is while curly, so maybe waist-ish full length). Wasn't there the bowl method that involved extra water in a bowl or something? Can't really remember because I didn't quite understand it :couch:

[AmeerahKhanNot]

I don't dry my hair with a towel, after I finish washing my hair I just squeeze out some water with my hands and after adding product I plop it in a cotton t-shirt and leave it for like an hour or so. The cotton t-shirt soaks up the extra water. I normally just diffuse my roots with clips in for volume but I let the rest of my hair air-dry. You could use a cotton t-shirt to dry your hair instead of a towel (A lot of curly girls do this to avoid frizz)

[Kat]

All I do with a towel is wrap my hair in it so it can soak up some of the water; I don't scrub at my hair with it or anything. I can't imagine what benefit it could have to my hair to leave it sopping wet and clumpy and dripping on the floor/soaking the back of my shirt and whatever chair I'm sitting on for longer.

[JasminxCat]

I use a microfiber turban wrap. It's gentle and absorbs about 50% of water after leaving it up for 10 minutes and that's all I need. I like applying my leave ins and oils on damp hair after the shower, then a tiny bit more again once it's dry

[irsviel]

All I do with a towel is wrap my hair in it so it can soak up some of the water; I don't scrub at my hair with it or anything. I can't imagine what benefit it could have to my hair to leave it sopping wet and clumpy and dripping on the floor/soaking the back of my shirt and whatever chair I'm sitting on for longer.

I kinda do the same. A couple of months ago I read T-shirts were better so I'm trying to switch to that. My hair is thin and fine, I don't even have a hairdryer where I live now.

[lapushka]

I don't dry my hair with a towel, after I finish washing my hair I just squeeze out some water with my hands and after adding product I plop it in a cotton t-shirt and leave it for like an hour or so. The cotton t-shirt soaks up the extra water. I normally just diffuse my roots with clips in for volume but I let the rest of my hair air-dry. You could use a cotton t-shirt to dry your hair instead of a towel (A lot of curly girls do this to avoid frizz)

That is still drying it. Some say a shirt even dries hair off better than even a microfiber towel does. :)

[knobbly]

Ugh no way. I blot out all the excess water I can, after squeezing down my length with just my hands in the shower. First I plop in a thin cotton birdseye towel, blot with the dry parts of the same towel, then I wrap my length in a dry microfiber turbie towel for 20+ minutes, and I blot with the dry parts again prior to letting it all down. I hate wet hair down my back.

I’m guessing that what you are feeling is the effects of sea water on your hair. It’s wildly different than tap water.

[foreveryours]

Sort of. After washing. I squeegee most of the water out of a ponytail by running it quickly thru my fist. I then wrap the tail in a towel and squeeze out as much water as I can down its length a fistful at a time. After combing, air drying takes an hour or two.

[Entangled]

If I left my hair dripping, it would take a long time to dry; even with toweling, it still takes hours to be dry all the way to the scalp. (I tend to blow dry to finish it off, because my scalp would get really irritated if I left it wet)

If you can get away with infrequent washes (I would have to spend every other day with wet hair), and your scalp doesn’t mind the water, then I don’t see the harm in an experiment. But all hair has different tolerances.

[KokoroDragon]

I think I did this when I took my hair typing photos quite a few months ago. I have a dehumidifier in my bathroom, so the super low humidity helped it dry faster. But I didn't touch my hair with a towel or anything, and the dehumidifier wasn't blowing my hair around like a fan or hairdryer would. Apart from hair typing, I don't see any benefits to drying hair in this way, but maybe someone with a curlier hair type than me would see a bigger difference.

[SelenVinland]

I don’t want to drip everywhere, so usually I gently wrap my hair in a microfiber towel and leave it up for 15-20ish minutes before letting it air dry the rest of the way.

[Chromis]

At my length that would be murder on our wooden floors :lol:

[The-Young-Maid]

Wet hair for hours on end only makes me cranky.

[Priska]

For my not-so-long, thin, dry and damaged hair this seemed to be a good, shine and moisture adding solution, but maybe I would have reached same results with drying my hair with a t-shirt and/or squeezing excessive water out with my hands. Possibly curly girls are right and terry towels really make hair fluffy, and I have only been using them.

But I really need to make more research to be sure of this. 🙂

[Priska]

..or not research but more experiments with my own hair, I mean. 🙂

[Bri-Chan]

I live on the italin coast, and I did this for sure when I was a child and I went to the see everyday, June to September :D but I actually can't remember how it was. But I think that would take ages.... I had way shorter hair.

[BuddhaBelle]

I agree with everyone above avoiding actual towels, i blot with a cotton t-shirt and wrap in my microfibre turban towel

[Feral_]

That is still drying it. Some say a shirt even dries hair off better than even a microfiber towel does. :)

That is true lapushka. The reason is a cotton t-shirt gets wet quicker than microfibre and the body warmth from your head will push the dampness to the outside of the fabric to evaporate. It’s a similar principal to how animal fur works in the wet. And (unrelated to hair) outdoor clothing manufacturers use this method very successfully in relation to garments to keep people warm and dry in cold / damp environments.

[Ylva]

I used to do this in the in-between stage of having abandoned all towels (I don't think they are the devil by any means but I just decided on that for myself) and not yet using leave-ins on my hair. That was probably a period of about one year. I would actually aim to leave the shower with as much water in my hair as possible, as I enjoyed the feeling of my hair damp, and wanted to preserve that for as long as possible. I had more severe bleach damage then. At that point, I think I was washing every 3-4 days; I was trying to stretch washes. I also like my scalp freshly washed and kind of damp and fresh.

As mentioned, I stopped doing this when I started using leave-ins on my hair. They simply weighed more in terms of making my bleach-damaged hair feel better, so I adjusted to that and started to squeeze excess water out of my hair prior to leaving the shower. That's still the most I do in terms of drying, and I think it'll stay that way.

[xanthochromia]

My hair is short (only just brushing the tops of my shoulders), fine, straight, and relatively thin (~2.5 inch ponytail). I don't use a towel on my hair now, I just "squeegee" the hair out with my hands as someone else mentioned. This was to break my habit of drying my hair very roughly with the towel like I used to do when it was pixie length. Because of my hair texture and length, my hair is fully dry in about an hour if I leave it completely alone. I just learned about the Madora method of tossing it around (https://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=76911&p=1747032&viewfull=1#post1747032), which seemed to dry my hair in under ten minutes and worked well for preventing the ends from flipping in weird ways from resting on my bathrobe or a collar. I'll keep doing that and start using a t-shirt as a towel soon as I no longer feel the habit to attack my hair with the towel.

[florenonite]

All I do with a towel is wrap my hair in it so it can soak up some of the water; I don't scrub at my hair with it or anything. I can't imagine what benefit it could have to my hair to leave it sopping wet and clumpy and dripping on the floor/soaking the back of my shirt and whatever chair I'm sitting on for longer.

Same. Sometimes if I'm in a rush and don't leave my towel in for 20-30 minutes, I take it down and my hair is STILL dripping. In warm weather and a continental climate, it takes 10-12 hours to dry as it is (more in cool or damp weather) so I would never leave it dripping when I get out of the shower, especially as I have to wash every 2 days, 3 max, as my scalp gets greasy.

[Jools69]

The last couple of years, I’ve only used a cotton T-shirt to squeeze out the excess water and blot out to stop any drips. My waist length hair takes about an 1 1/2 hour or so to dry, but much quicker during the summers months here in the UK.

I suppose for much warmer climes, hair would naturally dry much quicker. So wouldn’t be left dripping for too long. Although I wouldn’t intentionally practice it, since hair is at its weakest when wet.

[MusicalSpoons]

Is there anyone, who doesn't dry hair even with a towel but totally lets the hair air dry only? I just started to wonder if that is the reason why my hair has looked so great on our holidays on Italian beaches

I would imagine the heat from the sun would dry it a lot quicker than in cooler climates. Might be practical there but for a lot of us, no chance :lol:

[lapushka]

At my length that would be murder on our wooden floors :lol:

That just had me LOL! :lol:


That is true lapushka. The reason is a cotton t-shirt gets wet quicker than microfibre and the body warmth from your head will push the dampness to the outside of the fabric to evaporate. It’s a similar principal to how animal fur works in the wet. And (unrelated to hair) outdoor clothing manufacturers use this method very successfully in relation to garments to keep people warm and dry in cold / damp environments.

That reminds me. I have a couple of these, and should dig them back out!
https://www.amazon.com/hair-drying-towel-wrap-microfiber/dp/b00jooj5e0

I don't think they even do them any more! It's like a "bag" of t-shirt material that you can close with a drawstring. Very nice if you have long hair!