Want to keep hair smooth? These are the best hair straightening products for a glossy finish that lasts

Reviewed by: Lucy Abbersteen, Aleesha Badkar, Sennen Prickett

RRP: £27 | Type: Spray | Key features: Heat protects, humidity shields, smooths, adds shine

Color Wow’s styling products are famous around the world and a hit with celeb hairdressers. Having used this in our regular rotations for years, we can tell you that the mirror-like packaging is a very fitting tribute to the reflective shine that it imparts on strands. It delivered in terms of creating a smooth finish and keeping it there, thanks to its humidity-blocking technology – making it another bottle that’s on our holiday packing list.

If we’re being super picky, it does have a slightly unusual smell when you first spray it as there's no fragrance. However, this isn’t detectable on hair afterwards, so it’s not really an issue. Once applied, the formula is barely detectable on your hair and is quite lightweight, making it great for all hair types. Abbersteen recommends the Extra Strength version for hair that's very frizz-prone, but do note that both versions only shield hair from temperatures up to 190ºC. The original Dream Coat is also a product that JLo’s hairdresser uses on her, which tells you it’s up there as one of the best (as well as being a hit with our team, naturally).

Reviewed by: Lucy Abbersteen, Aleesha Badkar

RRP: £25.70 for 150ml | Type: Leave-in balm | Key features: Heat protects, repairs, smooths, strengthens

In a soundbite, this leave-in balm is a smooth hair operator. The first thing that got our approval was the added bonus of heat protection, shielding your hair from temperatures up to 230°C – meaning there’s no need to apply a separate heat protection spray. Its acidic pH works to stave off the damaging effects of colouring and heat styling.

Perhaps more importantly, we loved the bond-repairing results. The product itself seems to melt into our damp hair with no stickiness, leaving it silky soft – partly down to its moisturising properties, but also because it works to repair and strengthen your hair. We also think it's ideal for both blow drying and straightening your hair to create that all-important smooth finish, leaving it looking shiny and feeling healthy. The Acidic Perfecting range also has one of the best shampoo and conditioner duos for damaged hair, so if you like the results of this treatment, we'd recommend picking those up, too.

Reviewed by: Lucy Abbersteen, Aleesha Badkar

RRP: £9.99 for 200ml | Type: Rinse-off liquid conditioner | Key features: Lamellar technology

A brilliant budget-friendly treatment that's won over several members of our beauty team, L'Oréal's original viral wonder water is excellent for boosting shine and smoothness. Thanks to lamellar technology, it works to target dry and uneven areas of the hair with lightweight, smoothing layers. Beauty eCommerce editor Aleesha Badkar uses it on repeat on her curly, coloured and frizz-prone hair. "It's especially helpful when dealing with my dyed hair, which tangles up as soon as it touches water," she says. "I find it softly loosens up the knots in seconds, making it really easy to comb out. For me, it's a must for every hair wash and is a product I truly can't live without."

We'll caveat this by saying that, for hair that needs a lot of nourishing conditioner, the brand recommends you still use a separate one. But don't let this put you off; contributing beauty editor Lucy Abbersteen, whose hair is naturally curly and very dry, still uses it regularly to really supercharge shine and smoothness. "I find that it's like a top coat for my hair," she says. "It makes it shiny, touchably soft and is a nice 'boost' to whatever hair mask or conditioner I've used first."

Reviewed by: Lucy Abbersteen

RRP: £44 for 150ml | Type: Spray | Key features: Heat activated, prevents frizz, locks moisture, trademarked keratin protein

Designed to both shield your hair from humidity while keeping the moisture it needs in, this spray almost sounds too good to be true. But, thankfully, Virtue’s Frizz Block Spray very much delivers. Applied to damp hair and then activated with heat from blow drying, it's a great pre-straightening, weatherproofing step.

We first tested this non-sticky spray in the middle of a bleak (and very damp) English winter, when London sees high relative humidity, so it had a challenge on its hands. But even rainy days didn't end in loads of frizz, so we feel very confident it’d hold up in a muggy heatwave or hot holiday abroad, too.

All Virtue products contain its trademarked Alpha Keratin 60ku, identical to the protein in our hair, meaning it binds directly to strands to repair them. Pretty impressive, but that impressive science means these products come at a premium; this spray costs more than £40 for a 150ml bottle. If you can invest, you'll get a humidity shield you can rely on – trust us.

Reviewed by: Lucy Abbersteen

RRP: £14 for 200ml | Type: Spray | Key features: Heat activated, improves a style's longevity, heat and UV protection

Created by one of the UK’s top hairdressers, Adam Reed, ARKIVE brand is still fairly young brand but has made huge waves in haircare markets around the world. We’ve tried nearly every product and when it comes to creating a style that lasts, The Prologue is easily one of the best products for retaining straightness and smoothness.

Firstly, we loved that the formula is almost water-light and doesn’t add any heaviness or stickiness to your strands, meaning we could apply it very liberally. The fragrance is also mouth-wateringly good: a juicy mix of rhubarb, tomato leaf and vetiver that Adam called “No One Elsie” after his grandmother. But this heat-activated product's real superiority is in the longevity it adds to our strands, acting as a "memory maker" that works hard to make your style last. It truly is a godsend when you want to prolong the life of a straight, smooth hair. We're hooked.

Reviewed by: Lucy Abbersteen

RRP: £34.05 for 150ml | Type: Leave-in cream | Key features: Heat protects, smooths, shields against humidity

You’ve probably seen Kérastase’s iconic packaging adorning the front window displays of many hair salons and beauty stores. And if you’re looking to try a product that’s particularly great for styling thick hair straight, this is an excellent smoothing potion. Designed for thicker and coarser hair types specifically, this pre-blow dry cream is another multi-purpose formula. It smooths and shields from heat and humidity, as well as boosting shine for luxurious-feeling results.

When we put it to the test, it certainly reduced frizzy hair; though some other products in this round-up outperformed it in this area, we found it does smooth thick hair very well without weighing it down. Not only that, it also feels super luxurious with a scent that immediately transports you to a high-end salon – classic for Kérastase. And that experiential side is half the fun, no?

Reviewed by: Lucy Abbersteen, Sennen Prickett

RRP: £28 for 200ml | Type: Spray treatment | Key features: Heat activated, heat protection, results last for up to 3 days

A heat-activated, heat protective, smoothing and moisturising leave-in treatment from Amika, Frizz-Me-Not is an excellent product to use for any kind of smoothing style, including straightener hair. With "extended humidity shield technology", the nourishing formula contains ingredients like glycol and and panthenol to keep hair smooth – also protecting hair from temperatures up to 230ºC.

This relative newcomer to the Amika brand has already cemented itself as one of Abbersteen's favourite styling products. "The silkiness it imparts on my hair is almost unrivalled; I apply it to damp, freshly washed hair and my hair definitely stays softer for longer in the days that follow," she says. Although it isn't especially thick, it is designed for medium to thick textures, so do note this if your hair is very fine.

Reviewed by: Lucy Abbersteen, Aleesha Badkar

RRP: £25 for 90ml | Type: Leave-in conditioner | Key features: Heat activated and protective; smoothing alternative to silicones

Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness, a hairdresser by trade, answered a lot of prayers when they launched their own haircare range. The hero ingredient in all of the products (not just this one!) is an ingredient called hemisqualane, a silicone alternative that both smooths hair and works to improve its health over time.

The Blowout Styling Milk was one of the later additions to the initial lineup and is part of the Complete range. The need-to-know here is that it's an all-in-one smoothing, humidity shielding and heat protecting styling wonder. Despite its milky-serum texture, we could barely feel it in our hair after applying it; after working on a smooth blow dry we were wowed by the visible added shine. Basically, we really love this reasonably priced multitasker and think you will too.

Reviewed by: Lucy Abbersteen

RRP: £12.99 for 100ml | Type: Spray serum | Key features: Hydrating hyaluronic acid, up to 72 hours of hydration

You’re probably well-versed in the benefits of the best hyaluronic acid products for your skin by now (humectant, so draws water towards it, can hold several times its own weight in water). But what if we told you you could reap those same benefits in your hair? That’s exactly what L’Oréal Elvive set out to do with its affordable, skincare-inspired Hydra Hyaluronic range. If one product is particularly great for straight-styling, we'd choose this shine-boosting and moisturising leave-in. (That said, this range does come with one of the woman&home-approved 8 Second Wonder Water liquid conditioners, too.)

This leave-in is particularly ideal for very dry and/or dehydrated hair. Handily housed in a spray bottle, it claims to hydrate hair for up to 72 hours and, although we didn’t time it exactly, we can say that our strands still felt soft and smoothed-out by the time our next shampooing session was due. It can be used on both wet and dry hair, but if your strands don't absorb product that easily when dry, you may find it better suited to use on the former.