If your goal is to style your hair poker straight, you'll need to put in a degree of prep. To that end, the best hair straightening products will help to create an ultra-sleek finish, as well as working to prevent damage, stave off humidity and even impart a mirror-like shine.
Natural curls, coils and waves are also gorgeous, but there may also be occasions when you want to wear your hair completely smooth and straight, too – that's the beauty of changing up your style, after all. For the latter, using the best hair straighteners to create such a style is an easy route, but applying the right products as prep is equally important for lasting results. To be clear, here "hair straightening products" refers to those that help maintain sleek, smooth and straight hair – no styling product alone can replicate the results of a flat iron, a smooth blow dry or Brazilian blowout.
But, happily, many balms, leave-in conditioners and sprays offer both a smoothness boost and heat protection for hair, which is a non-negotiable when heat styling. Having spent weeks' worth of time styling our hair with smoothing products – as well as speaking to some of the industry’s leading experts and watching them in action – we know which buys are worth their salt. Here is our tried-and-tested guide to the top hair straightening styling products...
The best hair straightening products, reviewed by a beauty editor
Why you can trust Woman & Home Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
RRP: £26 | Type: Leave-in balm | Key features: Heat protects, repairs, smooths, strengthens
This leave-in balm is truly a smooth hair operator that does it all. The first thing that got our approval is that it comes with the added bonus of heat protection, shielding your hair from temperatures up to 230°C. In other words, there’s no need to apply a separate heat protection spray. This is down to its acidic pH, which staves off the damaging effects of colouring and heat styling.
Perhaps more importantly, we loved the results. The formula seems to melt into 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. It's ideal for both blow drying and straightening your hair with that all-important smooth finish, leaving it looking shiny and feeling healthy. The wider Acidic Perfecting range also features one of the best shampoo and conditioner duos for damaged hair, so if you like the results of this treatment, we recommend picking those up, too.
RRP: £44 | Type: Spray | Key features: Heat activated, prevents frizz, locks moisture, trademarked keratin protein
Ddesigned 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 step to weatherproof strands.
We tested this in the middle of a bleak (and very damp) English winter, when London sees high relative humidity levels, so this non-sticky spray 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, which is identical to the protein in our hair. It therefore binds directly to our strands to repair them – pretty impressive. However, means these products come at a premium; this spray costs more than £40 for a 150ml bottle. But if you can invest, you'll have a reliable humidity shield.
RRP: £12.99 | Type: Spray serum | Key features:
By now you’re probably well-versed in the benefits of the best hyaluronic acid products for your skin. But what if we told you you could reap those same benefits in your hair? That’s precisely what L’Oréal Elvive has set out to do with its affordable skincare-inspired Hydra Hyaluronic range. If one product is particularly great for styling hair straight, it’s this shine-boosting and moisturising leave-in, which 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 it still felt soft and smoothed-out by our next shampooing session. It can be applied to both wet and dry hair, but if your strands don't absorb product that easily when dry, you may find it better on the former.
RRP: £13 | Type: Spray | Key features: Heat activated, improves longevity
Created by one of the UK’s top hairdressers, Adam Reed, the ARKIVE brand is only a couple of years old but has already made huge waves in the global haircare market. We’ve tried nearly every product in the range and when it comes to creating a style that lasts, The Prologue is easily one of the best products to keep hair straight and smooth.
Firstly, we love that this heat-activated formula is water-light and doesn’t add any heaviness or stickiness to your strands, meaning you can apply it very liberally. The fragrance (one of two signatures across the ARKIVE range) is also mouth-wateringly good: a mix of rhubarb, tomato leaf and vetiver that Adam called “No One Elsie” after his grandmother. This product's real superiority is in the longevity it adds to your strands, though, working as a "memory maker" that works hard to keep your hair looking as you styled it. It's a godsend when you want to prolong the life of straight hair – and we're hooked.
RRP: £34.05 | Type: | 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 to use, with the scent immediately transporting you to a high-end salon – and that experiential side is half the fun, no?
RRP: £27 | Type: Spray | Key features: Heat protects, humidity shields, smooths, adds shine
Color Wow’s excellent styling products are famous all around the world and a hit with celebrity hairdressers, so our expectations were high before we’d even picked up this oh-so-shiny bottle. 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 extremely picky, it does have a slightly unusual smell when you first spray it. However, this isn’t detectable on your hair afterwards, so it’s not really an issue; those who don’t have a sensitive nose probably wouldn’t pick up on it if they weren't forewarned. Once applied, it's barely detectable on your hair and is quite lightweight, making it great for all hair types. It’s one that JLo’s hairdresser uses on her, which should tell you it’s up there as one of the best, along with being| a hit with our testers. Dream by name...
How we tested the best hair straightening products
A selection of the products we tested for this feature
To decide how well a formula helps to create straight hair and keep it in place, and if it was worthy of inclusion here as a result, we washed our hair and styled it straight, judging a product both in terms of the user experience and how well the results lasted. We also tested on hair that is naturally curly and frizz-prone to really put each one through its paces. During the testing process, we assessed all of the following factors.
- Price
- Packaging
- Formula type – e.g. balm, serum, spray
- Ease of use
- How it felt in the hair – barely detectable or slightly sticky?
- Fragrance
- How smooth and straight hair stayed through the day post-styling
How to style your hair straight, according to professionals
As well as giving you a list of the top-performing products, we also asked hairdresser Adam Reed, global brand ambassador for ghd and founder of the ARKIVE haircare brand and salon, to share his top tips for styling your hair straight.
- Style gently: It's tempting to roughly dry your hair if you're going to take to it with straighteners anyway, but this is actually a gateway to excess frizz. “Never rough dry your hair – rough drying opens up the cuticle, causing more frizz," Adam stresses.
- Direct the airflow: “Always blow dry hair by following the dryer in the direction of the hair from root to end, facing down the hair, and use a good brush, like the ghd oval dressing brush," Adam confirms. "This will help to keep cuticles sealed."
- Invest in quality straighteners: You've set a smooth foundation before you straighten your hair, but a quality tool will take the results to the next level. “Run the ghd Platinum+ styler over the hair; the perfect safe-for-hair temperature will immediately seal the cuticle," Adam says. "This will give incredible shine and smoothness, and prevent water or humidity from affecting the hair."
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