Michael Douglas just showed us how to add bounce to a flat bob in 4 minutes - and it couldn't be easier

One of the many appeals of a bob hairstyle is that its shorter length should, in theory, make styling a little easier. But whether you favour the fuller shape of an Italian bob or the slightly longer slip bob, there’s one area that can be surprisingly tricky to master: the back.

It’s something our Editor-in-Chief, Hannah, discovered after returning from holiday and noticing that, while the front of her hair looked polished in photographs, the back had a tendency to fall flat and develop kinks. So, we enlisted legendary hairstylist Michael Douglas, whose client roster includes Kate Moss and Claudia Schiffer, to show us how to restore shape and bounce.

His solution? A heated styling brush and a simple technique that takes just “three or four minutes” – and, importantly, is easy enough to do on yourself. Better still, this trick works on dry hair, making it a convenient way to revive a bob between washes or quickly bring it back into shape before heading out.

Michael's fix involves just a few minutes with one of the best hair tools – his very own MD London WAVE Heated Styling Brush. First, he clips up the top section of Hannah’s hair and mists the underneath with a dry heat protection spray. Working in small sections, he places the heated brush underneath the hair and slowly rotates it inwards as he moves through the lengths.

“The little fine bristles will pick up the hair and get it to stick to the barrel,” he explains. “As we start to turn the brush, we get this curve in the hair.” The trick is to introduce some height at the same time: “Lift it up at the roots to get a bit of height.”

There’s no need to give yourself a full blow-dry first – “you can let your hair dry naturally, brush it into shape and put a little bit of product on it if you want,” says Michael.

Once dry, simply work around the back of the head section by section with the heated brush, lifting at the roots and curving the ends under. The whole process takes “literally three or four minutes”, making it an easy way to refresh your style without starting again from scratch.

The finished effect is noticeably more voluminous. “It sits like a fully styled head of hair now,” says Michael of Hannah’s finished look. “No kinks, just a shiny, bouncy bob.” And considering the back of the hair is often the area we pay the least attention to, a few extra minutes spent there could be all it takes to make your bob look polished from every angle.

Why does a bob go flat at the back?

It’s a classic case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’, and one of the most common bob mistakes. We tend to focus our styling efforts on the sections we can see, ensuring the front has shape, body and volume, while the back often gets far less attention. Add hat hair, humidity and hours spent horizontal on a sun lounger into the mix, and it’s easy to see why a bob can quickly fall flat on holiday.

In Hannah’s case, this meant a lack of volume and a few unwanted kinks. Or, as Michael rather brilliantly puts it: “You’ve got a lovely shape at the front, but it looks like you’ve been crashed into at the back.”