How To Reduce Drying Time | Fast-Drying Curly Hair Routine

Does your curly hair take forever to dry? It can be such a pain waiting hours on end for our hair to dry, especially when you've already spent forever styling your hair. Well, i'm going to show you my best tips and tricks for reducing your dry time. I'M going to walk you through a step-by-step styling routine, show you all the tips and tricks that i do to reduce my drying time and the best products to choose for a shorter dry time. If you are new to my channel welcome, my name is gina and i make videos all about naturally curly hair and i try and simplify everything for beginners. So, no matter what skill level you are, no matter, what hair type you have everyone can achieve healthy hair. So let's go ahead and get started with the routine, so here's what you're going to need. The first thing is a hair repair. Towel like this or a cotton t-shirt. I personally prefer the hair repair towel because it is a flat cotton weave. It'S not going to cause any frizz, it doesn't have those tiny little fibers like a microfiber towel does, and you can also use a t-shirt if you just have an old t-shirt. That is a great way to dry your hair, without causing frizz so you're going to need your towel you're going to need any type of mister bottle like this. You can also just apply water with your hands, but this does make it really nice and convenient. You can find this on amazon, then you're going to need whatever products you're going to use, i'm going to show you guys some options of leave-ins creams and mousse and gel, and then whatever method you plan to dry, your hair, i'm going to be using a hair. Dryer and diffuser, so let's go ahead and get started so i've already rinsed out my deep conditioner and at this point my hair is starting to dry up in the towel. I have my hair wrapped up loose in my hair repair towel. This is the large one and i just have it looped through that little loop, that it has back up there, it's very very loose. So i don't have it wrapped very tight. You don't want to ever wrap up your hair tight when it is wet that could cause breakage. So the reason i do this is just so i can get out of the shower or i don't have to walk around with my hair dripping wet and it kind of dries it at the roots a little bit. So that's probably one of my biggest tips in this video for reducing drying. Time is let the hair repair towel or your cotton t-shirt absorb some of the excess water at the root, because we don't really need a ton of product and a ton of water at our roots to get great results. It'S more about the lengths of our hair. So if you didn't want to wrap it up, you could just take a t-shirt or your towel and sort of blot your roots like this. It is starting to dry on me a little bit. So that's what we're going to use the mr bottle for so because we obviously do not want to apply products to hair that is starting to dry. Like this, you can see how dry it is. That'S why we're going to use the mr spray bottle? A mister is really nice because it just sort of missed water droplets all over, and i feel like a mr spray bottle is a great way to just apply only how much water that you want. It'S not going to soak your hair, but a lot of times. I just apply it water from the sink using my hands, so to do that, i just get some warm water on my hands and i just smooth over like this. You can also use the mister bottle to re-wet some of your roots and it's just going to add a little bit of water to your hair, but it's not going to soak your roots like, i don't feel water dripping down on my scalp like i would, if I was leaning over my tub and just rinsed out my hair and then applying my products. That'S just so much water and it's going to take your hair forever to dry. If you're applying your products to soaking dripping wet hair, i can't imagine they would take my hair all day. It'S also going to dilute your products too. If you apply your products to soaking, wet hair you're going to have to use so much more product and you're not going to get as much hold if you're applying a stronghold gel to dripping soaking wet hair, then it's probably going to dilute it and you're not Going to get a gel cast or you're not going to get as much of a hold, so my next step is to use a leave-in conditioner or a curl cream, but i personally think leave-in conditioners help dry, your hair faster, so the first product i'm going to Apply is the curlsmith weightless air dry cream, but i really like this cream because it's very lightweight it's not going to weigh down your hair. It does have really great natural ingredients in it. So i'm just going to apply this all over. I like using a leave-in conditioner, sometimes instead of a curl cream. If i don't find that i need a ton of moisture in my hair and i want my hair to dry faster. Sometimes, when you go in with super thick, curl, creams and butters, and then you layer on a gel on top, it takes a long time to dry because you have such moisturizing ingredients underneath, which is great. If you have dry hair, that's what we want. We want to trap in moisture, but if you notice your hair just takes so long to dry, it could be because you have such thick creams and butters underneath of your sealing product like a gel or mousse. So this is going to help lock in moisture without weighing down our hair. Okay, now for the second product that i'm going to use on top, i would recommend going with a mousse or a foam. If you really want your hair to dry fast anytime, i use a mousse. My hair always dries faster. I think because they're just not quite as moisturizing as a gel, you want to obviously look for a mousse that does have moisturizing ingredients, so it doesn't dry out your hair, but they're just more airy and lightweight, so your hair tends to dry a lot faster. This is a new one from curlsmith. This is the bouncy strength volume foam. This is a protein foam, so if you need to add in a little protein to your routine, this is a great way to do it. I might just apply a little bit of this to my roots, to help give me some volume, so it's a really light foam. A foam basically has more water in it and it's more watered down compared to a mousse, so this step is definitely not completely necessary. I don't always do it, but it is a great way to make sure your roots have a little bit of texture to them, which helps give some volume here's another, really great option from the drugstore. This is the not your mother's curl top curl activating mousse. This is one of my favorite mousse products. I'Ve done a full routine. Using this, it was my drugstore beginner, curly, hair routine. This has a pretty strong hold to it. So if you like stronghold, you need humidity protection. You want your hair to dry fast. This is an excellent option, so for my styler today, i actually want to use one of my all-time favorite gels, and that is from we dead. This is the advanced climate control, heat and humidity stronger, hold gel. This is a gel i usually reach for in the summertime, because it does have humidity blocking ingredients. It still does have a lot of moisturizing ingredients, which is what i love about it, but the reason i wanted to go with this one for this routine is it's a very watery lightweight texture, so i'm going to try and show you guys if you can see It'S a liquidy watery gel, so this type of formula is great: if you want your hair to dry fast, i would avoid any type of thick souffle or any type of custard or a very thick gel, that's hard to apply those usually have more oils in them And sometimes those can just trap in so much moisture to where it takes forever to dry. So look for something that is more lightweight, especially if you have fine curly hair and you don't want it to get weighed down here's an option from the drugstore. I featured this on my channel before it's the dove amplify, textures, shine and moisture finishing gel. This also has that liquidy formula. This is a great dupe for this, although i do think this one lasts longer throughout the week. This is a really great, affordable option. So at any point, if your hair is starting to dry, i like to just wet one of my hands. So i add a little bit of water to my hands mix that in with my gel and keep going so one other reason. I really like damp styling versus dripping. Soaking wet styling is because i get more volume you get less really thick chunky, curl clumps and if you have low density hair like mine, really thick curl clumps can just make your curls look even more low density like it. Just clumps them together too much to where you don't have that volume but anytime, you have really thick chunky, clumps they're really pretty, but they can take forever to dry because all of your hair is compressed into that curl clump with all that moisture, and so that's Going to take a lot longer to dry, whereas damp styling, you get a more separated look, and i still do things to prevent it from getting stringy. I have a full video on how to prevent stringing curls, so i would definitely recommend checking that out. If you are worried about your hair, looking just stringy and dry, if you are going to try damp styling another thing i like about this gel is you can emulsify in your hands and you get this really nice, like milky, creamy consistency, so it's very slippery. It has a lot of slips, so that is great if you have very tingly or damaged or high porosity hair. So now i'm just going to take my behavioral brush and i'm just going to use this to create a couple of ringlets around the top. I like to be pretty quick with this. I don't like to always do my entire head. I don't really have time for that and to avoid this brush creating too many thick curl clumps. I like to hold it like this, sometimes, which creates a more separated, curl clump, as you can see, and sometimes i also break them up with my hands a little bit. Oh, i do still have that squishy feeling, but my roots are not dripping wet, so i feel like it's a good balance between having you know, wet enough hair to get your product supplied without frizz, but it's not so dripping wet. So you have a little bit of a squishy sound, but not a ton. It'S not like when i squeeze there is water and product gushing out of my hair. If there's any that are too clumped, i will just kind of shake them out so now that i'm completely happy with how my hair looks all over i'm gon na take my hair repair towel or you can use your t-shirt and mine's pretty wet. As you can see, it's got some dark areas which is good because i don't want to absorb too much product. I'M going to do what some people call micro plopping, which is where you basically just scrunch your hair after you've applied product and after your hair is wet with a towel to help absorb excess water. So i like to be very, very gentle when i do this, and i also don't like to squeeze my fingers together too much because that will just create frizz for me now, when you do this you're also going to absorb some product. So i'm going to show you a trick that i like to do to make sure that i'm not going to end up with frizzy hair that has no hold, because you scrunched out all the product. Another thing you can do is lift at the root like that, and that will help kind of dry your root a little bit, and if you don't want to get shrinkage, you can just take your towel and sort of blot your hair without actually scrunching, i'm just Going to flip it over to kind of separate it off the scalp. What my little trick is that i like to do is i wet my hands, then i'm going to take a little bit more of my gel or my mousse. Whatever sealing product, i decided to use in just a little bit: i'm probably just using a dime size amount mix that with the water and then glaze over your hair, and then you can also give it a scrunch. So this is going to add just that one other layer of gel to prevent your hair from getting frizzy. So i'm going to try and show you guys, my hair up close my roots are definitely just damp like they're starting to dry, which is great but they're. Also, not frizzy, so this is how my hair is looking now. So at this point, if you wanted to air dry, your hair, you could totally just leave it like this and walk around, but i personally like to diffuse, so i'm going to show you guys how i diffuse pretty quickly, so i actually get less frizz when i Diffuse, because when i air dry, my hair is moving around the air is blowing around it and stuff, especially if you go outside i'm more tempted to touch it. It'S hard to just sit still and not touch your hair. So if i didn't do that micro plopping step where i absorb the excess water, i would need to wait a little bit before you diffuse. You would never want to go right in, and diffuse soaking wet hair. It just doesn't make sense. It could be damaging to your hair to be trying to go from soaking wet styling to diffusing. It would just take so long to diffuse, but i find that because my hair is a little bit of a looser curl pattern. I can't wait too long before i diffuse, or else my curls will not really shrink up because they're already starting to form in the cast more elongated. So you could also plop with your hair, which is where you pop your hair up on top of your head with your towel or your t-shirt. That is a great way to absorb excess water. But i don't find that it's as consistent as micro plopping with absorbing excess water, because you're just kind of setting your hair up on top of your head. You'Re not going around and actually squeezing out the excess water. But that is another thing you could do before you diffuse alright. So here is the infinity pro conair, diffuser and hair dryer that i use this is very affordable on amazon. I like this one, because i love the diffuser teeth that stick outside of the bowl of the diffuser. That helps me with volume that helps to get right at my root and dry, my hair faster. I also prefer this dryer because it has a cool, warm and hot setting, so i use the warm mostly. I do switch to cool a lot of times on my ends. I rarely use the hot one unless, if i really need to get my roots dry fast, sometimes i will just use that on my roots, but for the most part i just used the warm for the longest time. I was using a dryer that was way too hot for my hair and even on the low setting, it was just damaging my hair, so this one's made for curly hair. So that's why it doesn't get too hot, which is great, because we want to dry our hair with warm air, not super hot air, because that just causes so much frizz and damage. So i like to plop diffuse, which is where i plot my hair over my counter and i hover my diffuser. Sometimes i even set the diffuser down and then diffuse that way, it's just a really easy way to dry my hair, and so that has really helped me prevent a lot of frizz from touching my hair too much because i'm sort of just plopping it to where I can still get that shrinkage that i want, but i'm not touching the diffuser too much to my head. Once my hair starts to form a cast, then i'm able to use the diffuser to scrunch my hair and get some more volume at the roots. This also helps to dry your roots faster. If you place the diffuser teeth right at your roots and lift it gives you more volume, then i'm switching to the cold setting and just hovering around my hair. It helps to get your hair really cooled off. To really see what areas are still damp, it's hard to tell what stamps, sometimes, when your hair is super hot, and this also helps the tame frizz. I was just looking back at the footage to see how long that it took, and it was about 17 minutes. I bet if i were to dry it to 100. It would probably be about 20 minutes in total, so i can usually drive my hair in anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes, depending on how wet my hair is when i'm styling okay. So now that my hair is completely dry now i can fluff out the roots, and when i do that, i usually just put my hands right at the root and then just fluff it my hands are totally dry. You don't want your hands to be wet when you do this, because it could cause frizz. So there's a couple things that i also wanted to mention that do have an effect on how fast your hair is going to dry. The first one is your hair's density. If your hair is low density like mine, that means that it is less than two inches thick in diameter around your ponytail. So you can actually measure your ponytail with a measuring tape like one that you use for measuring your body and if it's less than two inches, then it is low density. I think if it's two to three it's medium and then, if it's more than three it's thick, so if you have thicker hair, it's obviously going to take a lot longer to dry your hair, because the air is not getting to your scalp. If you have even lower density hair than mine to where you can see a lot of your scalp, it's going to dry a lot faster. It'S also really important to understand your hair's porosity. So there is a full range of porosities, depending on the amount of damage that your hair has, but the easiest way to remember it is low, medium and high. I need to do a full video about low porosity hair because i've already done one on high porosity hair, so i recommend checking that out. But if you have low porosity hair, your cuticle layer is very tightly bound. So it's really hard to let moisture in it. Doesn'T easily let moisture in so it can tend to feel more dry and it gets more prone to build up. But my theory is that if you have low porosity hair and you do get your hair moisturized - that it then wouldn't let it go. So your hair probably would take a long time to dry if you had low porosity hair, because it's holding on to all that moisture because the cuticle layer is more flattened and not letting that out. So if you're properly moisturizing your hair, like if you're using heat with your deep conditioners, you're, really letting your conditioner soak into your hair when you're, washing your hair and deep conditioning, then you're probably getting your hair moisturized. So then it might take longer to dry. If your hair is normal porosity, then you have a functioning cuticle layer, so it easily lets moisture in and out so it could vary on your dry time, depending on how much moisturizing products you use what sealant product you use everything else on the opposite, end of The spectrum, if you have high porosity hair, your cuticle layer, is a lot more raised, so it easily lets moisture in it takes in all the water and hydration it needs, but then it can easily let it out my hair leans more towards the high porosity side. So after i rinse out my conditioner, if i squeeze out my hair, it just releases all of that water and it starts to dry almost immediately. So i find that my hair dries pretty fast with it being high porosity, but on the other hand, it is a little bit confusing, because high porosity hair can absorb so much moisture and get almost waterlogged. So that could also take a long time to dry as well. If it had a ton of moisture in it. So i think it just depends on how you're styling, if you're scrunching out a lot of that water. If you scrunched out the excess water with the towel, like i showed in the video, then it's probably releasing that water, so it will probably dry a lot faster. Another thing to keep in mind is product definitely has an effect on how fast our hair dries. I let my hair air dry one time with no product in it and it dried so fast and especially the areas that were more high porosity on this top section. They dried within minutes, whereas the bottom layer was still dripping with water because it's more of a normal porosity. So that's definitely where porosity comes into play and products as well, because if i had products in my hair it would not dry near as fast, and that is because a lot of our products are designed to help trap moisture in which is what we want. So it takes a little bit longer to dry when you have products in, especially if they have oils and butters within the ingredients. Those are going to help lock in the moisture, which is good. So then your hair doesn't dry out. So if you are curious on learning more about the science portion of this video, i will definitely include more information about that on the blog post that goes with this video over on that blog post. I will also put a summary of all these tips and a step-by-step tutorial on how i did this routine, along with all the product links so again, that post will be linked down below if you're interested in checking that out. So that's it for today's video. I thank you guys so much for watching don't forget to subscribe. If you have not already and i'll talk to you in next week's video bye, everyone