Straightening brushes sound too good to be true. Coaxing your curls into smooth, straight hair couldn't possibly be as easy as just running a brush through them, right? Take it from someone whose curls are a life-long, well-kept secret: Straightening hair brushes can give you sleek, silky hair -- if you find the right one and know how to use it.
"You're only as good as your tools, and if your tools and technique fall short you're not going to get the results you're looking for," says celebrity stylist Ted Gibson, who coifs the heads of A-list stars Angelina Jolie, Anne Hathaway, Gabrielle Union and Kate Walsh.
Hair straightening brushes can give you lustrous, straight hair, but Gibson warns that they're not really meant to give you the bone-straight hair achieved with a straightening iron. A hair straightening brush is no replacement for a pin-straight, zero-wave finish. After two weeks of trying them out, I agree with Gibson: "They're two totally different tools to have in your styling arsenal for very different results."
I took six straightening brushes for a spin on my voluminous, hard-to-manage curls. Here, the hair straightening brushes that are total game-changers for curly-headed girls.
One of the fastest brushes to heat up, the Asavea gets up to 450 degrees and is easy to manipulate. It glides smoothly through your hair, with no snagging or pulling. I found I needed to slow down my brush stroke and pull my hair tight and straight by the tips to make sure the brush glides over every strand. You'll get the best results from brushing underneath your hair, from root to ends.
Once I got I got my technique down, I was able to get some decent straightening and shine. My only gripe was with the position of the power button and heat settings on the handle. They're right where you naturally grip with your thumb, so I occasionally accidentally switched of the Asavea in mid-stroke. For one of the more expensive models, I'd expect the design to accommodate wandering digits. Despite this, the Asavea gave good results for a softer-than-curly style.
The TS2 Super Smoother has a comfortable, ergonomic design and is just the right weight -- heavy enough to be substantial, but light enough to wield it easily through your hair. With the smallest and narrowest brush head and shortest handle of the straightening brushes I tried, this hair styling tool is compact, easy to run through thick, coarse hair, and grabs hair fairly close to the scalp for root-to-tip smoothing. Keeping hair sections small will yield the best results. Despite having to run the brush through multiple small sections, the straight, stiff, slim plastic bristles made for fast brushing and quick results.
Heat-up time was far from speedy, however. It took several minutes to reach temperature on any of the four settings, which range from 320 to 400 degrees. With the same pesky placement of the power button and temperature controls on the grip part of the handle, I constantly switched the brush off mid-styling, which made an otherwise great experience a tad annoying.
The Dafni was designed by an engineer dad and his curly-headed daughter, and the thought that went into the design is noticeable. The brush head bristles distribute heat evenly, which makes for faster styling on larger sections of hair. Most brushes can handle one-inch sections of hair, but I found this brush worked well with two-inch sections -- good news for those with thick piles of hair.
There's minimal chance of burning yourself with this brush, thanks to cooling technology that keeps the back of the brush from heating up. Even the power button location is thoughtful: It's close to the bristles on the brush-head neck, well away from your grip.
The Luma is very similar to the Dafni -- the designs are almost identical. Like the Dafni, the Luma's chunky solid inner bristles with small nibs on a broader shaft are surrounded by a ring of narrower bristles with no nibs. This bristle combination achieves satisfying results, gripping hair tightly to the heated base for a smooth glide from root to tip for sleek, no-bump locks.
Because it's so similar in outcome and design, but slightly more affordable, the Luna gives the Dafni a run for its money.
