Hairdresser shares how to blow dry your hair at home like a Salon pro

As New Year draws closer many people might find themselves attempting to make last-minute appointments to get their hair done for parties and get-togethers they’re attending to ring in 2023.

However, given the proximity to the date, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a salon with an opening.

Luckily, hairdresser Ricky Walters has you covered, as he’s shared a handy guide for how to blow dry your hair at home like a professional.

Speaking to The Mirror, the owner of SALON 64 in London broke the process down step-by-step for all those who struggle to achieve salon-worthy locks by themselves and there are a few things you’re going to need to give it a go.

Ricky demonstrated the process on model Danielle Copperman Sersoub (@dcopperman), starting by giving her hair a good wash, and shampooing twice before adding a little conditioner through the lengths and ends, avoiding the roots.

Product choice for the hair is ‘key’, according to the expert, who then adds a ‘workable’ volume spray and a heat protector before carefully detangling the wet hair and kicking off the blow dry with a ‘rough dry’.

“A few tips, slow speed and hot heat is key,” explains Ricky. “People often think when you rough dry hair you just kind of blast it in any direction but actually you can achieve so much with just rough drying hair.

“The rule is lift up for volume, so lift those roots and really work the roots if you want to achieve volume in your hair. Ignore your parting, you can put that in at the end.”

He proceeds to rough dry Danielle’s hair until it is 80-90 percent dry, ensuring that the hair he is drying in sections is given volume by lifting the roots up and away from the head on a slow speed, but with high heat.

All pretty straightforward so far.

But this is where the tricky bit comes in, as it’s time to grab your round brush.

“A huge factor when rough drying hair is how much time it saves you. You would never want to get a brush involved on soaking wet hair,” says Ricky.

“Hair has to go through a conversion process when it goes from wet to dry or hot to cold, so it sets. So you can rough dry hair like this until it’s about 80 or 90 percent dry and then get your brush involved and it will save you so many hours first thing in the morning.”

The pro advises starting at the front if you have bangs or shorter face-framing pieces.

“The first thing to do is pretend that you have no parting and just separate them from the rest of the hair and then you’re going to blow dry them all forwards with a large brush, with a little air through the back and front. Then when you let them down, you’ll get a cool shape around the face.”

And when it comes to brushes, you have to be careful with the ones you pick.

Metal brushes aren’t great for the hair as they get hot when used with hairdryers, so the expert opts for wooden round brushes – and size matters too.

“Always bear in mind, the bigger the brush the straighter the look, the smaller the brush, the curlier the look and the more bend you get on the hair. So it’s personal preference, how much bend do you like to get with your look?”

For this particular style, we were aiming for a glam, party vibe so started blow drying from the top with the bigger brush, lifting up again at the roots and pulling upwards, trying to keep maximum tension in the section as we go.

Each section then gets pushed over the opposite way from where the hair would naturally lie, to add more volume on top.

When you’re done with your sections and your hair is almost dry, this is when you switch to your small round brush to work on a ‘moulding’ technique to create curls/waves.

“So it’s all about moulding the brush like a roller on a stick,” Ricky explains. “You pull the hair around it, but you don’t want to brush the hair too much, just get those ends tucked in and then wrap it around and use the hairdryer to heat it up as you go.

“Unravel it and do the exact same thing over again on that piece of hair, until it’s 100 percent dry.”

He continues: “We’re slow cooking the hair, we’re moulding it, but we’re definitely not brushing because brushing smooths it out, but we want to retain curls.”

Repeat the moulding process around the head for each section, creating curls until you’re done, but be sure never to take a section of hair that’s wider than the brush, as this could leave your hair in nasty tangles.

Once complete, you could stop here and give yourself a pat on the back for getting this far… but if you’re feeling particularly confident there’s another step you can take that will mean you can continue getting ready for a party without worrying about your curls all falling out before you leave.

For this, you would do the exact same moulding technique, but when you unravel the curl from the brush instead of leaving as is, you pin it up onto your head to create a pin curl.

Ricky demonstrates this on Danielle’s hair, taking a section that’s been moulded and curling it back up to her scalp, wrapping it around two fingers as he goes and then clipping it into place.

Repeat with all the hair until it’s all pinned up, then spray with a flexible hold hairspray and leave it for as long as you can to set the curls.

When you’re ready to take all the clips out and free the curls, it’s then up to you whether you want to leave them as they are, or ‘tone it down a bit’ for a more relaxed wave.

For Danielle’s hair, Ricky uses his hand to massage the roots and shake out some of the curls, loosening them up and removing any section lines. You can repeat this step as many times as you like.

The more you shake, the looser your curls will become.

“It’s all about dressing out the hair to how you want to wear it,” he says. “This is currently quite big, quite glam hair, almost a bit 90s.

“If you’ve got hair that perhaps doesn’t hold the body, movement and curls quite well then don’t shake it out too much. Let nature take it out for you.

“You just keep going until you’re happy with the results, but there are other ways of dressing out the hair.

“Something else you can do is brush them out once you’ve taken them out which will give much more of a subtle wave.”

He then goes back in with a bigger round brush and hairdryer to get an even more relaxed look, which is very sleek and curved.

And there you have it, everything you need to create a salon-worthy blow dry at home. No need to fork out a fortune, just give it a go for yourself. Though don’t feel bad if the moulding technique takes you a while to get right, as Ricky adds that even the professionals will have struggled to get the hang of it at first.

Do you have any hair tips to share? We want to hear all about them. Email us at [email protected]