Do Steam Straighteners Damage Your Hair

There are plenty of ways to straighten your hair nowadays, thus having a normal flat iron does not get the job done anymore.

Additionally, companies have been trying to make hair straighteners more convenient for hair and reduce heat damage.

Nevertheless, women are wondering if steam straighteners really work? And the answer is yes, they definitely do!

Not only do steam straighteners work excellently to get your hair straight and glossy, but they also protect hair when used correctly!

Let’s take a deeper look. 

Watch this video for a quick explanation.

How Do Steam Straighteners Work?

Before talking about any potential damages, you must know what is steam straightener is and how it works.

Steam hair straighteners are a recently added hair straightening tool that incorporates newer technology.

It looks like a traditional straightener with bristles inside.

The main mechanism of a steam straightener is to hold water and use its steam to straighten the hair.

As a result, you can ultimately get better shine and a silkier look than using traditional hair straighteners.

While flat-irons straighten your hair by flattening the strands between its plates with direct heat contact (titanium, tourmaline, or ceramic, depending on what the plate has), steam straighteners use nano-ceramic and nano tourmaline technology to straighten your hair with added water.

Thus your hair can get its moisture back through the steam straightening process. Moreover, steam straighteners use vapor infusion technology which straightens your hair more efficiently than the traditional one and performs better in preventing heat damage.

Some steam straighteners are also used to condition hair while straightening it.

These vapor irons use nourishing oils and heat protectants (like argan oil or macadamia oils) to infuse the hair shafts and provide nutrients while straightening the hair.

The iron’s heat transforms the oil into a conditioning vapor emitted through the holes in the plates.

This vapor penetrates through the cuticles to condition the hair shafts and make the hair silky, shiny, and frizz-free.

Also Read: The Difference in Tourmaline VS Ceramic Flat Iron

However, this straightener can also damage your hair. How much damage can it do to our hair? Let’s see below.

Does Using A Steam Straightener Damage the Hair?

Damaged hair is one of women’s biggest fear.

But when you are using a straightener or any heat tool, your hair will be damaged to some extent.

Nevertheless, you can certainly reduce the amount of damage your hair is exposed to, and in the case of a steam straightener, the damage is considerably low.

The steam straightener can definitely damage hair in certain ways. Namely, if you, for example, keep the iron on your hair longer than necessary, it will burn your hair.

While using a steam straightener, you are applying both a heated iron and warm steam at the same time.

Hence the possibility of you burning your hair, which will also slurp out all the moisture from the same.

This will leave the hair dry and brittle, and as a result, you will get extremely frizzy hair.

A steam straightener will damage your hair even more if you do not use the best heat protectant for hair. 

While steam is not that harsh on hair like other hair straighteners, it can still cause trouble if you keep it on your hair for a long time.

Thus, every precaution necessary has to be taken before you work with a straightener. Otherwise, your hair can get severely damaged.

One begs to question, can we straighten wet hair?

If you compare a steam straightener with other straighteners, the damage obtained from a steam one(as we said above) is relatively low.

When you use any heat tool, the damage mainly occurs due to the lack of moisture. Usually, with steam straighteners, the hair does not get dry.

READ MORE: Do Hair Straighteners Damage Hair?

Do You Still Need It?

Straightening hair is not a new trend or fashion, nor are hair straighteners or flat irons.

But steam straighteners are certainly new to the industry.

The newer technology used in it is meant to straighten hair with minimal damage.

All the heat tools we use for styling damage our hair more or less because of the use of dry heat.

Namely, this dry heat makes the hair drier by pulling out the moisture from it.

Thus, our hair gets really frizzy because of the lack of moisture, and it starts to get damaged.

Breakage and split ends are also a common problems when your hair becomes dry.

Hence, the need for a steam straightener. When iron straightens the hair, the built-in steam chamber provides warm steam. As a result, our hair becomes dry and frizzy.

Nevertheless, it is gentler on the hair in comparison with other heat tools. The steam straightener is more useful if you have dry hair prone to damage.

On the technical side, there are not many differences between traditional straighteners and steam straighteners.

But the “steam” factor can make a huge difference in your hairstyling process and the condition of our hair.

We are not saying it will tremendously improve your hair, but it will certainly not make it worse.