Fashion / Celebrity Style

Heatless Curl Methods, Tried & Tested by Editors

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(Image credit: Who What Wear UK)

If one hair concern is front of mind for many of us, it’s heat damage. Thankfully, heatless curl methods are the perfect way to add curls and waves to your lengths without damaging your hair from hot tools such as curling wands, hot brushes, and hair multistylers. As a beauty editor, I’m often testing the newest hair tools. While I’m diligent with my heat protection spray, damage from regular hair tool use can be inevitable, especially if you’re using it every day. And with spring finally here, now feels like an apt time to throw down our hair tools and embrace some heatless curl methods.

Search on TikTok for heatless curls and you’ll be met with thousands of videos on countless different heatless curl methods, with people using them overnight (or even on flights) to reveal a bouncy blowout come morning. Some involve wrapping your hair around a curling ribbon to set your lengths into curls, while others are using socks or a dressing gown tie (yes, really) or heatless rollers to add volume and bounce without stepping foot near a hair tool.

However, while heatless curls are great for keeping your hair healthy, they can be a bit of a faff. They can be fiddly, uncomfortable to sleep in, and I’m a little bit sceptical of just how good the results are IRL compared to the seamingly perfect results you see on TikTok. This is why I enlisted the help of the Who What Wear UK team to each road test a different heatless curl method to find out the best heatless curl method—and we’re sharing our findings.

How We Tested

Who What Wear UK team who are testing heatless curling methods

(Image credit: Who What Wear UK)

Over the past month, we each traded in our hot tools and tested a different heatless curl method each, including a heatless curling ribbon, curling rods, Velcro rollers and an air dry cream in lieu of heat styling. We’ve each shown our before and afters of the heatless curls, as well as sharing our honest reviews on how easy they were to use and how we rated our results. Scroll ahead to see which of the heatless curl methods came out on top.

The Best Heatless Curl Methods, Tried & Tested

Curling Ribbon