Air-Dry Waves

Air-dry waves are not what your hair does on its own. They are what your hair does when you scrunch a small amount of the right product into wet hair, twist a few sections, and then completely leave it alone while it dries. Most failures are not the technique — they're touching it during the hour it spends drying.

Below is the version we recommend. Five minutes of hands-on, sixty minutes of hands-off, then thirty seconds of finishing. Works on wavy, curly, and slightly-wavy-but-mostly-straight hair. Doesn't work on dead-straight hair — there is no shape to coax out.

1. Plop, don't rub.. Right out of the shower, flip your head forward and let your hair fall into the centre of a microfibre towel or a clean cotton t-shirt. Wrap it up against your scalp like a turban — front to back — and leave it for sixty seconds. The plop removes the dripping water without dragging the cuticle. Skip this step (or use a regular towel) and the wave never recovers.
2. Comb in the leave-in.. Unwrap. Hair should be damp, not wet — if it's still dripping, plop for another minute. Spread a coin of leave-in conditioner across your palms and rake it through with your fingers, then a wide-tooth comb. Comb only when wet — never when dry — and start at the ends, working up. If you start at the roots you snap the hair the wave was about to form from.
3. Scrunch the curl cream up.. A pea of curl cream warmed between the palms. Tilt your head to one side and cup sections of damp hair from below, scrunching upward toward the scalp — squeeze, release, squeeze, release. Repeat on the other side. The scrunch tells the wave where to form; without it, hair air-dries straight even when it wants to wave. Use less cream than you think — too much weighs the wave down.
4. Twist two sections, top and bottom.. Take a small section near the front and twist it once around your finger, away from the face. Repeat on the other side. Then take a section at the nape and twist that too. Three twists total — that's it. The twists give the air-dry a defined shape so it doesn't all flatten into a single curtain. Pin the top with a claw clip and walk away.
5. Once dry, shake — don't brush.. When hair is fully dry — minimum sixty minutes, ideally longer — flip your head forward, shake gently with your fingertips at the roots, and flip back up. Do not brush. A brush erases every wave you spent five minutes coaxing into existence. If you want more lift at the root, lift each twisted section once and let it fall.

The hour you spend not touching your hair is the hour the wave is forming.