Thermal straightening / Straight perm

I just had my hair permanently straightened in Sydney at one of the asian salons - if you want the name contact me. Very fancy place and everyone that worked there was SO nice.

Ok so it's thermal straightening and it's permanent. It only stops being straight when your hair grows out.

Basically - the structure of the hair is changed permanently.

The process takes HOURSSSSSS. My appointment was at 10:15am and I walked out of there at 2:30pm. Lucky for me I had a cushiony thing on my chair and got to walk around a bit. And thank goodness I have an iphone so could play games/facebook etc.

So the steps:
1. Light wash (they don't rub your head too hard as that can then make your scalp sensitive for the chemicals)
2. Apply the rebonding stuff - a thickish white cream. All over the hair, probably 2mm from the scalp
3. Steam thingy - like the heat one that they put over your head
4. Check how it's going - if your hair is in bad condition, or you have any bits that have been bleached etc, they will react to the rebonding way quicker than the rest
5. Rinse
6. Blow dry/straighten
7. Apply straightening stuff - another thickish white cream. This time you can't move your head much - they kind of paint it on and have bits of tin foil. It's painted on the hair so that the hair sits very straight on the foil.
8. Rinse, wash etc
9. Soft blow dry - they just wiggle their fingers through it very gently.
10. Very light run through with the straightener.
11. Cut (if you choose to)
12. DONE

So after that you can't get your hair wet for 3 days. Definitely can't wash it. You have to make sure that you don't tuck it behind your ears, or basically do anything with it that could change the shape. No tieing it up, no hair clips etc.

Those 3 days for me - well it poured with rain the night that I got it done - clever me though, I was totally prepared - had an umbrella in my Louis ready to go. Boo yah.

My hair is probably two inches below my shoulders, possibly three. I still have layers in it (which is crap because the straightening looks better with no layers, and you need the weight to kind of hold it down) - so I had to be careful that my hair didn't kind of "sit" on my shoulders, because then it would stay like that. Eww.
So I kept keeping bits coming to the front of my shoulders and bits to my back.

Sleeping is fine, you just kind of don't have to worry about it for that time. I was concerned about it, but meh, I was tired!

I have one layer that ends maybe two inches from the full length of my hair - I kind of knew this one would be annoying - it will tend to kick out a little, but that only really happens at the back so it's not too bad.

Ok so..... I finally got to wash it this morning.

It felt gross when it got wet. Like straw. And after I shampooed, yeh still straw. But as soon as I put conditioner in - voila! It felt great again, and I could definitely tell the difference. It was like when you have GHD'd your hair, then step into the shower and the water is flowing over the straight hair.
It felt awesome.

Then I popped in some leave in conditioner, and lightly blowdryed, just running my fingers through my hair.

OH MY GOD. SO AWESOME.

It is STRAIGHT AS. I love it. And I can part it whatever way I want - it's not like the straightening set it into one style only.
I could have run the straightener over the top level lightly, but I didn't even bother. Go me, it looks great, straighter than I ever could have done it myself.

My hair used to be really wavy - my dad has the white man afro, and my mum has asian straight hair. This resulted with very puffy wavy hair for me. Like out of control puffy. Every time I used to wash it, it would explode into giant 80's wavey hair, but puffy and out of control. It looked terrible. It's not that I couldn't straighten it. However - I had to wash, sleep on it, then straighten it in the morning - otherwise it would be frizzy. Pain in the bum.

I am SO happy to be able to do this quick quick blow dry and I can walk out the door with my hair looking totally 'done'.

$280.

Lets see how it continues after this - I'll update!

*********************** UPDATE - Feb 2011 ***************************

So the salon I went to was:

Kippo - Pitt St, Sydney: It is very fancy with mirrors everywhere.. beautiful place.

I went back again in about November 2011 because my roots had grown back through (aobut 5 inches of regrowth... I really left it for ages).

So what happened with regrowth - it wasn't really noticeable until it got to about 3 inches, and then I could see the difference, there was more body in the regrowth and it just wasn't as smooth and nice. Also if it got wet it just exploded with frizz. It was also quite hard to straighten that bit to match the rest.

I had two days interstate for a conference and it was raining the whole time and I looked at myself with my new "mushroom do" due to the 5 inches of regrowth and thought that's it! I called Kippo on the morning of the second day and they fit me in THAT DAY. Who does that?? Like seriously. I thought it was the biggest long shot ever. And they were SO nice about it. I had a plane to catch that afternoon and they were so mindful of timing.

Look they are just lovely. Hands down just lovely people.

So we went through the process again - it was quicker this time cause of less hair.

Results? Absolutely awesome. Even better than the first time. God it felt good not to have to try so hard with it again. And now? I don't even straighten or blow dry at all!! I just run a leave in through it, then finger comb it into the shape I want... and it just dries beautifully. It's amazing. AMAZING.

Only side comment I would make about having your hair straightened - don't cheap out on products. I use Kerastase masquintense at least once a week, and I regularly give it a "treat" where I leave a treatment in for an hour or so. I also ALWAYS use a leave in conditioner. And I use very good shampoo/conditioner. At the moment I am liking Sebastian Laminates.