Have you had time to look into why you should be adding a hair steamer for your natural hair into your beauty routine? To all of the natural hair sisters in the world, utilizing a hair steamer for your natural hair is an absolute must if you are trying to grow out your tresses or even to keep them healthy and hydrated.
Keep reading to see what a hair steamer can do for your natural hair!
Benefits of a Hair Steamer
Just like anything that adds moisture to the hair, there are lots of benefits to using a hair steamer if your tresses are natural. The most well-known benefit is moisture retention.
- Fact: hair needs to stay moisturized to prevent breakage and to be elastic. Therefore, when you use a hair steamer, you’re helping to retain the moisture of your hair by using steam as well as the products that have been placed onto your curly kinky locks.
- Think about it: when your hair is dry, you have a hard time keeping your twist out looking fresh. If your hair is properly moisturized, you will not have that problem, and a hair steamer can help you to achieve that goal.
- Another major benefit of steaming your hair on a regular basis is to add strength to your hair. When you use a steamer for your hair, the tresses become more elastic and healthier to the touch and to the eye.
- This is especially important for women who are transiting from relaxed to natural. Due to the different textured hair, the exact line of where the two textures meet is the weakest park of the hair strand.
- By incorporating steaming into your regimen, it will give the hair more elasticity especially in the area where the two textures meet. This also means the hair will be a lot easier to manage.
- If you are struggling with dry and damaged hair steaming will help to open the cuticle of the hair. How is this important you may ask?
- Well, when you deep condition your hair, you want to make sure that you’re able to penetrate the hair’s shaft. To do that, you will need subtle amounts of heat added to your hair, which is why people tend to sit under a hooded dryer when they are deep conditioning.
- Luckily, there are other ways to lift the hair cuticle instead of sitting under a hair dryer: the hair steamer. The heat created from the steam will gently open up the hair cuticle and allow for the deep conditioner, moisturizer, or any other products for that matter to really get deep into your hair strands so, in turn, you can reap all the benefits of the product you just placed on your hair.
- The final benefit of using a hair steamer is that it helps to keep the scalp refreshed which can promote hair growth. By incorporating steam into your natural hair regimen, your products will not sit on top of your hair but actually, penetrate the hair shaft and your hair, in turn, will be more moisturized and have less breakage and help add length to your tresses over time. Also, steaming relaxed hair is just like steaming natural hair, there are no special instructions for using a steamer if your hair is not natural.
How to use a hair steamer
Using a hair steamer is much easier than you might think. There are a few different ways that you can steam your hair including the tabletop hair steamer, the handheld hand steamer, and the hair steamer cap, and a professional adjustable hair steamer.
The tabletop steamer resembles that of a hard bonnet that you would see at the beauty salon. In fact, you would use it in the same fashion.
The most well-known are the Huetiful Hair Steamer. This tabletop steamer takes up less space, so if you are tight on space, this may be the way to go.
There is also the handheld steamer that I purchased which is by Q-Redew. It’s a light weight hand held steamer.
You fill up the water reservoir with distilled water and steam your hair in sections. The mini combs or finger-like prongs help to lift the hair when steaming.
It’s convenient and stores nicely. Now if you would like to go all out you could invest in a professional hair steamer just like the ones they use in the natural hair salons.
This will set you back a few hundred dollars, but you would get betting the top of the professional line treatment. The drawback is that this item is very large, so unless you have your own beauty room it may be tricky to find a location to store this steamer when it’s not in use.
A hair steamer cap is also an option for those who like the all over the convenience of the tabletop steamer, but the movability of a handheld steamer. Unfortunately, the electric caps do not get as much steam on to the hair as the other methods; however, it is by far the least expensive of the ones mentioned and will also get the job done.
You use this cap the same way you would use a soft bonnet hair dryer. If you do not have the money to go out and buy a steamer, there is another option that you can use to reap the benefits of steaming your natural hair.
The process involves the use of a warm, damp towel and a microwave. It will be discussed further in the next section.
Hair steaming process
The hair steaming process is only slightly different depending on what kind of hair steamer for natural hair that you are using. However, there are a few things that are always the same regardless of what kind of tool you are using.
- First, you want to completely cleanse your hair you can either use a clarifying shampoo or clay, and apple cider cleanse. Just about everything that is recommended will work best on freshly washed hair.
- Next, after drying your hair with a 100% cotton t-shirt or a micro fiber towel, you need to apply a generous amount of conditioner and a tablespoon about of oil depending on your hairs length. Steaming hair with castor oil, in particular, is a great option because the oil is fairly thick and is packed with vitamins and minerals that nourish the hair.
- Also, the steaming process is great after you have applied your deep conditioner treatment. During the steaming process, it has a better chance of actually penetrating your shaft when the cuticle is opened as opposed to just sitting on top of your hair.
- The benefits of steaming your hair while giving yourself a hot oil treatment or a deep conditioner treatment include deeper penetration, softer manageable tresses, and healthier stronger hair. After that, things will go slightly different depending on which type of steamer that you have.
- If you have a handheld steamer, at this point you should go ahead and fill it up with distilled water, turn it on, and wait for the device to be ready for use. Please be aware that the steam can be very hot, so you want to be very careful when aiming the steamer directly onto your scalp.
- If possible, try to twist your hair into 4-6 chunky sections so that it will be slightly easier to get to the scalp instead of randomly doing different parts of your head. Proceed to steam your hair for approximately 20-30 minutes, taking a short break every 5 minutes per section.
- If you have a tabletop or a professional steamer, your job will be simpler. All you need to do is sit underneath it just like you would a hair dryer.
- Some women opt to put on a shower cap while they are underneath their hair steamer to get a greenhouse effect going on their tresses; however, you will be missing out on the actual steam hitting your hair since you are not allowing the hair to come into direct contact with it. A hair steamer is more beneficial for your hair if the steam and heat are allowed to come in contact your strands.
The final process for steaming natural hair involves a towel. I understand that everyone is not able to afford a hair steamer right away, so I’m going to give you a quick tip of steaming your natural hair.
- After applying conditioner and oil, take a t-shirt and soak it in water. Wring it out, then place in a microwaveable bowl.
- Microwave for about 1-2 minute or until hot. Place the shirt directly on top of your hair just like you would a towel, then put a plastic processing cap on top of your head.
- Since the water will be hot, please be careful and do not allow the hot water or t-shirt to touch any part of your skin. You are just allowing your treatments to soak in not burn yourself.
- Allow both the cap and wet t-shirt to sit on your head for 20-30 minutes. If done correctly, you will achieve the same greenhouse effect as though you were using a steamer.
- Although the focus is on deep conditioners and oil with your hair steamer; you can also use ingredients that you have on hand in your refrigerator. You can use ingredients such as eggs and mayonnaise for your steam treatments if you are looking to add protein to the mix.
- When looking at how to steam your hair with an egg, you would do the same thing as if you were giving yourself a protein treatment.
- Just be careful not to over-steam and damaged your tresses. Now that you’ve learned everything you need to know about using a hair steamer for your natural hair, you should be well on your way in having the healthy tresses of your dreams. Comment below and me know if you have tried steaming and how your hair responded.
Hey Curl Friend, I’m Patrina Haupt the creator and author of Natural Hair Queen. I hope you find my healthy hair care tips helpful in your hair journey. Healthy hair care practices are definitely, what helped me to achieve waist length hair.
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