The Cooling Rule: Why Some Styles Hold and Yours Fell

The most useful thing I tell brides about hold has nothing to do with product. It has to do with temperature. Hair holds the shape it cools into, and almost nobody uses that fact.

Here is what happens in a typical at-home styling attempt. Curl a section. Immediately touch it to check. Rake fingers through it. Curl the next section. The result is soft, falling waves that last an hour.

Here is what happens in my chair. Curl a section. Let it cool completely, still wrapped or pinned. Move on. Come back later and release it. The result is a wave with memory, one that holds its shape for sixteen hours in Florida humidity.

Cooling is the entire trick. Heat breaks the internal bonds in hair, and those bonds reform as the hair cools. If you manipulate hair while it is still warm, you set a looser shape. If you let it cool undisturbed, you set the shape you created.

Practically, that means one thing for brides: patience. And one thing for anyone doing their own hair: pin each curled section into a barrel and leave it until the whole head is done.

For an updo, the same principle applies at the base. I set volume with heat, then let it cool before pinning into it. Skip the cooling and the whole structure collapses by two in the afternoon.

This is also why blowouts done at home fall flat. The round brush sets tension, then the hair is immediately brushed out warm.

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