Hair Steamers for Curly Hair: The Ultimate guide

When it comes to caring for natural hair, good moisturization is vital. So, if you want beautifully hydrated and healthy curls, you should definitely try a hair steamer.

Steam is a fantastic way to get moisture deep into your curls, especially if they’re dry, damaged, or low porosity. So, if you want to experience the benefits of steam on your natural hair, this guide is for you.

First, we’ll take a look at how hair steamers work and the advantages of hair steaming. We’ll also look at the different types of hair steamer and explain how to choose and use the best hair steamers.

In a rush, here are our top hair steamer recommendations:

What Is a Hair Steamer?

Basically, a hair steamer uses heat to turn distilled water into steam, allowing it to surround your tresses with moisture. 

There are various styles of hair steamers, and we’ll discuss the different kinds in detail later in this guide. Some look like the hood-shaped steamers you have seen at the salon and envelop your entire mane in steam. Others are handheld devices that look like a blow-dryer and allow you to direct steam at a specific area. 

However, it’s important to remember that hair steamers don’t work like a hair dryer and won’t dry your locks. They’re also not the same as steam straighteners, a hot styling tool that incorporates steam.

How a Hair Steamer Works

Just as a facial steamer uses steam to open up your pores, a hair steamer works in the same way by bathing your locks in the moist heat of steam. This is gentler and less damaging than the dry heat of a blow dryer or the direct heat from hot styling tools. 

The steam opens up the cuticle on your hair shafts, which allows cleansers to clear away buildup more easily and lets moisture flow into your hair. 

It also allows conditioning treatments to penetrate more deeply into the hair shaft so that your locks get maximum benefit from them.

Is Steaming Your Hair Good for Your Hair?

Everyone wants soft, shiny, healthy-looking locks, and adding moisture is one of the best ways to achieve this. Steaming is a great way to boost hydration, making it easier to style and less prone to split ends, tangles, and breakage.

Whatever your natural hair texture, steaming can help make your mane smoother and shinier. It’s especially beneficial for the tight coils of type 4 hair, which can be prone to dryness, and can even be used on damaged hair that’s been exposed to chemicals like colors and relaxers. 

Not sure of your hair type? Our natural hair type quiz can help!

Can You Steam at Home?

There are many different hair steamers that you can use at home, from handheld steamers to full salon-style hood steamers. You can even buy microwavable steam caps that will give you a quick boost of steam in between washes.

So there’s no need to go to the salon for your steam treatment unless, of course, you want to!

Benefits of Steaming for Healthier Hair

Hair steaming can have a lot of advantages for your hair health:

1. Improves Hair Hydration

Steaming hair allows moisture to penetrate into the hair shaft more easily. It’s perfect for low porosity hair, which can struggle to absorb conditioners because the cuticle lays flat against the shaft.

Using a hair steamer will open up the cuticle, allowing the shaft to absorb moisture and nutrients from any conditioner you use.

2. Deep Cleaning

Another benefit is that steaming allows you to thoroughly deep cleanse your hair. This is great for high porosity hair, which has a more open cuticle that can quickly soak up oils and creams.

3. Enhances Hair Elasticity

Hair steamers allow moisture to penetrate deep into the hair, enhancing its elasticity. This makes it easier to style your hair and reduces tangles and breakage. 

4. Deep Conditioning

Applying a deep conditioning treatment before you steam your hair will allow it to absorb the product more effectively. And that means you’ll get the maximum benefits from your deep conditioner, oil, or curl cream, leaving you with soft, hydrated tresses.  

5. Enhances Curls

The moist heat from a hair steamer is perfect for refreshing and rehydrating your curls until you next wash it. It will give your natural hair improved curl definition and encourage clumping without leaving your tresses limp or flat. 

6. Promoting Hair Growth

Steaming might not make your hair grow faster, but it does support your scalp and hair health. Applying steam can increase blood flow in your scalp and encourage the production of sebum, the natural oils that moisturize your locks. 

Better hydration stops your strands from becoming brittle and breaking or developing split ends. This supports length retention, making it easier for you to reach your hair length goals.

7. Promotes a Healthy Scalp

It’s easy for dirt, dead skin cells, and products to build up on your scalp, but using a hair steamer helps to loosen this buildup. This results in a healthier scalp, which is the basis of healthy hair.

Disadvantages of Hair Steamers

If you steam your hair correctly, you shouldn’t have to worry too much about any risks associated with steaming.

However, you shouldn’t steam too long or too often. Exposing your hair to too much heat can damage it, making it dryer and causing split ends and breakage.

Too much exposure to moisture through steaming could also lead to hygral fatigue. This is where excessive moisture reaches the inner cortex of the shafts, causing them to swell. It results in reduced elasticity, causes frizz, and leaves your hair looking dull. 

However, it’s easy to avoid these risks simply by limiting your steaming sessions to no more than 20-30 minutes once every 7-10 days.

Choosing the Best Hair Steamer

You’ll find a wide range of hair steamers available online and in stores, but how do you pick the best hair steamer to suit your needs?

Here are a few tips on how to choose from the best hair steamers:

Type of Steamer

Several types of steamer are available, and the best hair steamers often have additional features like adjustable heat controllers or auto shut-off.

You could buy a floor-standing steamer with a hard hood, similar to the ones you’ve seen in salons. These take up more room than any other hair steamer, so be sure you’ve got room to store it when it’s not in use.

Other steamers still have a hard hood but sit on a tabletop. They’re more compact than stand steamers but still take up quite a lot of room.

There are also portable options that look similar to a hair dryer but blow out steam rather than dry air. These are good if you need more focused steam for specific areas that have a different curl pattern. 

And finally, you could buy a microwavable steam cap or a hair steaming hood, which attaches to your blow-dryer and pumps steam over your hair. These are cheaper and take up only a little room.

Your Hair’s Needs

If you have low porosity hair, you’ll benefit from the full-head coverage of a hooded steamer. But if you only need to focus on a few patches of dry hair, a portable handheld steam could be perfect.

You might struggle to fit a cap steamer over long, thick curls or hair that’s in protective styles. In this case, using a handheld steamer or a steamer with a wide hard hood could be easier.

A steam cap will be enough to boost the effects of a deep condition treatment on healthy hair. But if you want to hydrate and define dry curls or help colored hair absorb treatments better, a steamer hood would be better.

Your Budget

It’s also essential to consider your budget, as this could help you pick the best hair steamer. A hair steamer cap or inflatable blow-dryer attachment will start from as little as $20, but you could spend $80 on a handheld steamer or up to $100 on a tabletop steamer. And if you’ve set your heart on a salon-style hair steamer, that could cost you $150 or more. 

The Best Hair Steamers for Curls

Ready to go shopping? Here are some of the best hair steamers on the market to choose from:

Handheld Steamers

Q-Redew Hair Steamer

This steamer looks like a regular blow dryer and is incredibly easy to use. Its finger-like prongs make it easy to work the steam into dry curls, so you can refresh and define your curls between washes. The Q-Redew Hair Steamer is ideal for natural type 4 curls needing more focused steam treatment in specific sections. 

I have this one and have used it for a long time when I first started embracing my curls and my hair was dry and damaged. It’s been a few years since I’ve touched it since my hair doesn’t need the extra hydration.

Hair Steamer Cap

Vicarko Hair Steamer Thermal Heat Cap

This hair steamer heat cap is easy to use and easily packed away afterward. Just plug the thermal heat cap in, put it on over your shower cap, and choose from High and Low heat settings. It’s light, comfortable, and heats up within one minute. However, the heat cap might not be large enough to cover long locks, braids, or twists. 

Free-Standing Hair Steamer

Artist Hand Professional Hair Steamer

The Artist Hand Professional Hair Steamer is one of the best hair steamers you can buy. It is a hard hood steamer with added features like adjustable heat control and auto shut-off. This is a great hair steamer if you like to steam regularly and want to get the full salon experience at home. 

Tabletop Steamer

Kingsteam Hair Steamer 2-in-1 Ozone Facial Steamer

This powerful steamer has a hard hood attachment for steaming your hair and a separate facial steamer wand attachment. The dome is large enough for long hair and produces plenty of steam, but doesn’t have a heat controller. 

FacialSteamer

NanoSteamer Large 3-in-1

This facial steamer can be used on your hair too. Just add water, plug it in and turn it on, and when it’s ready, you can move your hair into the stream of the steam. It gets too hot to pick it up and move it so you need to keep it on the counter. 

How to Steam Hair at Home

Steaming at home is easy if you follow these simple steps. Be sure not to use your steamer for longer than 20-30 minutes or more than once a week. If you start to feel any pain or burning, stop steaming immediately. 

Set up your space

You’ll probably be using your steamer for 15-20 minutes, so pick a comfortable spot. Handheld steamers can be used anywhere with a plug outlet nearby, but if you’re using a tabletop steamer, you’ll need to ensure you can position the hood high enough. 

Select your products

Gather together any conditioning products you plan to use during your steaming session. 

Time to steam

First wash your hair with your regular shampoo. Starting your steaming session with freshly washed, wet hair helps it absorb all the gorgeous nutrients and hydration from your conditioner. 

Steam your locks for five minutes to open the hair cuticle, then apply your conditioning treatment, and follow up with a full 15-minute session for fabulously soft, hydrated locks.

Rinse and finish

When your steaming session ends, rinse with cool water to help close the hair cuticles again. Follow up with hair oil from root to tip to lock in that juicy hydration.

Should You Steam Your Hair With Conditioner or Without?

You can steam dry hair without any hair product as a great way to revive your locks between wash days. Just 5 or 10 minutes under the steamer will add hydration and refresh your natural hair.

But you can also use hair products to get even more benefit from hair steaming. Some of the options to try include: 

Deep conditioners

After your shower, apply a deep condition treatment to the entire length of your wet hair before steaming. This will help the formulation penetrate each strand for intensely conditioned locks.

Curl creams

Applying your favorite curl cream to freshly washed and conditioned hair before steaming will help your strands absorb all the moisturizing ingredients. Your curly hair will retain moisture better and experience less shrinkage.

Hair oils

Steaming hair with oil is a great way to prepare your hair for shampooing after it’s been in a protective style, like braids or twists. Apply liberal amounts of oil through your curls to thoroughly saturate every strand, then sit under the steamer for 15 to 20 minutes. Shampoo as usual afterward.

Can You Use a Steamer on All Hair Textures?

Hair steaming is beneficial for every hair type and is particularly helpful for naturally curly hair. That’s because natural hair tends to be dry as the natural sebum struggles to travel all the way down the strands. Steaming replaces lost moisture in dry hair, helping to reduce the risk of breakage.

If you have low porosity curls, steaming is an excellent way to care for your curly hair. 

How Often Should Hair Be Steamed?

When you see how hair steaming improves the look and feel of your mane, you might be tempted to steam hair more frequently or spend longer under the steamer.

However, this could expose your hair to heat damage. You could even risk hygral fatigue, the damage caused when your hair shaft repeatedly expands and contracts due to excess water exposure. 

To keep your hair hydrated without risking damage, the recommendation is to steam your hair for around 20 minutes every 7 to 10 days. Healthy hair may only need to be steamed once a month as a special pampering treatment, and you should absolutely avoid steaming your hair for longer than 30 minutes. 

FAQs

If you’d like more information on using a hair steamer, here are some of the most frequently asked questions on the topic:

Is It Okay to Steam Hair Every Day?

No, using a hair steamer every day will expose your hair to excess heat and moisture, which can lead to hygral fatigue. It’s safer to apply steam no more than once every 7 to 10 days. 

How Much Does a Hair Steamer Cost?

A wide range of hair steamers is available to suit all budgets, from inflatable blow dryer attachments costing less than $30 to salon-style hair steamers costing $150 or more.

Can I Use a Hair Steamer on Chemically Treated Hair?

Hair steamers are very beneficial for hair that’s been exposed to a chemical treatment like a color or relaxer. It will help to hydrate your dry locks, leaving them looking and feeling more moisturized.

Can Using a Hair Steamer Cause Damage to My Hair?

Steaming your hair for too long or too often can damage your hair, causing it to become weak and limp. So, it’s essential to follow the guidance included in this article.

The Bottom Line

As you can see, a hair steamer is a fantastic addition to your hair care kit, and there are many different types to suit all budgets and needs.

Steam provides effective hydration and helps your locks absorb conditioners and products more deeply. Using a hair steamer for 20 minutes every week will leave your mane looking healthier, softer, and more manageable, and is an easy way to give your dry curly hair some extra TLC.