The Best Flat Iron for Every Day Sleek Hair

Flat Iron: A Buying Guide

Flat irons are one of the most commonly used styling appliances out there. Hair straighteners and flat irons are so easy to use and effective for styling your hair! With proper usage guidelines and best practices, you can also minimize the damage to your hair and scalp over long-term use.
With that said, even though using a flat iron is easy, choosing one isn’t! Consider stuff like your hair type, your styling goals, features, build quality, and brand reliability. If you have no clue about what distinguishes a high-quality flat iron from a sub-par one, read this buyer’s guide until the end to make sure you spend your money in the right place!

Plate Coating

Flat iron structuring consists of built-in plates with a frame. These plates are covered and treated with a specialized coating, which can make all the difference in determining how advanced it is. Depending on the type of coating on a particular model, your flat iron will vary in impact resistance, durability, performance, and several other key areas.

The three common coating types are titanium, ceramic, and tourmaline, so let’s quickly go over all of them.

Titanium

If you’re looking for the latest and greatest tech in the realm of flat irons, be sure to get a model with titanium coating. It’s the latest market trend and offers excellent smoothness, durability, and impact resistance. It won’t scratch up easily, and won’t pose issues with styling material residue buildup. The styling effects also ‌last longer!

Tourmaline

Before titanium coatings became popular, Tourmaline coating used to be the talk of the town in the highest-end flat irons. It’s not ‌as effective as titanium, but still offers a top-notch user experience by allowing your hair to glide through with no excess damage or pulling. The material is also a great heat conductor, which results in consistent hair straightening performance.

Ceramic

This is where it all started! It was the first material to be used as an innovative coating on flat iron plates after the age-old, traditional materials like aluminum. Ceramic offers excellent heat distribution, so the plates heat up evenly, allowing you to glide the flat iron through your hair. Even though high-end models don’t have ceramic any longer, it’s still a budget-friendly material that provides great functionality, which is why it’s still a popular choice to this day!

Some of its downsides are that it’s more prone to scratches and breaking, as well as picking up product residue which needs to be regularly cleaned off.

The “Ionic” Feature in Flat Irons

If you’ve got especially frizzy hair, then the “ionic” feature on some flat irons may come in handy. It works by generating negative ions, which ionize the positive ions on your hair to provide you with benefits like sleek and supple hair, better natural moisture retention, a glossier look, and reduced static charge to eliminate frizz. If you particularly struggle with unruly hair, you wouldn’t want to miss out on this feature!

Temperature Control

Being able to control the temperature as needed provides some well-needed liberty in hairstyling. That’s because if you’ve got thick, curly, or coarse hair, you’ll need higher temperatures to get aggressive straightening performance out of your flat iron. Similarly, if you’ve already got fine and weak hair, ‌turn the heat down to avoid damaging your hair any further.

Most modern-day flat irons have temperature control with at least some ‌adjustability. Super cheap budget options may only have an on/off switch, which isn’t ideal.

Plate Width

You should also pay attention to the width of the plates on your new flat iron. The right size depends on how thick or thin your hair is, and how ‌you plan to use it to style your hair.

For instance, a half-inch plate would be ‌narrow, and it’s ideal for styling bangs or ironing out thinner strands of hair. If that sounds like your particular use case, then a flat iron with narrow plates will be much more comfortable to use.

They’re not suitable for long, thick hair, as you’ll only be able to fit a small section of it on each swing. This means not only will you have slightly uneven results, but it’ll also take a long time to style all your hair.

Similarly, if you plan on curling your hair using a flat iron, thin plates are the way to go! It also helps to have rounded edges‌.

If you’ve got super wide and thick strands of hair, go with a flat iron with a plate width of about 2 inches to perform optimally and make life easier for you.

Brand

With electronics, it always helps to have a big brand name to rely on. It provides you a strong sense of trust that your appliance won’t just randomly stop working a few months down the line.

When you’re in the market for a flat iron, ‌pay a little extra for an appliance that comes from a well-established brand name. Those models are equipped and updated with the latest technological advancements with an impressive set of features that have a significant impact on your overall user experience and styling results.

Recognized manufacturers consider and optimize core details like safety, effectiveness, hair damage minimization, and styling efficiency. Plus, you even get longer and more reliable warranties when you go with premium brands.

Key Features To Look For in Flat Irons

Aside from the primary qualities mentioned above, there’s a wide range of additional quirks and features that you must look for in your new flat iron depending on your personal preferences. These may not be essential but can help you choose between two similar models within a competitive price range.

LED display

Some flat irons come with an LED display that shows important information like the heat setting you’re on, featuring options like temperature adjustability and the on/off function which can improve your overall user experience.

Heat-up duration

Some flat iron models are quicker to heat ‌than others, which is an important metric to consider if you often get ready in a hurry!

Option to dry or style wet hair

While it’s not advisable to style your hair while it’s wet, as it’s highly damaging, some advanced flat irons are equipped with specialized features to counteract those harmful effects. So long as you don’t overdo it, this is a highly liberating feature for hairstyling enthusiasts!

Automatic shut-off

If you’re an avid user of hair straightening flat irons, chances are you’ve forgotten to unplug or turn off the appliance after using it at some point. But, did you know that some of the latest flat irons come with an auto shut-off functionality? Whenever you leave it unattended, it’ll turn off automatically, preventing the plates from overheating, saving energy, and neutralizing any potential fire hazard risks.