KNOW YOUR TOOL
When I heard people talking about heated rollers, I was scared, not even gonna lie to you. They sound like a tool for torturing rather than easy hair styling, don't they. My heated rollers are these Babyliss Boutique ceramic rollers and I have to say they are a joy to use. They look pretty sleek (although bulky to store, meh), and come with 12 large rollers (32 mm) and 12 clips. They are really easy to use - I part my hair into two sections - the crown and the bottom layer. I use three rollers on each side of my bottom layer and the same on the crown. It might not sound like a lot but the rollers grip the hair nicely and even though my hair is quite coarse, they would accommodate for even thicker hair than mine.
WAIT UNTIL TOMORROW
That's right - don't you even think about curling your freshly washed hair. It's the same way it works (or doesn't work) with curling thongs - your hair's just way too sleek and doesn't have any grip right after washing. And anyways, your hair probably looks pretty lush after you've washed it so why would you go all heater rollers on it right there and then! Day two is much more curl-friendly and you won't feel too guilty hair-spraying the crap out of your hair. It already looks a mess, so what!
MOUSSE & SPRAY
Here we go - the formula that works for me is: mousse - hair spray - hair spray. Now you might want to do a few trial-errors with your own here but I believe this is a generally acceptable formula for most people using heated rollers. First apply some mouse (especially to the roots of your hair), once the heater rollers are in your hair add a light spritz of hair spray and repeat again after you've taken them off. As I'm not a massive fan of mousses, I use Shu Uemura Liquid Fabric spritz (they sell this on Look Fantastic) - it makes your hair a little moussey sticky but I find it holds my hair better than any mousse I've tried.
THAT'S THE WAY YOU ROLL
At first, I didn't think the way your roll your hair onto the rollers was all that important. TUT TUT. Of course it is important! To get volume in your hair and for the curls to look natural, roll your hair in a downwards motion so that once you're clipping it in place there's a strand of hair covering the rollers from the top (which creates the volume). Makes sense, yeah?
PLL
Yes, PLL stands for Pretty Little Liars. Even though putting your heated rollers in is easy-peasy and you're done in about 3 minutes - there's still a difficult part to it. The waiting part. You will be tempted to take them off in about 5 minutes - at least that's when my patience with hair styling goes out of window. My tip is to switch on Netflix and watch half of an episode of the PLL, that is leave your rollers in for at least 15-20 minutes for the best results. And then, if you're looking for even bigger oomph, use one of two rollers on your crown again. I mean heated rollers are time-consuming to use in a way however while you've got them on your head, you can do about a million other things. Obviously I wouldn't attempt lying down in them but you can do your make-up, get dressed, watch YouTube, read blogs, have a breakfast or even walk your cat. If you do that. I do.
Do you use heated rollers?
What do you prefer - heated rollers or curling thongs?
