Straightening my curly, poofy hair is an arduous, two-day affair. I would do almost anything to make the process faster and easier, but I never quite pictured myself loading locks of my hair into the nozzle of a vacuum-like device in my bathroom. There was no way this would work. But it did.
The RevAir, or reverse air dryer, is incredible. It dries and straightens hair in one step. Mileage may vary—depending on your hair texture and the style you prefer, you could have perfectly straight hair with no follow-up. But at the very least, it will greatly reduce the overall time spent on your styling.
Quick Dry
If you’ve ever gotten a blowout or done one yourself, you know it’s quite a process, especially the thicker and wilder your hair is. You hold a brush with one hand and the blow dryer with the other, painstakingly smoothing out each section one by one. With my hair, the only person who has done this successfully without a flat iron was a Manhattan hairdresser who can only be described as a very expensive magician. Left to my own devices, I look like Monica Gellar on vacation.
I’ve wanted to try the RevAir since I saw it on YouTube a few years ago. It’s the perfect internet product, given its size and design—it literally looks like you’re funneling your hair into the hose of a shop vac. What if it doesn’t work? What if it pulls and tangles my hair inside it, or even worse, gets it stuck or yanks my hair out? But it doesn’t.
I started with clean, wet hair and applied a generous amount of the company’s hair primer—you’re not supposed to use sticky products, like oils, gel, or mousse, but the company says you don’t need product for it to work. Then I sectioned my hair and started feeding each into the wand. Once it’s fed all the way to the roots, you slowly pull the wand back until your now-straight hair is free to lie against your neck.
You’ll probably screw up the first few sections as you figure out exactly how much hair you can do at once and what heat and speed settings are right for you. With my thick, extremely curly hair, I can crank the RevAir up to 6 or 7, and in about 30 seconds the hair comes out dry and straight. The company says you’ll need 30 to 90 seconds, and I found that to be accurate. The bottom layer of my hair, which is coarser and curlier than the rest, needed smaller sections and a bit more time; the top layer of my hair was quick.
It took all the curl out of my hair, but I still needed to smooth out some of the puff with a flat iron. With my hair type, that’s not uncommon, but I’ve seen videos of the coiliest curls being elongated into a perfectly stretched style that looked beautiful.
