Marisa Roy, friend of amika, received our new h(air) blow dryer brush in June so she could give us some feedback. Read below for her experience!

Picture this: you’re walking out of the salon with a fresh blowout. After having watched your hair stylist smoothing and adding lift to individual sections of your hair with a blow dryer and round brush, you walk out confident that you can mimic their technique and recreate bouncy and shiny hair on your own at home. You bask in the glory of your blowout for as long as you can until you inevitably need to wash your hair and are then immediately humbled by your inability to recreate the same volume and shine your stylist did. Sound familiar?

Learning the blowout is a beauty rite of passage, but every single time I attempted one it went horribly awry - sections would either fall off the brush or I would wrap my hair around the brush too much and get it stuck, frizz would not be tamed, I couldn’t add lift at the root without it falling limp soon after, and it would take so long to finish all the sections of hair (at least an hour’s work at the beginning, with a little practice getting it down to 30 minutes) that my arms were sore afterwards.

I’ve tried blow dryer brushes in the past but found a lot of them to be very harsh on my damaged, over-processed hair and would always have to resort back to the conventional lengthy arm workout way of blow drying my hair. That is, until amika introduced the hair blow dryer brush, a 2-in-1 blow dryer and hair styling tool that combines the power of a blow dryer with the smoothing and volumizing properties of a round brush.

The design of the hair Blow Dryer Brush addresses every pain point of using a hair dryer and round brush. The barrel is coated in tourmaline, which generates negative ions when heated to calm frizz, and its large oval shape adds extra lift at the root and delivers volume while allowing for larger sections of hair to be styled at once. The device has 3 heat and speed settings created with every hair type in mind. When my hair feels particularly compromised, I’ll prep the hair with a heat protectant spray like the shield anti-humidity spray and my favorite leave-in conditioner, the vault color-lock leave-in conditioner, and use the low heat, high speed setting all over before moving up to medium heat, low speed to finish off smoothing and styling my hair. For thicker and wavier hair, I’d recommend the high heat, high speed setting to save time and set the hair so the style lasts. The brush has two types of bristles, the longer ball tipped ones detangle and smooth (no more hair getting stuck in the bristles!) while the shorter tufted ones amp up the shine (no joke, this was what I was most impressed with in my road test - I haven’t seen my hair this shiny in months!). Finishing hair off with a little supernova moisture and shine cream is my tip for boosting shine even more. Lastly, but certainly not least, the brush weighs under one pound and can be used with one hand, meaning no more sore arms. Rejoice!

All told, the entire process takes about 15 minutes from damp hair (I find it works best to let your hair air dry a bit before using the brush, just enough time to finish the rest of your morning routine), which is HALF my best time with the conventional round brush and blow dryer method. If you’re looking for gorgeous bouncy shampoo commercial-worthy hair at home with half the effort and time (and would rather work out your arms at the gym anyways) the amika hair blow dryer brush is for you!

By Marisa Roy, friend of amika