What is a Brazilian Blowout?
The Brazilian Blowout is an in-salon straightening treatment that lasts for an extended period of time (about 12 weeks on average). Think of a perm, but with the opposite effect. Supposedly, you can customize a Brazilian Blowout so that it will maintain your curls but eliminate frizz. I have no experience with that, as I’ve only ever gotten Brazilians meant to completely straighten my hair. A Brazilian Blowout incorporates keratin to improve the strength and shine of your hair by coating each strand with a protective layer.
Pros:
- You don’t have to straighten your hair everyday (or at all), thus limiting the heat related damage
- It makes your hair more manageable
- It increases the shine
- Hair that is dyed before a Brazilian will hold the color longer
- It lasts! Mine lasted about three months and the residual effects lasted even longer
- A simple blow-dry and brush will leave your hair pin straight
Cons:
- It’s expensive ($200+)
- My hair is voluminous by nature which was lucky for me. It’s said that the Brazilian won’t decrease the amount of volume that your hair holds but, at least in my case, that’s untrue. I had to blow dry my hair upside down in order to maintain similar volume to what I had before.
- While my hair did get shinier after the blow out, I did not see a difference in strength. I have very weak hair and saw no significant difference after.
- My natural curls are very tight, while my Brazilian faded, I was first left with pretty, loose waves but after time passed my hair went through many unattractive stages of frizz, curl and craziness. It took me about a year to recover my natural hair texture and volume
- *I had significant hair loss after my Brazilian. There were many factors that could have played in to the hair loss, it very well could have just been bad timing that lined up my hair loss in the frame of my Brazilian. Nonetheless, it has made me warier of going back for again.*
Additional Information:
- THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A “BLOW OUT,” AND A “BRAZILIAN BLOWOUT”
- A Brazilian Blowout takes about 2 hours in total
- Usually, they will wash your hair with the Brazilian Blowout formula, straighten it, wash it again and re-straighten it
- It really does seem to seal and hold the color of previous dyed hair
- If you want your Brazilian to help hold the color of your dyed hair, you should have it dyed within the two weeks leading up to your Brazilian (you can even get it dyed directly before the Brazilian)
- If you want to get your hair dyed AFTER the Brazilian, you will have to wait about two weeks
- I will say that I think it is beneficial to wait a significant period of time between blowouts. My hair lost much more volume after my second blow out and also became greasier, quicker.
My Recommendation:
Despite the scary cons, I would recommend trying a blowout if you have trouble managing your hair on a daily basis. The scarier of the cons (hair loss, taking forever to regain your natural hair texture/volume) don’t seem to be widespread issues among other people and could’ve simply been the severe weakness/damage to my hair before I got the blowout. The first month after my blowout my hair air-dried pin-straight. For the following 3 months, all I had to do was a quick blow dry to attain that same straightness. While I love my natural curl, the blowout provided me with hair that looked like I had spent hours straightening it and loads of serum making it shiny, but with almost no prep time.
