Why do professional hairdressers use Hair Detanglers

Wedding & Airbrush Make-up Artist, Philippines

I was at a Cosmetologie fair in Hongkong when I saw a group of people gathered around a hair equipment booth. It was the booth of Wigo & Tuft, 2 of the most sought after curling hair iron producers. I first encountered these brands during my Jing Monis stint and was so amazed at the curling power of these brands, ergo I stayed and squeezed in with the other hairstylists.

I noticed in particular a rack of small boxes that people seem to be clamoring for and I saw that it was a bunch of detanglers that were on sale. The brand was Tangle Cherub and although I don’t know exactly why people wanted this as I haven’t used a detangler before I still inched my way in the crowd to buy a bunch of them.

Normally what I use to detangle are wide tooth combs as we were told when we were little girls.  It took me a while to appreciate detanglers I got from the fair.  It stayed as a decorative part of my dresser for a long time before I finally grabbed it and used it.  And it took me a while before I realized why they were called detanglers.

I have 2 daughters in grade school who hate combing their hair after bath and sleeps on their uncombed hair.  When they wake up in the morning their hair looks like the mane of a shitzu that has not been groomed for weeks haha!  This was my chance to put the detangler to the test.

So I used my Tangle Cherub on my daughters morning hair and discovered why it is better to use that than a wide toothed comb.

With a wide tooth comb, when you comb tangles you push them down which ends up tightening the tangles. Just like what happens when you tie a knot on top of each other and you push it down, the knot gets tighter.  So your resolve is to comb from the ends of the hair and work your way up to slowly release the tangles.  There would be times though that you will pull on a tangle and you will hear your daughters loud “ouch!”.  It also takes forever to accomplish this hence you need to add extra minutes to your preparation time before school. 

Check how the hair under the wide tooth comb seems to be tied in knots.

What I noticed when I used the detangler is that it starts detangling from the topmost layer of your hair and separates hair little by little as it has a lot of soft bristles that pulls the hair away from each other.  Although you will feel like you don’t get to the scalp, this is actually why it works because it detangles the hair layer by layer but it can all be done with quick brushing strokes so you finish up faster.

Notice in the above picture how the hair is separated in little chunks and not build knots under it.

I used my detanglers with my clients and it not only saves time but it also makes their hair more volumized as it spreads the strands away for each other.  So that is why my friends a detangler is a friend of a hairstylist ;)