Playa

Heat-free style? 🥳 While I love the look of sleek, polished hair, a combination of natural laziness and the bleach-inflicted damage already done to my locks mean I tend to stay away from heating tools as much as possible. Instead, I’ve spent years perfecting the hair masque-Aquis towel-serum approach to heat-free styling, which generally leaves me with a loose waves look that I can live with. Still, the craving for shiny, straight hair never quite goes away, which led me to trying out New Day Mist by Playa Promising hydration, fragrance and heat-free styling in one, this sounded like the sort of lazy girl hack I needed in my life. Firstly, through a combination of agave root juice, aloe leaf juice powder, sugar cane extract (a humectant) and argan oil, this product definitely delivers on its promises of both hydration and fragrance (added perfume also adds to this second effect). Let’s be honest though, it was this spray’s abilities to help relax my waves with no more than the flick of a hairbrush that made me reach for my credit card…so does it deliver? I’m very happy to report that (for my hair at least) it really does. Spritzed sparingly through sections of hair before being brushed in, this definitely makes my waves far less pronounced. While not the same effect as when I straighten hair, and not quite as effective on some of my more stubborn kinks (hello grown-out bangs), overall I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well this spray simulates the results of rough-drying my hair. In contrast, if I want to enhance the look of any waves, I spray this before reshaping with my fingers and it seriously helps to ramp them up to curls. Plus points: Delivers on all three of its claims, making my hair look like I’ve actually put more than 30 seconds effort into styling it. High proportion of natural ingredients. SLS, paraben, phthalate and cruelty-free. At £19 for 160ml this also represents better value than a lot of other high-end brands, plus I really need to use only the smallest amount of this to see results. Spray not an aerosol- better both for the environment and for ease of travel. Minuses: You’ll hear no complaints from me here- I love it.