Your hair is super resilient and strong. It can withstand high temperatures, adapt to different environments, repair from heat and chemical damage, and a single strand can hold up to 100 grams of weight.
When your hair gets wet, however, its structure changes, rendering it much more prone to damage. Water compromises the protein bonds that constitute each strand- that’s just basic chemistry. Now, the very structure of your hair is weakened.
Water also causes the hair cuticle to swell and open up—which also leaves your hair prone to frizz and damage. The quicker you remove water from your hair, the less it will swell and the less damage will be done over time, making your hair look and feel better in the long run.
This means tossing your cotton towels and relying instead on microfiber fabric, which absorbs moisture exponentially better and is gentler on your hair cuticle.
But everything has its pros and cons.
Pros of Microfiber Hair Towel
- Absorbs water faster. Microfiber is just around 100 times finer than human hair, a square inch on a microfiber towel holds close to 200,000 fibers, which creates a larger surface area in which to absorb moisture. For this reason, drying your hair with a microfiber towel will be a faster process than with a cotton towel. After wrapping your hair in a microfiber towel for around 30 minutes, it will be almost totally dry.
- Lightweight. Using a large towel to dry your hair can result in damage due to the weight that it places on your hair. As the cotton absorbs the water in your hair, it'll become even heavier than the large towel already is. The weight of the large towel can cause your hair to break. Microfiber hair towels are super lightweight and compact on the other hand.
- Less friction. Another benefit is the lack of friction caused. With no need to rub the hair to extract the water, less strain and friction is imposed on your hairs, leading to less breakage over time. This also helps microfiber to reduce the frizziness you may see with standard towel-dried hair, requiring less anti-frizz product.
- Better value for money. As microfiber lasts longer than cotton, these towels provide better value for money, withstanding up to around 500 washes.
- Last but by no means least, microfiber towels leave no little balls of fluff or lint in the hair.
Cons of Microfiber Hair Towel
- You should wash cotton and microfiber towels separately. Rather than bundling all of your towels into the washing machine at the same time, you will have to wash cotton and microfiber towels separately. Why? The powerful attractant in microfiber means pieces of lint will cling to them during the cycle.
- Do not use softeners. You should also avoid fabric softeners, which clog the material’s fiber.
- Not environmentally friendly. The biggest drawback of using a microfiber towel is the material itself. There is a lot said about microfiber pollution caused by synthetic fabrics. Microfibers are tiny pieces of plastic that wash off of clothing and flow down the drain into our water systems. One way to deal with this is to wash them less often and use cold or warm water (instead of hot water) to clean them as heat causes the fibers to break down more quickly.
Conclusion
Overall, in terms of performance, there are no cons when drying hair with microfiber towels. To eliminate hair damage you should always use a microfiber hair towel over a cotton one.