If your hair is just wavy, all you need a good quality flat iron, and a good hair regimen. Get a Solia flat iron at Folica.com. Use 1 or 2 drops of Redken heat glide before flat ironing and you won't believe your eyes. It might take a few tries to perfect your technique, but trust me, It will be great.

You do however have to take good care of your hair. Deep conditioning and protein treatments (once a month) are a must, as well as regular trims.

If you are still considering a relaxer, don't go with conventional Sodium Hidroxyde relaxers. Go with Thioglicolate (sp?) also known as Thio relaxers. They are awesome. Your hair will be super soft, shiny and frizz free. And will stay that way even in a nasty humid day. I live in Miami and have beautiful hair days everyday, thanks to my Sedu flat iron and Rusk radical anticurl thio based relaxer. It is so different from regular relaxers and the results are out of this world. If you want more info about it, go to verticalsinhair.com.

Other brands are Redken Vertical, and Loreal X-tenso. 

Well, good luck and great hair. 

Hi jackpaul,

I’ve been using Redken’s Vertical for over 5 years and none of my clients ever had problems whatsoever. There is always a reason as to why the hair breaks after hair straightening service.

1) An experienced stylist will apply the solution a fraction of 1-1½ centimeters away from your scalp, especially on the crown area (top section of head of hair) because there is more body heat.

2) The solution seeped down the hair shaft and onto the scalp and caused reduction (Deoxidization in the pores). As you probably know, solution that has seeped onto the scalp is the primary (though not the only) cause of hair breakage. This type of damage will be noticeable as a prickly small bump in the areas where the chemical touched the scalp. and if so, you would have felt a tingling sensation on the area you’re referring about during the Vertical process.

3) The stylist manipulated the hair roughly and applied too much pressure to this area during the step #1 procedure. Or combed the hair by applying pressure near to the scalp, or used a broken comb.  

4) The stylist started the application process from the crown area instead of starting from the nape area. This causes the top section to over-process and the back section to under-process.

5) The chemical solution was not rinsed adequately.

6) The neutralizer was left longer that what the instruction had called for which in Verticals case, it is a maximum of ten minutes.

So as you can see, there are many variables and it is almost always the stylist’s mistake and NOT the product.

Steve