August in Abu Dhabi is why your hair takes twice as long

By the second week of August I can usually tell what the air has been doing before a client has taken her bag off.

The hair looks “done”. It has product in it. It was straightened this morning. And it has already started to lift at the hairline, the crown, sometimes the nape — the bits that meet the weather first. Then she says some version of: I don’t understand, I spent ages on it.

You did. That is the problem.

Late summer here is not a bit of frizz. Nights can sit close to 100% humidity. Moisture goes into the fibre, the hair swells, a blow-dry that would have set in January simply will not hold. So you dry it longer. You go over it with the iron. You add more serum. You still restyle it after you have been outside. I have clients who used to need ten minutes and are now closer to twenty, and they think they have forgotten how to do their own hair.

They haven’t. The hair is wetter than it looks.

I wrote a more technical post about humidity and frizz in January. I’m not repeating it. If you want the hydrogen-bond version, it is here. What I want to talk about now is the thing people actually feel in August: time.

The iron is making next week worse

This is the conversation I have most often in this month, and it is not a popular one.

Turning the plate up does not beat Abu Dhabi humidity. You are pressing hair that has already taken on water. That lifts the cuticle, raises porosity, and the next humid day the hair drinks even faster. Then you heat it again. After a few weeks of that, the ends are drier, thirstier, and more reactive than they were in June — which is why “I’ve always straightened it and it was fine” stops being true in August.

If it only looks smooth while the iron is on it, that is heat, not a result.

What I would rather you do, even this week, before you book anything: dry it fully in the AC. Finish with cool air. Leave it. Do not keep “tidying” every wave you see in the lift mirror. Put a light leave-in on the mid-lengths and ends if the hair is thirsty; keep heavy oil off the roots. Silk pillowcase if you have one. None of that replaces a treatment. It just stops you cooking the cuticle while you wait.

What Nanoplasty is for, in this climate

I am a certified Nanoplasty specialist. I use it because of this weather, not in spite of it.

A lot of women come in having had keratin elsewhere. Keratin, as it is usually done, coats the hair. It can look shiny on day one and still leave the fibre underneath poorly fed. In humidity that coating is not as clever as it looks. Nanoplasty is formaldehyde-free and works inside the cortex — intra-cellular nutrition — so you are smoothing the hair by supporting the structure, not by sealing a film over it.

The reason I care, practically:

Hair that is more even dries faster. You need fewer passes. It does not swell the moment you walk from the salon into the car park. It still moves; I am not trying to give you a helmet. And it lasts up to six to eight months, which in Abu Dhabi is the difference between getting through the rest of the year and booking a panic appointment every time the air gets heavy.

Gemma messaged after her first wash: ten minutes to blow-dry instead of twenty-plus, still super straight. That is the result I am aiming at. Not a photoshoot. A shorter Tuesday.

I do not put Nanoplasty on every head. If the hair needs repairing and softening more than a strong straighten, that is Hair Botox. If she wants a plant-based, more flexible smooth, Taninoplastia. I look at the hair, how she lives, how straight she actually wants to be. If it is the wrong treatment I will say so. I would rather lose the booking than do a service that does not match.

If you have been waiting for summer to end

It is the 20th of August. This is the hard part of the year, not the run-up to it. Hair that has been heat-styled since May will not suddenly become easy in September because the calendar changed.

New clients get 10% off the first booking.

Nanoplastia is AED 1,000 shoulder, AED 1,200 waist, AED 1,400 lower back, plus AED 200 if the hair is extra long or extra thick.

Message me if you are unsure which treatment you need. Book if you already know.

simasmooth.com · booking@simasmooth.com · 050 707 6854