Locked and Loaded. Your Hairdryer Just Got Better.

I want you to go get that catch-all basket from under your bathroom sink. Yes, that one. With the purple eyeshadow you bought a year ago and tried once, only to be told by several people “You look tired – Are you getting enough sleep?” And the rest of the dental whitening strips you had to stop using about half-way through the prescribed ten days because the PAIN made you cry every time you ate a salad? And the two squirts worth of fabulous and expensive body spray you’re saving for Just the Right Occasion? Yes. That one. Go get it. I’ll wait.

Okay. Dig. Down to the bottom. Keep digging. What’s that? An eyelash curler? Wow. Does yours work? Mine’s completely useless. Okay, keep going. Hey! There’s your Ped*Egg! Yeah, I forget about mine, too. Thanks for the reminder. Keep digging. THERE! There it is. Get that thing out. Yes, THAT!

What is it?

That, my friends, is a HAIR MIRACLE. It’s the concentrator or targeting nozzle that goes on the end of your hair dryer. OHMYGRANNY! YOU DIDN’T THROW IT AWAY DID YOU?

I conducted an informal poll on Twitter last week and I got about fifteen or so replies. Only three or four people said they know what a concentrator/targeting nozzle is and use theirs.

And the rest of the respondents?

Don’t have hair that’s as fabulous as it could be.

I just bought a new hair dryer right after Christmas. I brought it home and took it out of its box. I fought through the twisty wire things and the shrink-wrap and the perplexing-to-refold directions-in-sixteen-languages and pulled out a diffuser (another goodie!) and the targeting nozzle pictured above, my hand poised above the rubbish bin, ready to send it to the landfill. But something stopped me and I thought, “Okay, little fella, I’ll give you a chance. Here, let me put you on the dryer, and you show me whatcha got.”

And I am here to tell you that little fella is STILL on my hairdryer. Actually, he’s not. He’s on my dining room table because that’s where he posed for the portrait above. BUT he’s been on my dryer since that moment and when I get done writing this post (eventually, I promise!) he’s going RIGHT BACK ON THERE.

What does a targeting nozzle do? It directs the air stream at only the hair you’re working on at the time, vs. allowing air to billow out wildly all over one side of your head or worse, just out into nowhere-ville. This is good for three reasons.

I thought you’d never ask!

1) More air gets directed right where you want, which means your hair dries faster, thus you spend less time drying.

2) A direct stream is easier to AIM. Exactly where and HOW you need the air to flow. When you aim your dryer down the shaft of the hair, you’re sealing the cuticle and creating that healthy shine. And when you pull your hair over your head and dry the underside/ roots from above (which is called over-directing) you create volume at the roots. Using your concentrator makes ALL of the air exiting your dryer flow exactly the way you want it to. Use it, and you’ve got dryer working as efficiently as it possibly can to create and lock in your style.

3) I don’t know about you, but I have a HARD time keeping my hairdryer a safe distance from my hair as I’m trying to manage the brush, the dryer, and, you know, LIFE. The concentrator forms a built-in barrier between the hot wires inside the tip of the dryer and my round brush, so my hair is protected from getting dried, fried or broken.

And there’s one more added benefit, too. Does your wrist or arm ever get tired from all that wrangling to get the dryer angled just right? Guess what? I’ve taken a look around and it seems almost all the targeting nozzles I’ve seen rotate, which means you can pivot the nozzle instead of your appendages to get that perfect shot at your tresses.

The bottom line? Using the concentrator/targeting nozzle both streamlines and magnifies the benefits of my hairdryer’s output. With a few spritzes of my bumble & bumble Styling Lotion (reviewed at this link) and a few quick minutes with a round brush and my dryer outfitted with this handy-dandy but largely unsung hero, my hair’s as shiny, soft and smooth as glass in less time than it used to take me to get it only half that smooth.

Yours can be too.

But first you might have to go dig around in the trash.