Men's Hair Styling Cream: What Should It Do
Just as there are many different names for the various items you can use to style short to medium length hair, there are many different performance factors for a hair styling cream. We’ll have other articles to go over the common traits of a clay, paste, putty, gel, pomade, serum, but for this fine segment, our best hair product guest of honor is the hair cream.
Different types of hair cream
There are two real different types of men’s hair styling cream. One’s that come in puck style jars, like Challenger Blue, and the other kind that come in squeeze bottles similar to suntan lotion.
From what the research has shown us, the hair creams sold in the squeeze bottle type of containers are generally more for a female demographic, and feature a product that can often have restorative or rehydrating effects. The best hair styling cream for damaged hair would probably come in this size of container and contain anywhere from 3 ounces of product for a high end hair cream and 8 or 10 ounces for one designed to get more coverage for the price.
Now let’s talk about the hair styling cream that’s a hair styling cream and comes in a hair styling puck. We like this one.
The biggest determining factor is the consistency of the cream when it comes to what it’s called. If it’s too dry, you wind up in the clay arena, and if it’s too wet it will be a hard to use product and be too liquidy. Neither of those extremes is ideal, so the texture of a hair styling product is very important.
A professional hair styling product should have a professional feel, and to us that means that it’s easy to scoop out of the jar as well as being easy to spread in your hands. There’s little we hate more than having to rub our hands together to cause enough friction to light the sun, just so the hard to manage products can be used. That’s no fun. A high quality hair styling cream can be spread between the hands and fingers with ease. It should feel like a butter substance that screams luxury and quality.
That feeling is what we strive for in every single jar of Challenger.
There are 3 states in which you can apply hair styling cream to your hair. They’re with wet hair that you’ll blow dry, with wet hair when you let it air dry, and with dry hair that you’ll let air/blow dry. (note: we’re combining both air and blow dry conditions for already dry hair because the real element that changes performance is the wetness of the hair and it’s ability to bond using the styling cream as it dries).
Hair styling cream for wet hair and blow dryer –
We recommend this approach if you have longer hair or the strands you’ll be styling are a bit tougher to work with. Stuff like slightly curly hair, really thick hair, or some kind of hair that has a mind of it’s own beyond your usual cowlick.
If you need a pompadour hair styling cream, you’d get the longest lasting and most voluminous hold applying a hair styling cream to your damp or towel dry hair and then using the blow dryer to style it from there.
For short to medium length hair, this is certainly a viable route, especially if you’re going for a windswept look , an updo, or want to be more certain that your hair will stay up and/or in place for as long as possible until the inevitable forces of gravity, moisture, and air cause some forces that make your hair go down.
More often, though, if you need a hair styling cream for short hair, you’ll want to go ahead and take option 2.
Style damp or towel dry hair with hair styling cream and let it air dry.
This is likely the route to be used by most people that would make the most of a high quality hair styling cream. It’s how we envision people using Challenger Blue most effectively.
If you’re a professional and need a hair styling approach for your best and most important looks, go this route. And because you should be looking your best every day, you should do this every day.
The instructions for styling your hair in this way are as follows:
- Have damp hair
- Take a finger full of product and spread it through your hands for best application. If this means fingertips and not full palms, then do that. If you want some full hand sculpting action, get it spread all over the place as if we’re trying to get a lather going.
- Style your hair from the root out to the tip and turning or directing your hair product in the direction you’d like it to go. If you want to hit up the natural part in your hair and go from there, we like that route a lot. It’s a timeless style, and a lot of the best hair styling cream for parting hair are used for parted hair.
- Let your hair dry in the air and go about your business. You can certainly run your hands over your head or do the good old pat pat check up top to make sure all the cadets are in line. It part of your hair is being fussy, you can certainly add some more product as needed to get it working perfectly.
- Enjoy the knowledge that your hair is looking all kinds of good and go out to conquer the day knowing you’ve brought your best to the party. That’s what we like!
The prospect of styling your hair when it’s dry should not be intimidating. It’s very doable and some of the best hair styling products for short and medium length hair are put to excellent use this way.
(Note)- if your hair is over 2 inches long, there’s a chance a quality hair styling cream may be too fast drying to work effectively at styling the root and whole hair strand in the right direction. Don’t say we never told ya so ;)
We see the dry hair approach being most used by people with hair under 1.5 or at most 2 inches. This is for the “I’m going to work and need to look solid” or “I’m about to run out the door for a date and want that suave James Dean hairstyle look.” Challenger Blue could have been James Deans hair styler. We like that too.
So the process for using a hair styling cream on dry hair, especially to style it, is that you’ll take a finger full from the jar (hopefully it has that butter consistency we mentioned above), spread it through your fingertips, and then apply it to the first 100 or so rows of hair at the front of your head to get that flow moving in the right direction. Be sure to style quickly if you’re doing so with dry hair.
One other thing that could come into play, especially with a hair styling cream that has good hold, is that you might pull up a few loose hairs that are ready to come out anyway, but that you may see in your hand and go “hello, there’s some hold right there!”
Having that happen a couple of times makes you really prefer using a hair styling cream for wet or damp hair so you can keep all the pups chilling in your mop for as long as possible for maximum coverage possible.
Which takes us into our recap and our ranking of the best styling approaches for a hair styling cream that comes in a jar and is meant to be used as a styler.
Our favorite medium-firm hold hair styling cream happens to be a matte finish hair styling cream. It’s got a subtle scent and is also water soluble, meaning it rinses out easily. It’s also travel friendly, meaning you can take it in your carry on for maximum styling goodness on the go.
Okay, we already mentioned it a few times in the article, but it’s our first article so we’re hitting it hard. Challenger Blue is fantastic!! There, out of our system!
The best approach that we’ve found for styling short to medium length hair is by applying the hair styling cream to wet hair, and then letting it air dry to perfection.
If you have longer hair, are going for a more voluminous look, or want to get your pompadour hair style on, our best advice would be to use a hair styling cream as a pre-styler and then bust out the blow dryer to give you the lift and lightness that usually goes along with well groomed hair. We’ll be admiring you from a far.
The other option isn’t the best one, so if you want to read about it, scroll up a few paragraphs. We want to finish with our best advice for hair styling.
Use a hair styling cream like Challenger Blue to make the most of your hair and style it damp to let the hold and look you’re going for set in.
And keep challenging yourself every day to be your best version.