Gwyneth Paltrow at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party on Feb 27, 2011.

Silky. Shiny. Lustrous.

It’s envied by curly-haired population, and it’s all the rave in magazines right now, getting ready for spring.

It’s pin-straight hair.

Most of us women have a flat iron at home, and think we know how to use it properly. Yet I’m constantly getting emails from frustrated women, saying “Help! I straighten my hair with my flat iron, yet my hair’s never really flat!”.

It seems pretty simple enough:

Step 1: brush hair
Step 2: run flat iron through hair

But ask yourself this question. “Am I flattening my hair? Or am I straightening my hair?”

Think of it like this. You just cut a piece of wood from a tree to make a table. Now you want to paint it a nice chocolate brown colour, so you take your paint brush and paint a coat on. The table is now chocolate brown, but it’s bumpy, jagged, and definitely not smooth. This is basically what you’re doing when you just run a flat iron through your hair, by itself. Think back to the table. What can you do prior to painting, that would make the table smooth? Sand it! Now go back to your hair. The crucial tool you need to straighten your hair instead of flatten it, is a simple comb. Running a comb through your hair while following it closely with a flat iron will separate your hair strands while pulling it straight, so that the flat iron can actually straighten individual strands, instead of flattening the whole thing like a pancake.

Some flat irons come with a built-in comb. I’m not a big fan of these, as if the comb hits a tangle, the heat is staying at that place until the tangle is combed through. This damaged the hair tremendously, as flat irons carry a very high heat (sometimes up to 450F) and the heat being idle on one spot of your hair will most definitely damage it.

When buying a flat iron, try going for a professional brand rather than a drug store brand, as most drug store brand flat irons have cheap ingredients that can actually damage your hair more. Make sure to look for ceramic, or better yet, tourmaline plates. A tourmaline flat iron carries more negative ions in it, which neutralizes the positive ions in your hair caused by friction, allowing the cuticles in the hair to lay flat. Flat cuticles allow less moisture out of the hair strands, and reflect light to make hair shiny.

Also remember that cooling is what sets a hair style. Make sure not to straighten your hair and then immediately pin it up!

Recommended product: KQC X-heat Tourmaline Ceramic Flat Iron ($159.95 on flatironexperts.com)