Dyson may have kicked off the curl obsession, but the space has only gotten hotter.

The company, long known for its vacuum cleaners, launched the Airwrap in 2018 to universal acclaim, not only solidifying Dyson’s place in the hierarchy of hair tool innovation but also inspiring a cottage industry of products promising better, softer, healthier curls. Shark, Dyson’s competitor in the vacuum business, has challenged its UK counterpart with its own hair tools — first with a dryer, in 2021, and then with the Flexstyle, in 2022, the latter being hailed on TikTok as an Airwrap dupe at half the price: $299.

Now, there’s even more: Haircare brands including T3, Bondi Boost and even Conair have come out with their own versions, while labels like Drybar have released hot air brushes with interchangeable heads. Beyond these sorts of electrical tools, there’s also silk-covered wands and old-school rollers, which are seeing a resurgence on TikTok. The look is so popular that it’s inspired DIY interpretations, too: At the end of last year, “sock curls” went viral on TikTok, with users wrapping their hair around a sock overnight in order to create a bouncy blowout look without any heat. (They’re still a frequent sight in many GRWM videos.)

These innovations come as consumers increasingly put a premium on hair health, creating demand for styling tools that claim to minimize or eliminate heat damage. “Heatless curls” has been a surging search term online since 2022, according to insights firm Spate, which recorded a 17 percent increase in Google and TikTok traffic in 2024.

However, some evidence indicates a fleeting trend; the UK, which once drove interest in heatless curls, has seen a sharp decline in searches since their August 2023 peak, and they’ve yet to take off in the large hair markets of Japan and Korea. And there’s also doubt about these tactics’ effectiveness.

“Think of hair like gold,” said hair stylist Claudia Clementi. “It needs to be heated to be shaped.”

But in the US, where heatless curls now reign supreme, some have a difficult time imagining ever going back to high-heat styling.

“I remember when I would religiously style my hair in the morning, and there was this frying noise,” said TikTok creator Wendy Ly, who uses the Dyson suite of hair tools. “It makes me feel better that I’m not putting too much heat on my hair when I’m still trying to nurture it back to health.”

Protecting Your Tech

Curls are not a perfect science, but Dyson hopes to craft something close. According to senior design manager Robyn Coutts, the UK company spent about $31 million to develop the Airwrap, creating some six hundred prototypes.

Dyson protects its technology using a mix of design rights (for signature colours like Jasper Plum) and patents (for its Coanda barrel or app integration). “They can be quite specific or they can be quite open, but there is still room to dupe, as we’ve seen,” Coutts said. None of Dyson’s products are as duped as the Airwrap. In 2022, the Netherlands-based hair tool company Navado released the Easystyler — a tool advertised on their website as “a premium alternative to the Airwrap,” clocking in at €219 ($226), less than half the price of the original. Navado did not respond to a request for comment.

Dyson has vigorously enforced its patents through litigation, as it did in 2020, successfully suing a Chinese manufacturer that made counterfeit hair dryers with the UK company’s logo and branding. But dupes are harder to fight. Dyson is currently engaged in an infringement suit with Shark, alleging that its Flexstyle is too similar to the Airwrap. Shark has responded by accusing Dyson of infringing on a number of its vacuum patents. (The case is ongoing.) Dyson has three main patents that relate to the Airwrap, while Shark has one. Still, the dupe has outpaced the original in other arenas. On Amazon, hair tool unit sales for Dyson in 2023 totaled around $800,000, compared to $3.4 million for Shark according to marketing intelligence firm Cobalt. (Shark did not respond to requests for comment on its hair tool patents.)

Dyson has yet to address Navado’s Easystyler or T3’s Aire 360, despite the latter earning Cosmopolitan magazine’s Best Airwrap Dupe Overall distinction, likely because the products don’t borrow Dyson’s Coanda technology or design codes. Dyson and Shark also have history, as the former has sued the latter for vacuum patent infringement before either company was in the hair business.

But their best defence is to innovate faster than their competition, improving upon its original inventions — the latest Airwrap i.d., which launched in 2024, has a Bluetooth app integration that allows users to preset their perfect curl settings — and developing new ones. Coutts also hinted at “game-changing” projects down the pipeline. “Patents only take you so far,” she said. “We can’t stand still. We have to keep innovating. We have to keep moving.”

The Soft Curl Economy

While the Airwrap disrupted the hair market as a low-heat alternative, entirely heatless curls have become a pursuit of its own, with just under 300,000 posts tagged #heatlesscurls on TikTok. The related “overnight curls”, which appears on over 50,000 videos, describes a loose, pre-Raphaelite hair texture that can be achieved by tying hair up, sleeping on it and brushing it out in the morning, no heat required.

Content creators will try any technique, and will usually post about it, too. Plenty of consumers still use rollers, a technology that has been around for almost a century; still, many in the industry think a better, gentler, easier-to-use option is just over the horizon.

There’s also been new products that have sprung up out of this desire: Rachael Shtifter, the owner of Boston-based salon Parlr, began sewing prototypes of her Sleepy Tie after the Covid-19 pandemic put her business on pause. Over Zoom, she demonstrated the tool, which resembles a figure eight-shaped scrunchie; it wraps hair in a taut top knot while the wearer sleeps, and produces soft, languid curls when removed in the morning.

Addison Cain, a director of insights at Spate, sees heatless curls and low-heat curls as distinct but related categories.

“The former is more about convenience, and the latter is more about hair health,” Cain said.

Sleepy Tie has seen success in combining the two. The brand launched in 2021, but an inflection point came last year, when Shtifter posted a TikTok video pairing the Sleepy Tie with her Airwrap. “I made this video that was like, if you’re not doing this at the end of your Dyson blowout, you’re making a mistake,” she said. It netted 30 million views in a week.

“The goal is not to eliminate heat, but to use it less,” said Shtifter.

Sleepy Tie recently launched at Ulta Beauty, and has expanded its collection with the introduction of a silk bonnet, an accessory familiar to women of colour with kinky or coily hair. On the brand’s website, a photo of a white model wearing the bonnet in bed spans the homepage, exemplifying an uncomfortable truth about the soft curl economy — that many of the tools and accessories are not new, but are being newly marketed to non-Black women.

In general, low- and no-heat tools lose efficacy the thicker and more textured the hair, according to New Orleans-based hair stylist David Connor, who estimates that the Airwrap works on 30 percent of hair types.

“In terms of damage, it’s significantly better, but we’re losing the results we’re looking for in the majority of hair textures,” Connor said. The look is not for everybody, anyway. Connor points out outliers like Italy, where women have naturally wavy texture but prefer sleek straight hair. (See: last week’s Versace show.) The grass is always greener — curlier, or straighter — on the other side.

Sign up to The Business of Beauty newsletter, your complimentary, must-read source for the day’s most important beauty and wellness news and analysis.