I’m very low maintenance with my hair, so there are very few products that make a significant difference in my routine. I was initially a bit skeptical about how much impact a towel could have, but surprisingly, I’ve seen massive improvements from using Aquis hair towels!
I’ve always felt that I should be better about drying my hair – I usually shower at night, wrap my hair in my bath towel for a few minutes, then let it air dry while telling myself that it’s OK because I’m reducing hair damage (it’s really because my arm gets tired from holding the hair dryer). Right before I go to sleep (my hair is usually still wet at this stage), I pineapple my hair with a coil hair tie. The issues are:
- The wet towel is heavy and has given me a crick in my neck on more than one occasion (the actual worst)
- While the towel is on, I can’t make any sudden movements or the towel will flop onto whatever I’m doing, often breaking off some hair with it
- Once my neck has had enough I take the towel off, but usually this isn’t long enough so my hair drips onto my back. This gets very cold in winter
- My hair is usually still quite wet when I go to sleep, so I often get a cold head, or I wake up with kinky hair
I’ve been using the Original Lisse Towel for the initial blot of my wet hair, and the Lisse Luxe Turban which wraps around your head and secures at the back with a loop and button. I’m disappointed I didn’t try them earlier! Switching to Aquis towels has solved all of these problems I listed, as well as some I didn’t know I had.
How Aquis Towels Work
Aquis towels are made of ultra absorbent, super fine polyester/nylon Aquitex fibres that are split to 1/100th the width of a single human hair. They’re woven in a way that wicks water away much faster through improved capillary action, and distributes it over the towel very efficiently. This means two things: the Aquis towel absorbs far faster than a regular towel, and can absorb a lot more water in total as well, for its weight. It also does it with less effort – the efficient wicking means you need to move the towel around less to soak up the same amount of water.
The graph below shows time (seconds) vs total water absorption (as a percentage of the towel’s weight) for a normal cotton towel vs some of Aquis’s microfibre materials. The slope at the beginning shows how quickly the materials absorb (Aquis is much faster than cotton, as seen from the steep slopes), while the height of the final plateau shows how much water they end up absorbing (3-4 times its own weight for the Aquis towels, vs 2 times for the normal towel).
So how much difference does a really absorbent towel make? Turns out it’s quite a lot! I’ve found myself getting really annoyed when I’ve forgotten to take the towel into the bathroom (which has led to a lot of towel-retrieving nudie runs).