Hi, my beauty-loving friends! Fabiana here. In past posts I've written, I've established how I love a good beauty hack that will make my life easier — especially regarding my hair.
My hair is extremely thick, wavy, and frizz-prone, so I typically embrace my natural texture and just air dry my hair as shown above. On the occasion that I want to heat style it, it's a sweaty and tedious hour-long process that I will only do about twice a month. So, when I do take the time to give myself a blowout, I will do anything in my power to make the style last for as long as possible.
This brings me to a little product that I've been continuously seeing pop up on my TikTok FYP: the Sleepy Tie. At first glance, it just looks like an enormous scrunchie — but devotees of the $29 tie say it can protect and prolong a blowout while you're sleeping, allowing you to score an extra day or two before your next hair wash.
Apparently, the key lies in the specific way you loop your hair through the tie. (More on this below.) The brand also has two sizes: the Sleepy Tie Mini which is smaller than the original design and is meant for thin, fine hair types. The original Sleepy Tie is ideal for all other hair types — and that's what I tried.
When I sleep on a blowout, I typically just let it be. I usually don't tie it back or wrap it in anything. I usually wake up with frizzy, messy waves, so I'll have to touch it up with my Dyson Airwrap or Shark Flexstyle, then spritz some dry shampoo to refresh my style and eliminate frizz.
I only wash my hair once a week, so usually, I try my best to stretch occasional blowouts to at least day 4 or 5. However, sometimes by that point, I'm forced to put my hair up in a half-up half-down hairstyle or a slicked-back bun because my hair is very flat and blah by then — especially my curtain bangs — from sweaty workouts, touching it throughout the day, and sleeping on it. This is the point when I know my blowout has reached its last leg.
I was eager to see if the Sleepy Tie could help with that last leg. If I could eliminate applying extra heat to my hair and still wake up with voluminous, smooth, bouncy hair — I would be one happy gal.
For the test, I decided to use my Sleepy Tie on a three-day-old blowout before going to sleep.
The most difficult part of using the Sleepy Tie is figuring out how to wrap your hair in the specific way that's called for. Thankfully, beyond the brand's instructions, social media is also filled with videos of people explaining how to use it. I have to admit that I did have to watch several different videos MANY times to understand how exactly to wrap my hair in it. I knew there was a learning curve with it so I tried to be patient with myself, and after several failed attempts — I finally got it down!
Here's my version of a how-to:
Step 1: Brush your hair to smooth and prep it for the ponytail.
Step 2: Gather your hair into a high ponytail and wrap the Sleepy Tie arch (or base) around your ponytail.
Step 3: Take your ponytail and loop your hair under and around the arch.
Step 4: Take both sides of the scrunchie and use your hand to flip it (like a figure 8 position) to wrap the scrunchie around the arch.
And that's it — time to go to sleep!
The next morning:
As soon as I woke up, I ran to the mirror to check out my hair. The sides and back of my hair were loose, and the bun did shift down, most likely from me moving during my sleep. However, to my surprise, none of my shorter layers came out of the Sleepy Tie bun at all (just a lot of flyaways).
I gently unraveled my hair from the bun and flipped my head upside down. I was worried that the front pieces of my hair — aka my curtain bangs — would look flat after sleeping with my hair up all night. Surprisingly, they weren't that flat! A little fussing with them, and they were good to go.
My curls also didn't totally stay intact, but overall, my hair looked voluminous and just as good as it did (in my opinion) before I went to bed with the Sleepy Tie. I actually liked how flippy and bouncy it looked.
Overall, the Sleepy Tie exceeded my expectations. As mentioned, I can usually stretch my blowouts to day 4 or 5 — but the Sleepy Tie got me to day 6. My hair stayed full of volume, and the technique of wrapping my hair around the scrunchie prolonged my style and even added some additional flips to it — which I liked.
Obviously, the Sleepy Tie didn't help prevent my roots from getting dirty or oily, but my trick of spraying dry shampoo each night in my roots, brushing it through my hair, and then pulling it back in the Sleepy Tie really helped me prolong my blowout as long as possible. Although the difference between my before and after hair pictures is subtle, I personally noticed a big difference in the volume and ends of my hair. Usually, a day-3 blowout for me has big soft curls — as seen in the "before" picture above — but the "after" picture has more flips to it.
The only thing I didn't like about the Sleepy Tie was the challenging learning curve of how to use it. I think you have to be patient and give yourself time to figure out how to use it. I have a lot of thick, long hair, so it was tough for me to wrap my entire head of hair around the scrunchie without some layers poking out. But as I mentioned before, once I finally mastered how to use it — it was easy from there on out.
As a side note, I was curious to try the Sleepy Tie on my air-dried, non-blown-out curly hair — to see if the intricate hair-wrapping routine would still improve or maintain texture and smoothness while I was sleeping. However, it did not do anything except make my natural curls very dented and out of control the next morning. So, I'll just underline that applying heat is necessary if you want to see positive results.
Going forward, I plan to wrap my hair in the Sleepy Tie whenever my hair is blown out. I think it's a great way to preserve your style for an extra day or two with little effort while not adding extra heat to your hair.
It's also important to note that while my hair can hold a curl well, I think someone with straight or wavy hair could also have positive results with the Sleepy Tie because of the wrapping technique.
BuzzFeed was sent this product free for review, but was under no obligation to give a positive review.