For over a year now, I’ve been trying to figure out how to make a messed up style look good from morning till night without going to flat. This has become a bit of an obsession if I’m honest, but nevertheless I feel I have discovered many useful things which I hope will help you in your quest for messed up hair that holds its style.

Hair Straighteners
For spiked up hair, a pair of straighteners is a must. Even if your hair is relatively straight anyway, straighteners will allow you to remove or soften the natural curve of your hair thus making it stick straight out rather than down towards your head. I recommend GHDs (unsurprisingly), the mini styler is fantastic for shorter hair who would be more inclined towards a messed up style. My boyfriend owns the Toni & Guy slim straighteners that are in the Argos catalogue at the moment and they’ve worked fine for him, so that’s another option if you don’t quite have enough for GHDs.

Straightening Product
There are a couple of products on the market that you spray on your hair as you straighten and aim to hold your style as you straighten. One of these is GHD Creation Spray. At around £13 a bottle, it isn’t cheap but it does lift the hair. For my thin hair, I find the creation spray does not do enough to style my hair entirely, but for thicker hair you may find this does the trick. An alternative I have seen is by Tresemme. I can’t remember its name and I have no tried it out, but it claims to perform the same job for around £5.

Wax, gel and other styling products
There are an absolute plethora of type of styling products. So many that it is practically impossible to pick the good from the bad. A good rule of thumb is to pick one that gives a textured look and is non-greasy. Shockwaves do a good non-greasy wax (it’s the one with a yellow lid) but they now do a wax moose too which I have found to work fantastically because you can apply it just like a liquid before it solidifies into a more orthodox wax. For those wanting to splash a bit of cash, Tigi have a couple of waxes to pick from, again, just pick one that is non-greasy and offers a good firm hold and you’ll be fine. I have personally found that Tigi is very over priced for what you actually get, but that’s just my opinion.

Hair Spray
As with styling product, there is a mass of hair sprays to chose from too. Tresemme’s range of sprays work fine for me and cost around £4 for a very big can. Best of all, Superdrug seem to offer this stuff on buy one get one free almost permanently so that’s definately worth a look. For extremely styled hair, go for freeze spray. For a less controlled look, go for the medium hold spray. Another spray you can try, and I highly recommend, is John Frieda volume boost spray. It comes in a blue bottle (like the other products in the volume range) and you spray it onto your hair while you have your hair held upside down. It’s kind of like a spritz gel, but it is very light and won’t weigh your hair down. I have found this to be the best finishing product I’ve ever used and will hold your hair for ages assuming you don’t get it wet.

That is my overall findings to a messed up style. I have very fine hair that is very hard to style which is why this article may seem quite exhaustive in the lengths I’ve gone to to get my damned hair to stay put longer than a half hour. Best tip of all is: Less is more – just because you use loads of product doesn’t mean it’ll hold longer – it’ll most likely just collapse in on itself due to the weight of the product you’ve applied.