Some of us like the little foldaway travel-style blow dryers and some of us prefer to pull out the monstrous, tangle-ridden bump and fall to the ground blow dryers. Sound familiar? Well its time to inspect what you have been using and or hiding away in your vanity. Anything that plugs in can start a fire. You should inspect the cord periodically and never wrap it up like a puzzle for storage next to your sink.

Heat is a great enemy to your hair. That means hair dryers must be used with great care and on a moderate setting. A blow dryer on its hottest setting will reach temperatures above that at which water boils. This can be disastrous on the hair.

The best choices for Blow Dryers and their care:

It seems the ION hair dryer includes all the bells the whistles. It offers technologies separately or together, with ionic only, ionic and ceramic, and ceramic only settings. A full complement of features includes several heat settings and speeds, a quiet motor, concentrator attachment and a hinged filer for cleaning. Your best bet for one of these would be Tourmaline, BaByliss, and Revlon.

There is a huge price difference between professional and home hair dryers. You get a longer duty cycle for the extra money. Professional hair dryers are supposed to last for 1200 hours where as the more inexpensive blow dryer lasts about 500 hours. Professional hair dyers are also generally larger and generate more airflow than consumer blow dryers.

For an inexpensive, professional hair dryer, we found the Tourmaline has rave reviews. This dryer is different from other blow dryers because of its crushed tourmaline jewels, which generate more negative ions than any other mineral. The jewels are injected into all the dryer compartments. It the only dryer with a true ceramic heater coil. It weighs only 13 ounces and packs a whopping 1800-watt motor.