Dyson Corrale review: ‘50% less damage means I can finally use a hair straightener again’

IMAGE Editorial Director Dominique McMullan is delighted to have her beachy waves back after years of thinking that all hot hair tools were out of the question for her brittle hair. 

I’ve always had lots and lots of fine hair. It is naturally pretty wild. I compare the texture to sheep’s wool, just after a storm in the west of Ireland. You get the idea. It takes quite a bit of styling to get it to where I want it. Since I was 15 or 16 I’ve blow-dried it every single time I washed it. I used to iron it, with a real iron, just to try and tame the frizz. I remember clear as day the first friend I had who bought straighteners. I spent a lot of time in her house for those first few months. When I got my own, I used them nearly every day. They were a revelation for my self-conscious, teenage mop.

While I am naturally quite fair, I have always bleached my hair. I have highlights on highlights if I’m honest. But despite years of abuse through bleach and heat damage, my hair always remained manageable. That was until I had a baby last year. When my son was about six-months-old my hair started falling out. It broke off, over the course of about a month, all around my hairline. It happens. Post-natal hormones can result in extremely brittle hair. But I found it pretty tough to deal with. After all those years, my hair had had enough.

It is for these reasons I was so delighted to learn about and use the Dyson Corrale. It causes 50% less breakage* than a conventional straightener. Hallelujah, because that means, after 18 months of avoiding any straightener at all costs, I can have beach waves back in my blonde bob and not worry about causing as much damage. You just know that Dyson is going to have some cool, innovative technology that is at the forefront of their product. For the Corrale it’s the manganese copper alloy plates that flex around your hair to gather it.

For me, the other revolutionary aspect of the Corrale is that it’s cordless. Meaning that once it’s charged, you can stick it in the car, or your handbag, and finish your hair when you don’t have a sticky 18-month-old on your lap. Game changer.

It also means that if like me, you’re not great at the technical parts of styling, you’re not going to get all tangled up in the cord when you are attempting a crimped look circa all the cool kids in 1995.

If all these reasons were not enough to persuade you, my engineer husband, who has zero interest in hair, was extremely impressed just by the Corrale’s slick engineering and packaging. It looks great too. These days every time I pass my room I admire the Corrale sitting on its special little stand on my dressing table, and mentally thank it for giving me back a little bit of myself, without damaging future me.

The Dyson Corrale is available now. See more on dyson.ie. 

* Thermal damage measured by hair strength, when creating the equivalent style. Tested on flexing plates vs solid plates.