Voltage Conversions: What’s that mean for hair care?

Exhibit A: Don't let this happen to you. Perhaps I'm searching for a good hair day.

So you’re going to be on vacation and you’re going to be taking photos, but you don’t want to look like you left every hair care tool you own back at home.  Blow-dryers and straightening irons take up a ton of space in your suitcase, so if space is an issue, you may forgo bringing them in favor of something you actually deem practical (because in all seriousness…haircare shouldn’t be THAT important, right?).  But even if you DO manage to bring them, odds are they won’t work anyways if you’re traveling outside of the US.  Wait, what?  Please see Exhibit A to the left for a real life example of a foreigner (me) who lugged her straightening iron all the way to the UK only to plug it in and destroy it (a Chi, no less!) immediately.  And then have to survive an entire semester abroad looking like I had just come from the gym.  *sigh*

The US operates on 110 voltage while most of the world operates on 220V.  Not a huge deal.  Odds are that your laptop, iPod, iPhone, iPad, camera battery charger (although often not for “fancy” cameras) all have a built in mechanism for switching between 110V and 220V.  For appliances that are not dual voltage, you’ll have to buy one of those bricks that “steps up” or “steps down” the current for use by your appliance.  If you buy a “regular” voltage converter though, your heat tools (blow dryer, any irons) will still not work. This has to do with watts.  Most appliances need converters that support 50 watts, but appliances that heat up require up to 1600 watts.  Big difference.  What you need is a dual-voltage-wattage converter.  Add that to all of the shape converters that you’ll need to carry with you, and you’re going to max out your suitcase space very quickly.

Your hair will hate you here.

The best solution I’ve found, and this is for those who travel somewhat frequently and try to pack light, is to go ahead and buy separate, dual-voltage hair appliances.  The idea here isn’t to buy something that will replace your day-to-day items at home, where presumably you have invested more money, but rather to buy smaller items that you can use globally for years and years of trips.  Heck, they can even be back-ups for trips within the US when you are pressed for suitcase space.  In the long run, its cheaper and less of a hassle than destroying the appliances you currently have or schlepping around a dual-voltage-wattage converter when you’re trying to fit everything into a carry-on.  The best I’ve found are the Babyliss Travel hair-dryer and the Baby Croc Mini Travel Flat Iron.  These things are TINY and each less than $25.  I’ve tried the wet-dry dual voltage flattening irons, figuring that this would be the ultimate all-in-one and save me from bringing a hair-dryer along too, but these don’t really work so well unless you buy an expensive version.

So there you have it.  Learn from me, and on your next trip abroad, you won’t be standing in a towel in some foreign hotel room with your newly-fried appliances and a bad hair day ahead of you.

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