How to Use a Curling Iron for Beach Waves?

Forget perfect ringlets. Beach waves are supposed to look loose, textured, and a little undone. Getting that look with a curling iron comes down to a few habits: skipping the clamp on the ends, weaving the barrel in opposite directions, and letting each wave cool before you touch it. Here is the step order that consistently works.

Prepping Hair for Curling Iron Beach Waves

Hair must be completely dry, brushed through, and protected from heat before the iron ever touches it. Curling damp strands is the fastest route to lasting damage.

Start with dry hair, every time. TRESemmé notes that using a curling iron on hair that is not fully dry can cause severe damage, so air-dry or blow-dry first and give it an extra few minutes. Then spray or cream a heat protectant evenly over your lengths. This isn’t optional, even on low heat settings—it’s the difference between a style that lasts and a style that frays.

Comb through so there are no tangles, then split your hair into a bottom layer and a top layer. Clip the top section out of the way and begin curling underneath.

The Right Way to Curl: Sections, Direction, and Time

Work with 1–2 inch sections, wrap hair around a vertical barrel, hold briefly, and alternate the direction you wrap to keep waves looking natural.

Take a small section of hair—about 1 to 2 inches wide. TRESemmé’s guidance points toward that smaller size because it creates more defined wave texture, while sections that are too large tend to fall flat before you finish styling.

Hold the curling iron upright with the clamp facing forward. Place the section into the clamp, but leave the last 1.5 inches of the ends out—this is the trick that gives beach waves their loose, carefree finish instead of a tight curl. Wrap the hair around the barrel away from your face for the first curl, then alternate the direction for each section after that. TRESemmé advises wrapping the next sections in the opposite direction to keep waves from turning into uniform ringlets.

How long to hold? It varies. TRESemmé suggests 3 to 4 seconds, while Aveda’s tutorial works with 10 seconds on the barrel. Shorter times suit fine hair and looser waves; longer times suit thick or coarse hair that needs more heat to hold its shape. Let the curl slide off the barrel and pin or clip it loosely so it can cool.

Letting Waves Cool and Setting the Style

Leaving curls alone until they cool locks in the shape, and a light finishing product keeps the waves soft instead of crunchy.

Touching a curl while it’s still warm flattens the style and invites frizz. Aveda’s tutorial is explicit: loosen the curls only after they have fully cooled. So curl your way around your head, pin each section up as you go, and wait until the end before you break anything apart.

Once everything is cool, unpin and run your fingers gently through the waves to separate them. Don’t use a brush—it will pull out the bend. Finish with a light serum or a flexible-hold hairspray to cut down on frizz and hold the shape. A wave from the barrel, not a spray, should be doing most of the work.

Matching Heat to Your Hair Type and a Few Common Mistakes

Heat settings should follow your hair’s texture: low for fine or fragile strands, higher for thick or coarse hair.

Vasco Sassoon’s styling guide recommends lower heat and smaller sections for fine or fragile hair, and higher heat with larger sections for thick or coarse hair. Color-treated hair falls into the lower-and-slower category. You can always go back over a stubborn section, but you can’t un-cook a strand that’s been scorched.

Several mistakes show up again and again. Curling hair that isn’t fully dry can cause severe damage. Oversized sections produce weak, undefined waves. Wrapping every section the same direction results in an unnatural, overly uniform look. Touching curls before they cool flattens the finish. And loading on too much product before curling can make hair damp and work against you. Barrel size matters too—Vasco Sassoon notes that wider barrels give looser waves on long hair, so step up a size if your waves come out tighter than you wanted.

If you are working with shorter hair and want picks that won’t fight your length, our tested roundup of curling irons for short hair beach waves cuts through the options.