Cloud Nine Hair Straightener Review

Quite a while ago now (4th of December to be precise!), I was very kindly sent a pair of Cloud Nine hair straighteners for reviewing purposes. I’ve purposely taken my time in reviewing these for a number of reasons such as:

• Assessing hair damage with lower heat compared to GHDs
• I wanted to try them on other people’s hair (my hair is too layered for curls)
• To test their durability

This is gonna be a long one, so brace yourselves!
The Blurb

Just Like Heaven...For Your Hair

Imagine… a hair styling iron that allows you to achieve breathtaking results - without constant, searing heat.

Well, it’s arrived and gone are the days where you at the mercy of one temperature setting – high. The brand new Cloud Nine iron, brought to you by the founders and inventors of the original ghd iron*, will allow you to take instant control - drop the heat, increase the heat - and enter another world of styling.

From natural and smooth, to experimental and bold, you can now get the hair you want, everyday, no matter what its type, your challenges or your hair-aspirations.

With its low, medium and high heat options, six in total, and a perfectly constructed, rounded barrel, Cloud Nine is one tool that enables you to achieve a whole range of finishes. You can create natural curls and waves, or even simply smooth a blow dry, as well as crank up the heat when you do need to achieve something more structured or adventurous.

The varied heat settings also mean you can adjust the temperature to suit your hair type. Finer hair may not require white-hot temperatures to smooth out a kink, while thicker hair can benefit from a variety of heat settings as you style layer-by-layer.

Poker straight hair delivered through searing heat, and the same look day-in, day-out, is over. With Cloud Nine, you can, at last, go a bit easier on your hair, while discovering a whole world of flexibility. Curly, wavy, straight or voluminous - you choose.

Look closely at the iron’s black ceramic plates, and you will see they contain an element of pearl sparkle. This patented technological element actually adds extra shine to your hair.

Sounds promising, eh?

What’s In the Box?

The packaging (which I forgot to photograph – oops!) is sleek and tidy, much like the straighteners. However, I must say I find it a bit boring, and dare I say it, cheap. I know, I know, never judge a book by its cover, but it is kept very simplistic with the only indicator that it is a hair straightener being a few tiny words in small writing. I personally feel that the box should have more decorative aspects to it in order to jump out at the buyer – we all know the hair straightener market is dominated by GHD, so in my opinion the packaging needs to be a bit more eye-catching.
The box however provides 1 straightening iron (of course), 1 heat guard, 1 styling tips, safety instructions and manufacturers guarentee booklet, as well as a handy little pouch to keep the straighteners in (although I’m not 100% sure this is heat proof – I’m guessing it is).
Iron Features
Temperature control panel
With low, medium and high heat options, plus everything in-between, the irons can create unlimited styles with lower temperatures. The LED panel gives a clear indication of temperature, and with a simple tap of the buttons you can raise or lower heat.
Black ceramic plates
There are some trade secrets we can’t share. Take our black ceramic plates. The special and mysterious ingredient we’ve incorporated into them gives hair added shine and sparkle, each and every time they are used.

Swivel cord
At last, an iron that’s solved the problem of the dreaded twisted cord. Thanks to the swivel cord – unique to Cloud Nine – you can enjoy incredible freedom of movement when styling your hair, without worry or hassle.
Heat guard
As soon as your client has finished using their irons, they can clasp them back together, slip on the protective heat guard and allow them to cool down knowing that they’ve safely left them resting.
Hibernation mode
This intelligent sleep technology automatically kicks in when the irons have been switched on, but not used for thirty minutes. When in this mode they’ll cool down to ‘box temperature’, and only reheat once they’re switched off and on again.
RFID chip
The state-of-the-art RFID chip allows us to identify each iron with its own unique ID number. This means we can track each iron and monitor it throughout its working life to ensure it’s a genuine product only sold through authorised Cloud Nine stockists. This technology is designed to protect you from fraud or mis-selling.
Dual adaptor
All Cloud Nine irons are supplied with a standard two-pin Euro plug, but have been fitted with a UK 3-amp adaptor. To use the iron in a country outside of the UK that uses the two-pin Euro plug, simply remove the screw that’s positioned between the three pins and remove the adaptor from the two-pin plug.
Most of the features mentioned are standard with pretty much any competing/similarly priced straightening iron, particularly GHD. I do however find the RFID chip a pretty nifty little feature. Personally, I’ve never had a pair of straighteners stolen nor have I lost a pair, but I do know others who have, and I find it reassuring to know that if that ever were to happen, mine could be easily identifiable.
Initial Thoughts

The iron itself is very sleek and to an extent, very low profile. It is predominantly black in colour with a few bits of silver and sparkle (on the plate itself) making them look very sophisticated. There is an on-off switch located on the inside of one side of the iron, and on the opposite side there is the ‘temperature control panel’ whereby you set your desired heat.
This temperature control panel is Cloud Nine’s unique selling point (USP) – less heat, more style. Here’s a little rundown of what you can achieve from each heat setting:

Smoothing a blow dry without losing body

All hair types: 100°

The naturally straight look

Fine hair: 100°

Medium/Thick hair: 150°

Soft curls for medium/long hair

Fine hair: 125°

Medium/Thick hair: 175°

Soft curls for short hair

Fine hair: 125°

Medium/Thick hair: 175°

Waves

Fine hair: 100°

Medium hair: 150°

Thick hair: 200°

Tight curls

Fine hair: 150°

Medium hair: 200°

Thick hair: 200°

Flicks

Fine hair: 100°

Medium hair: 150°

Thick hair: 175°

The very straight look

Fine hair: 150°

Medium hair: 200°

Thick hair: 200°

I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t had a chance to play with each setting properly, nor have I been able to curl somebody else’s hair using these. I do however, have a good feeling they will work well for curling due to the shape of the body of the iron – it is curved (much like the GHD) which I know from experience really does aide in curling. The time it takes to heat up is remarkably quick – by the time I’ve sectioned the bottom layer of my hair off it has completely heated up. Anyhow, I initially used the ‘high’ temperature to straighten my hair. Yes, it did make it poker straight, but I felt that the temperature was just too high so I moved it down to ‘200’. I’ve found that this works very well for my hair, but I could probably get away with the setting below 200.
Now the big question – how smooth are the plates going through the hair? Well, I will say there is a bit of a ‘snag factor’. They don’t entirely glide through the hair like I hoped they would do – they’re fine on my non damaged roots and mid-lengths, but when I get to the dry damaged ends, it pulls. I know this is generally the case for most straighteners, but the gloss finish GHD’s don’t do this, and you would expect the Cloud Nine’s to do the same being in the same price range. I will say however that despite the snagging, the finished result is perfectly straight with no lumps and bumps.
What’s the damage then?
As I mentioned before, I deliberately took my time in reviewing these straighteners as I wanted to see what kind of damage was caused by them. They arrived at a great time as I’d just had my hair cut a couple of days before, so it was perfect time to try them out.
Fast forward a month, I decided I wanted rid of the red hair and the only way to get rid of it was to Effasor (bleach bath/colour stripper) the hell out of it. Without going into too much detail, red is much harder to remove from hair than black, (black bleaches up orange, red bleaches up pink – pink is much harder to cover!) and we ended up having to strip it twice as it just didn’t want to budge. This of course meant my hair had extremely split ends, and to be honest, I’ve got off pretty lightly with the damage. Most people would be left with three inch long hair from stripping their colour twice, thankfully I only lost about an inch of hair from doing so.
Anyhow, this has obviously hindered my experiment to see how damaging the lower heat settings were. But, before my little colour experiment, I did notice that my hair was getting noticeably less split ends from using them, despite blow drying my hair, and straightening it every day. I’m not saying that the Cloud Nine iron causes no damage whatsoever as obviously any heat will cause damage, but the damage in my opinion was remarkably less.
Picture – straighteners closed with Heat Guard on.

Durability
The other reason for my delay in review was that I wanted to see how durable the straighteners were. As you know, the brains behind Cloud Nine are those that created the original GHD iron, and if you can remember back that far, the first gen of GHD’s were not known for reliability. I can’t find any news articles right now, but they were notorious for literally ‘blowing up’ and catching fire at the plug socket. Now, I know technology has advanced and they would have learnt from their mistakes, but I just wanted to make sure that these iron’s weren’t going to follow in the footsteps of their GHD cousins and blow up in my hands.
I also wanted to test how well the body of the straighteners held up, and so far, so good! So far, there are no marks on the straighteners (minus fingerprints) and the plates seemed to have held up well, too. My only criticism of the plates is that they gather ‘hair muck’ as I like to call it at the sides. My GHD’s also do this, and I have had clients ask me what to do to remove it. I usually advise a lightly damp cloth wiped over to remove it (switched off of course!). I’ve had this discussion before with colleagues that we think GHD should make a specific plate cleaner to remove the muck and also provide the plates with a spruce up – Cloud Nine, make one please!
I do however have a big (and possibly pedantic) criticism about the design of the body.
The picture below focuses on where the hinge of the straighteners is on the body of the iron. It might be difficult to see/to understand, but when the iron is closed, that ‘line’ to the right of the ‘Cloud Nine’ name is opens. Now, I keep my straighteners when they’re not in use enclosed in the heat guard pictured above. When this heat guard is removed, the straighteners spring up, and if your hand is where the line is, your fingers get pinched. Sounds trivial, but I really don’t like pinching my fingers every time I go to straighten my hair. Boo on you Cloud Nine, sort it out! Other than that, I have no complaints about their durability.

Conclusion
Overall, I am genuinely impressed with the Cloud Nine iron. Although the plates do have a slight snag factor to them, the multi heat setting is a big bonus and it is possible to create styles without the high heat provided by GHDs.
The design of the iron is sleek and sophisticated and so far it has held up well. The long swivel cord is also an added bonus, as well as the hibernation mode for those that forget to turn their straighteners then dread coming home to a house on fire.
Now the big question…. Would I choose Cloud Nine over GHD?
Its a tough one, but overall I would say yes. That yes though, is in comparison to GHD’s regular straightening irons, not their limited edition gloss finish irons – the finish the gloss iron’s give is unbeatably smooth, but for reviews sake, I will keep to the regular irons. The price point is almost identical to GHD’s, but the ability to choose your temperature is a big pull factor over the GHD iron. Many complain that with GHD there is no natural straight style, it is ‘poker straight’ and that’s it. There are endless styles and finishes you can create with the Cloud Nine iron without the searing heat.
Thank you Claire at Propaganda for allowing me to try the Cloud Nine iron.
Micro iron and wide iron’s are also available. Medium iron costs £129.99 and is available from www.cloudninehair.com
Caroline.x