The silky-smooth fabric of either silk or satin pillowcases allows your hair to slide across the surface more easily. This also helps cut down on the frizz for those of you with curly locks. For the same reason that cotton is great for keeping you dry when it's hot out, it's a terrible material for a pillowcase.
“The benefit of having a good silk pillowcase is that it creates less friction on the hair and allows the hair a gentle surface," he says. "Friction can disrupt the cuticle layer of the hair, which causes bedhead and frizzy hair.”
Chances are a night of particularly deep sleep has wreaked havoc on your hair or skin at some point—but the best silk pillowcases are here to help you avoid that outcome ever again. Silk's texture prevents hair breakage and static caused by friction, and it can also help prevent wrinkles and breakouts.
Cotton pillowcases are known to absorb the oils from your hair and skin, which can leave them dry, brittle and prone to breakage. The good news is all these problems are easily addressed by switching to a silk pillowcase. Silk allows the hair to slide around on your pillow effortlessly, so you wake to smoother hair.
Satin offers similar haircare benefits to silk, but it won't retain moisture as well as silk. "Satin absorbs a little bit more than silk since it's a mixture of numerous materials including cotton, but it's still way less than 100% cotton pillow cases," Onuoha says.
"Silk is beneficial to the hair because it is a breathable fabric allowing circulation and preventing the moisture from night sweats from getting trapped at the root of the hair," says Hill." It also helps to minimize the friction between our hair fibers and cotton fabrics.
This comes down to some good news/bad news: First, the bad news: Your cotton pillowcase may be doing terrible damage to your hair. Now, the good news: A mulberry silk pillowcase is fantastic for hair and can even help reverse and repair damage and hair breakage (and give you a great night of beauty sleep to boot!).
The best way to wear your hair when you sleep is loosely tied up in a low ponytail or a bun, with a soft fabric tie or scrunchie. As an alternative, you can also wrap your hair in a silk or a satin scarf or bonnet to help with moisture retention and reduce friction.
Protects Hair
A satin weave, especially when paired with silk fabric, can help prevent hair damage. The smoothness of the weave reduces friction, thereby reducing the likelihood of frizzing, tangling, matting, and breakage.
More significant hair loss can be caused by a number of factors — alopecia, chemotherapy, hereditary baldness, childbirth, stress — but your pillowcase doesn't have anything to do with it. “Whether it's cotton or silk, the pillowcase you sleep on at night doesn't influence your hair loss in any way,” Fox says.
An average pillowcase will grab onto your hair strands and hold tight, even as you're moving around during sleep. This results in pulling and pressing that results in those unflattering locks the next morning and also encourages breakage and split ends.
As such, silk is prone to fading when exposed to direct sunlight, either indoors or outside. Even this best silk bedding will fade if left in direct sunlight. This is why we recommend always hanging your silk to dry away from the sun. Happily, your silk sheets should air dry very quickly, even indoors.
Hair and skin help – When choosing between a satin vs silk pillowcase for skin and hair, you win either way, as satin also has the benefit of low friction. It also shares silk's breathability and hypoallergenic nature.
Since the silk encourages the outer layer of your hair cuticles to lay flat, adds Marjan, so strands look and feel smoother—just like silk.
Less Friction
That's not the case with a satin or silk pillowcase. The satin pillowcase will allow your hair to gently glide over the top of it reducing friction, tangles, and frizz and keeping your hairstyle intact. The satin or silk pillowcase also helps prevent split ends from breaking.
Silk pillowcases, like your other bed linens, come into direct contact with your skin every night, so it's important to wash them regularly — typically about every seven to ten days. To learn more about washing bed linens, check out this guide to washing and properly caring for bedding.
Despite their similar appearance the biggest difference is that satin is a weave and not a natural fibre, whereas silk is a natural fibre fabric.
Sleep on a satin or silk pillow case.
No joke this will help your life in more ways than one. Not only does it help with oily hair, but also with fine lines and wrinkles. A normal cotton pillow case strips oils from your skin and keeps it built up in its fibers.
The silky soft texture of bamboo fibres prevents any unnecessary pulling and friction; making bamboo sheets good for your hair. Instead of waking up with a new hairstyle every day, bamboo pillowcases do not rub against the hair fibres, keeping your locks as silky soft as you left them the night before.
Silk absorbs less moisture than other popular bedding materials like cotton. This allows the skin to retain more moisture, which in turn helps prevent dry or itchy skin. Silk is also less likely to absorb any lotions or serums you might use in your bedtime skincare regime. These benefits extend to your hair as well.