I Tried TikTok’s Sock Curls Heatless Hair Hack

If you’ve spent any of the last few weeks mindlessly scrolling through TikTok, chances are high you’ve come across the heatless sock curl tutorial taking over the app. I’ve tested my fair share of heatless hair hacks (some of them better than others), but I hadn’t seen one go this viral in a long time.

Ever since breaking up with my ex for the 50th time last month, I’ve decided I’m on a glow-up journey, and getting my hair in tip-top shape was high on my list. I started hair oiling the night before every wash day and started taking a hair supplement — and if I could also minimize heat damage by trying a new heatless hair hack, I figured I should give it a shot.

All I needed to try it out was two socks, so I got to work immediately. Keep scrolling to learn how it worked for me.

To test it out, before going to bed, I parted my dry hair down the middle, where I normally wear it, and divided it into two parts. I’ve seen a lot of people using mousse in their hair for overnight curls, but I was worried about my hair feeling crunchy, so instead, I opted to use a dime-sized amount of the Oribe Gold Lust Nourishing Hair Oil ($59) on the mid-lengths and ends of my hair.

From there, I wrapped my curtain bangs in a velcro roller and pinned it at the top of my head using a duck clip. If my front pieces were long enough, I would have just wrapped them in the sock, but I figured they would be too short and the velcro roller was a good workaround. Then, I started the sock curling process. I took one sock and put the toe portion in my mouth and gripped it with my teeth while I wrapped my hair around it tightly — I’ve tested quite a few heatless hair hacks and I knew wrapping things tightly would be key, because things tend to loosen up overnight. Once all of my hair was wrapped around the sock, I flipped the bottom half of the sock over the hair I had just wrapped around. (It sounds a little confusing, but it’s easy to get the hang of once you watch the video.)

I repeated the same steps on the other side of my hair, and then I fit my hair into a silk bonnet. I also removed the duck clip from the velcro roller because I figured it would get annoying overnight. Then, I headed to bed.

I won’t lie — this wasn’t the most comfortable situation to sleep in. In all honesty, I haven’t really found an overnight heatless hair hack that is comfortable overnight, so this experience was pretty par for the course in my opinion. However, what did surprise me was how great my hair looked in the morning.

When I got out of bed and unwrapped everything, I was stoked to see that the curls were tight, bouncy, and looking good. Plus, my bangs had a ton of volume from sleeping with the velcro roller all night. I ended up brushing everything out, adding in a little dry shampoo at my roots, and then coating my ends with a little more hair oil, and I was ready to take on the day.

Overall, I liked this hack and I think it worked well. However, I think it will be a heatless curls trick I use every so often, not every night. I had to add a lot of tension to my hair to get the curls looking as good as they did, which made me a little nervous about my hair health, especially considering I slept with my bangs up in a tight velcro roller. I’ve tested it out a few other times during the day (where I only wore my hair in the sock for a few hours), and I still got similar results. Either way, I think this is a hack to try if you’ve been looking for an easy way to get bouncy curls without the heat damage.

Renee Rodriguez (she/her) is a staff writer and social producer for PS. She writes across all verticals, but her main areas of expertise focus on fashion and beauty content with an emphasis on reviews and editor experiments. She also produces social content for the PS TikTok and Instagram accounts.