Sophie Stanbury’s Hair Tutorial

If you’ve ever seen the reality show Ladies of London on Bravo, you may have noticed that Sophie Stanbury has the most insanely gorgeous hair! It always has so much volume and body and just seems to bounce and look gorgeous and elegant it is simply amazing. Lucky for us she has made a YouTube channel where she is sharing her hair styling secrets!

Sophie Stanbury’s Dry Hair Styling

In this video Sophie shows how to style her hair with hot rollers once it is already blow dried:

Sophie Stanbury’s Dry Shampoo

Sophie likes my favorite dry shampoo- Batiste Dry Shampoo which is great and affordable! My favorite scent is the Sassy & Daring Wild. Dry shampoo gives your hair body, keeps the style in longer, gives you volume, and helps to get rid of grease. It also helps lighten and lift your highlights if you’re putting off a trip to the salon.

Her high end pick is Bardou Immaculate Spray Dry Shampoo.

Sophie Stanbury’s Hot Rollers

Sophie goes old school with Hot Rollers and uses the Babyliss Pro 30 Piece Heated Ceramic Roller Set, but only uses the largest (red) rollers.

Since those are currently sold out, the same brand offers a Babyliss Nano Titanium Roller Jumbo 8 Set which only has the very large rollers:

She said leave them in for 5 minutes to give your hair a slight wave or leave them in longer if you want curls and a more evening look. Separate the curls with your hands and fluff the hair so it doesn’t look like one huge curl.

I use the Caruso 30 Molecular Steam Hairsetter with 30 Rollers which also comes with 8 Jumbo rollers which is what I wear to achieve this look. If you use these rollers I recommend clipping the very front section instead of using the “shield” to close the roller so you don’t get a dent in your hair.

One tip she doesn’t mention is you should start with the roller at the bottom of your hair and roll up. Don’t start in the middle, wrap the bottom portion of hair around the roller and roll from the middle up from there. You also don’t want to roll your hair too tightly if you want to achieve Sophie’s wavy look.

If you want a high end version, I’ve seen good reviews for the T3 Volumizing Hot Rollers Luxe.

Sophie Stanbury’s Hairspray

She uses the cult favorite L’Oreal Elnett Satin Hairspray and uses “normal strength” which I think means “Strong Hold” (as opposed to extra strong hold).

Sophie Stanbury’s Wet to Dry Styling

In this video Sophie shares how she blow dries her hair then sets it in Velcro rollers:

Before blow drying, Sophie uses Moroccan oil Treatment Hair Oil all over to add shine to her hair.

Sophie recommends using some mousse in your hair pre-blow dry if it is weak or thin. On her blog she recommends the Aveda Volume line which includes Aveda ‘phomollient’ Styling Foam.

Blow Drying

She starts by rough drying her hair on high heat and high speed with the nozzle on the end then sections it off and clips the top half up and out of the way. I tried to figure out what blow dryer she is using and even asked her on Twitter, but she didn’t reply. The ghd air Professional Performance Hair Dryer looks similar.

GHD Air Professional Performance Hair Dryer

She then divides the bottom half into left and right sections and uses a roller brush with a ceramic base. Sophie points the hair dryer down to make sure the hair is being blown smoothly against the brush to reduce frizz. She then rolls up the hair in the brush and dries the roots really well and then the ends while rolling the hair over and over to give it a curl at the bottom. She uses a “Nano Technology” brush which may be the SUPRENT Nano Thermal Ceramic & Ionic Round Barrel 2″ Hair Brush.

Velcro Rollers

After blow drying one section of hair, Sophie rolls the hair around a jumbo Velcro roller starting at the bottom and rolling up then pins the hair to the roller with 2 alligator clips. This helps set the curl so it lasts longer and gives the hair volume and body. She doesn’t say what size they are, but they appear to be about 1 3/4″. This Dry Bar ‘High Tops’ Self-Grip Rollers set includes 1 3/4″-2 1/2″ rollers which would both work individually or together to get this style.

For all of the rollers you want to roll the hair under so it doesn’t flip out. In the front or crown section of the hair Sophie separates her hair into 3 sections. She then over-directs her hair to the front of her head while blow drying to give it extra lift. Sophie puts in the Velcro roller starting with the hair over-directed (as opposed to straight up above her head) near the face and rolls it away from the face/towards the back of the head to help set and keep lots of volume. Even though the Velcro rollers are “self-grip” you still will want some alligator clips to hold the rollers in place. She says she generally uses 2 rollers at the bottom, 2 in the middle, and 3 at the top.