The short answer (prices checked 9 November 2026)
- Lowest cost per guaranteed year is the TRESemme Ceramic Straightener at £17.00 with a three year guarantee, which works out at £5.67 for each year the maker stands behind it.
- The chart leader is the Remington Shine Therapy S8500 at £21.99, number one in Amazon UK's Hair Straighteners chart and number 23 in all of Beauty. Its listing gives two different guarantee lengths, so its figure is either £7.33 or £4.40 a year.
- The dearest year belongs to the ghd Unplugged: £249.00 against a two year guarantee, so £124.50 a year, about 22 times the TRESemme.
- Electricity barely registers. Styling for ten minutes a day, five days a week, comes to 43 hours a year, which costs 28.3p at 25W and £2.26 at 200W. The hardware is the cost, not the running.
- Our audit finding: not one of the top 20 listings states a wattage, because hair care appliances are not on the UK energy labelling list. We checked the maker's own manual too, and it isn't there either.
Straighteners are a Black Friday and Christmas staple, and the Amazon UK chart right now is a strange shape. A £21.99 Remington sits at number one, ahead of ghd models at £129 and £174, and it's number 23 across the whole Beauty department. That's unusual enough to be worth a look, so we costed the chart rather than the marketing.
The obvious question for a site that costs appliances is what one of these costs to run. The answer turned out to be a story in itself, and it starts with a gap in the rules.
How this page was made
Prices and specs last checked by Look Into on 9 November 2026 · next check 4 January 2027 · how we picked
Prices in this table come from Amazon and are refreshed at least once a day, with the date of the last update under the table. The cost-per-use and running-cost figures on this page use prices Look Into read on 9 November 2026, so they can differ from today's price.
Compare live prices for every pick
As an Amazon Associate, Look Into earns from qualifying purchases. Product prices and availability are accurate as of 9 November 2026 10:43 am and are subject to change.
The appliance with no energy label
UK energy labelling covers 17 product groups. The government's guidance lists them: air conditioners and comfort fans, dishwashers, domestic ovens and range hoods, electronic displays including televisions, lighting products, local space heaters, professional refrigerated storage, refrigerating appliances, refrigerating appliances with a direct sales function, smart phones in Northern Ireland, solid fuel boilers, solid fuel local space heaters, space heaters, household tumble driers, ventilation units, washing machines and washer-dryers, and water heaters.
Hair care appliances are on none of them. A washing machine has to carry a kWh figure by law. A straightener has to carry nothing at all. We went looking for the wattage of the UK's best selling straightener and came back empty four times over: the Amazon listing has no figure, Remington's own UK instruction manual has no figure, the international version of that manual has no figure, and the AO product page has no figure. The Remington manual gives the voltage and nothing else.
The contrast is sharp if you have read our label work. We costed the top 20 washing machines, dishwashers, freezers and televisions straight off their energy labels, because every one of those has to carry a kWh figure. For a straightener there is nothing to read.
So here's the honest version. We can't tell you what a particular straightener draws, because nobody publishes it. What we can do is show you the whole plausible range, and let you see that the answer hardly matters.
What a year of straightening costs, at every wattage it could be
Ten minutes a day, five days a week, is 43 hours of styling a year. At the Ofgem price cap for 1 October to 31 December 2026, electricity costs 26.32p per kWh, the rate our UK Running Cost Index runs on. That gives:
- At 25W, 43 hours is 1.1 kWh, or 28.3p a year.
- At 50W, 2.2 kWh, or 56.6p a year.
- At 100W, 4.3 kWh, or £1.13 a year.
- At 200W, 8.6 kWh, or £2.26 a year.
The spread across that whole range is under two pounds. Even the worst case is under half of what the cheapest straightener on this page costs for a single guaranteed year. Forgetting one on is cheap too: a full 60 minute auto shut-off window at 100W is 2.6p. The fire risk is the reason to care about that window, not the meter.
Which leaves one cost that actually separates these products, and it's the one nobody prints on the box.
Cost per guaranteed year
Take the price you pay and divide it by the number of years the maker promises to stand behind the thing. That's the cost of a guaranteed year. It's a blunt figure and it says nothing about how long a straightener lasts beyond its guarantee, but it's the only durability number any of these listings actually commit to, and it separates them by a factor of 22.
How we picked these
We read Amazon UK's Hair Straighteners chart and the first 20 unsponsored results for "hair straighteners" on 9 November 2026, opened every listing we've cited, and chose six with genuinely different jobs rather than six of the same iron in different colours. Every ASIN was checked on its own product page for title, price and stock. Prices and chart positions are from 9 November 2026 and move, especially through the Black Friday sale.
Look Into has not handled these products: every figure comes from the maker, the listing or a named source, read on the date shown.
| Straightener | Chart | Price, 9 Nov | Guarantee | Per guaranteed year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TRESemme Ceramic | 7 | £17.00 | 3 years | £5.67 |
| BaByliss Smooth Pro 235 | 16 | £34.99 | 5 years | £7.00 |
| Remington Shine Therapy S8500 | 1 | £21.99 | 3 or 5 years, both stated | £7.33 or £4.40 |
| Remington S5515 Extra-Slim | 5 | £24.99 | none stated | cannot be worked out |
| ghd Original | 3 | £129.00 | 2 years | £64.50 |
| ghd Unplugged | 80 | £249.00 | 2 years | £124.50 |
TRESemme Ceramic Straightener
Price: check the live price on Amazon · up to 230°C · £5.67 a guaranteed year · number 7 in Hair Straighteners, 9 November 2026
The cheapest way to buy a guaranteed year of straightener, by a clear margin. Seventeen pounds against a three year guarantee is £5.67 a year, which is less than a tenth of what the ghd Original works out at. The listing claims a 30 second heat up and a 2.2m swivel cord, and it ships with a heat mat.
The catch: two heat settings, so there's no fine control if your hair needs a low temperature, and we found no auto shut-off anywhere in its listing. That matters more than the two settings do.
Remington Shine Therapy S8500
Price: check the live price on Amazon · 9 settings, 150°C to 230°C · £7.33 a guaranteed year · number 1 in Hair Straighteners, 9 November 2026
Number one in the category and number 23 in the whole Beauty department, which is the part worth pausing on. At £21.99 it's outselling irons at six and eight times the price. It has the fastest claimed heat up of our picks at 15 seconds, floating plates, a digital display and a 60 minute auto shut-off that its manual spells out.
The catch: the listing argues with itself. Its specification table says three years of warranty while its bullets promise five, plus one more on registration, so the guaranteed year costs either £7.33 or £4.40 depending on which you believe. The same table sets a maximum of 221.1°C where the title says 230°C, which looks like 430°F converted and left in.
BaByliss Smooth Pro 235
Price: check the live price on Amazon · 6 settings, 140°C to 235°C · £7.00 a guaranteed year · number 16 in Hair Straighteners, 9 November 2026
Five years is the longest guarantee of anything in the top 20, and it drags a £34.99 iron down to £7.00 a guaranteed year, within pennies of the chart leader. It's one of only ten listings in the 20 that states an automatic shut-off, and it gives the interval as an hour. Locking plates make it easier to pack.
The catch: the five year guarantee appears in the bullet copy rather than the specification table, so it's a marketing claim you'd be relying on at the counter. It also sells the lowest of our corded picks, at number 16.
Remington S5515 Extra-Slim
Price: check the live price on Amazon · 9 settings, 150°C to 230°C · guaranteed year cannot be worked out · number 5 in Hair Straighteners, 9 November 2026
The narrow-plate answer, and the only pick here aimed at hair a standard iron struggles with. Remington says the plates are 45% slimmer than its standard ones, which is what makes a pixie cut, a bob, a fringe or a beard workable. Same 15 second heat up and same nine settings as its bigger sibling, and it sits at number 5 on the chart.
The catch: no guarantee length appears anywhere in the listing, so the one durability figure we costed every other pick on simply isn't there. The 45% and 75% figures are both measured against other Remington models, which the small print says plainly.
ghd Original
Price: check the live price on Amazon · one setting, 185°C · £64.50 a guaranteed year · number 3 in Hair Straighteners, 9 November 2026
ghd's argument is that you shouldn't get a choice: one temperature, 185°C, on every model it sells. It's the most popular expensive iron in the chart at number 3, the listing claims a 30 second heat up, and it drops into a sleep mode after 30 minutes untouched. ghd's own help page gives the temperature as 365°F and the heat up as 30 seconds, and no wattage.
The catch: £129 against a two year guarantee is £64.50 a guaranteed year, about nine times the chart leader's figure. The fixed temperature is the point of the thing, but it does mean no lower setting if your hair is fine or bleached.
ghd Unplugged
Price: check the live price on Amazon · cordless, 185°C · £124.50 a guaranteed year · number 80 in Hair Straighteners, 9 November 2026
The only cordless iron we costed, and the only one you can use away from a socket. ghd quotes up to 20 minutes of continuous styling, a two hour charge over USB-C, a 45 second heat up and cabin luggage approval. If you style in hotel rooms or at the gym, nothing else here does the job.
The catch: £249 against the same two year guarantee as the £129 Original, so £124.50 a guaranteed year, 22 times the TRESemme. It sleeps after three minutes of non-use, which is short enough to interrupt a slow styling session, and it sits at number 80 on the chart.
What the top 20 listings actually state
We read the first 20 unsponsored results for "hair straighteners" on amazon.co.uk on 9 November 2026 and counted claims across four places only: the product title, the feature bullets, the technical specification tables and the product description. Here's the count.
- 0 of 20 state a wattage. The only numbers followed by a W were the width fields in the dimensions.
- 19 of 20 state a maximum plate temperature, ranging from 185°C to 235°C. The one that doesn't is the ghd Chronos at £219.
- 10 of 20 state an automatic shut-off or sleep interval. The other half say nothing about it at all.
- Those intervals range from 3 minutes to 60 minutes, a 20-fold spread, and ghd's own range spans it: 30 minutes on the Original, 3 minutes on the Unplugged.
- The best seller's specification table gives a maximum of 221.1°C while its own title says 230°C, and gives three years of warranty while its own bullets say five.
Temperature is the one figure the category reliably publishes, which makes sense, because it's the one the marketing is built on. Power isn't advertised by anyone, and no rule says it has to be. If you want to know what yours draws, a plug-in energy monitor is the only route left, and we've costed those in our running cost work.
Questions people ask
Do hair straighteners have an energy rating?
No. UK energy labelling applies to 17 product groups, covering things like fridges, washing machines, tumble driers, televisions and space heaters. Hair care appliances aren't among them, so no maker has to declare a kWh or watt figure for a straightener, and in practice none does.
How much electricity does a hair straightener use?
Nobody publishes the figure, so the honest answer is a range. Ten minutes a day, five days a week, is 43 hours a year, and across 25W to 200W that costs between 28.3p and £2.26 at the October to December 2026 cap rate of 26.32p per kWh. Whatever your iron actually draws, the answer lands inside a couple of pounds a year.
What does it cost to leave a straightener on?
A full 60 minute auto shut-off window at 100W costs 2.6p. The money isn't the reason to worry about it. Only half the top 20 listings state a shut-off interval at all, and the ones that do range from 3 minutes to a full hour, so it's worth finding your model's figure before you rely on it.
Is an expensive straightener worth the money?
We can't answer that on styling results, because we haven't handled these. On cost we can: a £129 ghd Original carries a two year guarantee and a £17 TRESemme carries three, so the ghd costs about eleven times as much for each year its maker will stand behind it. Whether the styling justifies that is a judgement about your hair, not about arithmetic.
How long are hair straighteners guaranteed for?
Across our six picks the range is two to five years, with one listing stating no guarantee at all and another stating two different lengths in two different places. BaByliss gives the longest at five years, ghd the shortest at two, on both a £129 iron and a £249 one.
Sources
- GOV.UK, Regulations: energy information, for the list of 17 product groups that require an energy label.
- Amazon UK Best Sellers, Hair Straighteners, for chart positions on 9 November 2026.
- Remington S8500 UK instruction manual, for the 60 minute automatic safety shut off and the absence of a wattage.
- AO, Remington S8500 product page, checked for a wattage figure.
- ghd help centre, ghd Original styler, for the 365°F temperature and 30 second heat up.
Prices and chart positions were read on Amazon UK on 9 November 2026 and change often. Look Into is an Amazon Associate and earns from qualifying purchases; the links above are affiliate links and the price you pay is the same either way.
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