Do hair diffusers work?

[Rivett]

I would love to have those corkscrew curls even for a day!

My hair is fine flat yet fizzy….

A diffuser works on my wavy (2a+2b) hair but I have to put in a lot of product (gels, curl cream etc) and scrunch when soaking wet to give me curls. I hair plop in a towel/ tshirt and then mostly air dry (which takes hours) then gently diffuse with mousse on. Once dry I have to scrunch with hair oil to get rid of the gel crunch.
It's quite curly on day 1, day 2+3 is like beachy waves after I've slept on it.

Or I blow dry it straight and curl afterwards which is much quicker and fewer products used but more likely to have heat damage.

Yes but they won't miraculously create corkscrew curls on their own.

If your hair is 'fine but fizzy' it's probably wavy hair at heart. So if you added enough conditioner, a curl cream, gel and diffused it you would get some kind of curl. But not necessarily corkscrew if that isn't natural to your hair.

What do you use to Curl after straightening?

I've just started attempting to get my wavy hair curly. I was quite impressed with a diffuser - I would say that it's worth squishing the cream and gel for about 5 minutes. I have very non porous hair that takes about 6-8 hours to dry on its own so the diffusing helped. Im still a bit confused as it feels very straw like when I'm done though even with squeezing out the cast. Not exactly soft curls I'd run my fingers through. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

I'd definitely recommend smoothing over and scrunching hair oil of all the styling at the end to remove the hair crunch from gels.

I use a hair straightener or hair curler to curl if I've blown dried straight-ish depending on how loose or tight I want the curls.

@AnnaMagnani is correct though, if your hair isn't naturally wavy/ curly, you may struggle to get the look you're after. Hair tongs/ curlers/ curling with straighteners will give you a better corkscrew curl than diffusing with a hairdryer