Knowing your skin type is essential if you want to achieve awesome skin, right? Well, hair is no different. If you want to achieve your heavenly hair goals, you need to firstly figure out what type of hair you have.
But don’t be fooled into thinking your hair is one of four types - straight, wavy, curly or spiral (AKA coily). Oh no, that would be way too easy!
Determining your hair type is a little trickier than that. There’s the width of your strands, the number of strands and the shape of your tresses.
Oh my, sounds kinda’ complex doesn’t it? But hey, don’t sweat it - we've got the facts to help you find out your hair type easy peasily.
Take our quick quiz to find out which hair category your terrific tresses fall under.
Texture
Hair texture basically refers to the diameter of your strands. Say what? In simple terms, what we’re looking at is how wide an individual hair strand is. It’ll be either fine, medium or coarse.
To do this, take a single strand of hair. Lay it flat on the table or hold it in your fingertips. If the hair is hard to see, you have fine hair. If you can see the strand quite clearly (without squinting) and it looks quite textured, you have coarse hair. If it’s neither fine or coarse, you can bet your bottom dollar you have medium hair.
- Fine
- Coarse
- Medium
Shape
Next up, let’s determine the shape of the hair. This is where we look at the curls, or lack thereof! If your hair is completely void of any kinks or bends, you have straight hair. If the hair has small ‘S’ shape bends, then it’s wavy. If you see obvious curves, but they’re not super tight, then you have curly tresses. Finally, if those curls are taught, you have spiral hair.
- Straight
- Wavy (has slight s bends)
- Curly
- Spiral (AKA coily or kinky)
Density
Dense is not a word you hear too often when talking about hair. And yet, the density determines how much hair you actually have. In other words, it helps you work out if you have thin, medium or thick hair.
The easiest way to discover your hair density is to take a section of your hair; split it into two so you’re holding half in one hand and half in the other hand and, moving the hands away from each other, bend towards the mirror.
Can you see your scalp? If you can easily see the scalp, your hair is thin. If it’s quite hard to see the scalp, your hair is thick and if it’s in-between, then your hair is most likely medium density.
- Thin
- Medium
- Thick
Porosity
Is your mane a moisture magnet? If it sucks up moisture faster than a kiddo can drink a chocolate milkshake, it has a high porosity. What does this mean exactly? Well, if you are trying to add moisture to the hair you’ll need to use a fair bit of product before the hair will look visibly hydrated. You might also want to avoid too much heat styling.
A good (and simple) trick to work out the porosity of your hair is to pop a strand of your precious hair into a bowl of water.
If it sinks to the bottom, this is because it’s absorbed the moisture and this means it has a high porosity. If it neither sinks or floats but hangs about in the middle of the bowl, you can assume it has a medium (normal) porosity. Lastly, if the hair floats on top of the water this means it has a low porosity.
- Low porosity
- Normal porosity
- High porosity
Scalp health
It’s easy to overlook the health of your scalp when you’re trying to work out your hair type. However, your scalp is essential to the look and feel of your tresses. After all, an oily scalp can leave hair looking dull, while a dry scalp can invite frizz into your life.
The best way to assess your scalp is to take a good look at it a day after you wash your hair. If the roots of your hair feel greasy and sit fairly flat to the head, it’s likely you have an oily scalp. If, on the other hand, your scalp has a little residue or you notice flaking skin, your scalp is probably dry. If the roots of your hair are neither oily or dry, and your scalp doesn’t have signs of flaking, you can assume you have a normal scalp.
- Oily
- Normal
- Dry
Now that you’ve clued up on your hair credentials, you’re ready to choose the perfect hair product for your individual hair type. In other words, time to say goodbye to that mundane mane and hello to lust-worthy locks!
Thankfully you don’t have to do too much of the guesswork when it comes to selecting a naturally powerful Shampoo & Conditioner to tame your mane. Our Happy You S + C work fabulously for ALL hair types and will be available very, very soon.
