What’s Your Hair Type? How to Treat and Color Your Hair Based on Your Hair Type
@azrael.does.hair in Wrath and Poison Before you dive into the world of color, knowing your type is an absolute MUST. Once you get it down, you’ll know how long to leave color on your hair, what hair products your hair can’t go without, and what your coloring routine should look like to get you the shade of your dreams. Let’s get to it, Fox! Finding Your Hair Type If you don’t know what your hair type is, there’s a SUPER easy way to tell. Next time you wash your hair, don’t put any product in it and let it air dry naturally. If it comes out straight, you have straight hair (type 1), if there’s a little wave, you’ve got wavy hair (type 2). If your hair dries curly, you have one of two hair types. Type 3 curly hair will have springy ringlets or corkscrew curl patterns, but it’s not as dense as coily hair. Coily hair is classified as type 4 and has dense spirals, zig zag patterns, and shrinks when it dries. Type 4 hair is more prone to breakage and can be more fragile than other hair types, so it needs just a bit of extra love and care with a special hair care routine to make sure it’s as healthy and strong as it can be! @iridescentsoulx in Frosé over faded Poison Finding Your Hair Texture Once you’ve figured out your hair type, it’s time to learn more about the texture of your hair. Which is what impacts how your hair holds style and color. There are three main textures: Thick Hair This texture has the largest circumference, which makes it slower to absorb color. This just means that you need extra processing time so that it can actually absorb the color you’re wishing to see. It can also be resistant to certain chemical treatments like straightening or perming, so be mindful if you’re looking into treating your hair! Medium Hair Landing right in the middle, because of its middle-range of circumference, medium hair has no special consideration for how much color to use, or adjustments to processing time. Fine Hair This hair texture usually processes quickly and is very easy to lighten! It is prone to over-processing and damage from chemical treatments, so less is more if you’re working with fine hair. @lisovskihair in Poison and Neon Moon How to Find Your Hair Texture Guess what!? There’s also an insanely easy way (and kind of fun way) to tell what your hair texture is. Take a few strands from your hair brush and lay them next to a piece of sewing thread. Try to make them both a similar length so you can see the difference really well and place them side by side on a flat surface. Thick hair will be thicker than the thread, medium hair about the same size as the thread, and fine hair will be considerably thinner than the thread. The way your hair tends to hold styles is also indicative of the type of hair you may have. Fine hair doesn’t hold a curl very well or for very long, medium hair is pretty easy to style and can hold style for longer, and thick hair holds curls very well, but it can also be more difficult to style because it’s less pliable. @lyn_bax in Ginger Flare, Cosmic Sunshine, and Space Cowgirl Finding Your Porosity The porosity of your hair impacts how your hair absorbs moisture, water, and product. You can imagine when you’re dying your hair, the porosity of your hair makes a huge difference on how the color actually shows up! Porosity is directly connected to the condition of the cuticle layer of your hair, which you can think of as the shield your hair has for the inner layers of hair. Your hair naturally has a certain level of porosity, but factors like environment, chemical processing, and heat styling make a huge impact. A healthy average is right where it’s at when it comes to hair porosity - highly porous hair is likely damaged and absorbs moisture too quickly because the cuticle layer is open causing it to release moisture really fast. If you’re doing any sort of chemical processing to hair with high porosity, you have to be really careful! Color will take super quickly and can end up being over saturated. If you’ve noticed that your hair gets super dark or vibrant when you color it at first, but then fades really fast, your hair is probably highly porous. Low porous hair is resistant to absorbing moisture, harder to process, and resistant to hair color because the cuticles are tight and hard to open. If you’ve noticed that color doesn’t stick to your hair very well, you may need more dye or a longer processing time to help it sink into your strands. Next time you wash your hair, set aside a bowl of water and grab a freshly clean strand from the shower or your brush. When it dries, drop it into the bowl of water and pay attention to what happens next! If it immediately sinks to the bottom, it’s highly porous. If it floats somewhere in the middle with ease, then it has normal porosity. If it stays at the top and takes a really long time to sink, your hair has low porosity. The good news is you can help out your strands wherever they land on the range of porosity! For highly porous hair, use hair care infused with keratin, argan oil, and ginseng root extract. This will help repair damaged hair, and lead to stronger and healthier strands. Be sure to protect your hair from heat and the environment as well! Once you start to reverse the damage done to your hair, you’ll see color last longer and hold better. If your hair has low porosity, let the color sit for longer when it’s processing so it can work its way in. @tallulah.cosmo in Wrath Finding Your Hair Elasticity There’s one last thing, Fox! Your hair is also elastic - which literally indicates how much pulling or stretching your strands can handle before they break. The more heat and/or chemical damage, sun exposure, and aging hair experiences, the less elastic it will be. Hair that has a high level of elasticity is much easier to color, while hair with low elasticity is more prone to breakage and is likely to be resistant to color or other treatments. The next time your hair is wet, choose a strand and hold it tight. Stretch it as much as you can! If the strand stretches and returns back to its original length when you let go, it has good elasticity, but if it breaks or doesn’t return to its original shape, it has low elasticity. If you find that your strands have low elasticity, no worries! Get a shampoo and conditioner with lots of keratin, which will nourish your hair with the protein naturally found in hair and nails, making it stronger and more elastic. Over time, you’ll have softer, stronger, and healthier hair that holds color well and doesn’t fade easily. Rocking a bold and bright shade is such a freeing form of self-expression, but you’ll see the best results when you’re working with a good base. Explore our vegan and cruelty-free hair care line, packed with nutrients and oils that are nourishing AND moisturizing. And next time you’re ready to switch up your color, you’ll know exactly how to treat your strands for the most breathtaking results!
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