What’s Your Curl Type? (2025) Leave a comment

Like, as an illustration, how you can brush them. My mom has straight hair and did not fairly perceive how you can cope with my curls after I was a baby, so she would cope with unruly hair the one approach she knew how: by brushing it. Consequently, I appear like a poodle in almost each one among my elementary faculty pictures. In line with Syed, brushing and brushing curly hair is OK—however solely when the hair is moist.

Unsurprisingly, pin-straight Kind 1 hair is the simplest to comb or brush. Nevertheless, Kind 4 hair isn’t 4 occasions more durable to comb, as one may anticipate, however 23 occasions tougher, based on Syed. And that is solely when it is moist. When it is dry? “About 32 occasions tougher to comb,” he says.

Curly hair and combs not mixing isn’t new data to curly-haired people, however you won’t know why that is so. The shaft of a strand of straight hair is uniformly tubular—“like a cylinder,” says Syed—which supplies it a uniform construction and loads of energy. “Kind 1 hair is nearly two occasions stronger than the coily hair,” he says. The shaft of a strand of curly hair, nevertheless, is oval-shaped. The extra oval-shaped the shaft, actually, the curlier the hair finally ends up being.

A part of this energy—or lack of, within the case of curls—comes from the variety of cuticle layers and the place they’re distributed. “The straight hair has about six to 10 layers” all through, Syed says, “whereas the coily hair, the place it’s crimping, solely has a few layers from the within of the crimp after which outdoors six to 10. So it turns into very sophisticated in its bodily construction.”

Care and Extra

Extra fragile hair means it is extra breakable. And breakage = frizz and flyaways.

“Kind 3 curls (particularly 3b and 3c) are extremely delicate to warmth injury,” says Suzette Boozer, Dippity-Do curly hair expert and movie star hairstylist who has labored with everybody from Gwen Stefani to Janelle Monae. “It’s important to keep away from exhausting urgent and at all times use a top quality warmth protectant. With out this care, the curls can grow to be limp, frizzy, and even lose their sample completely.”

This is without doubt one of the causes that utilizing a warmth protectant in your hair care routine is so essential—it supplies a barrier between the software and the hair shaft to maintain it from weakening additional or drying out. And talking of drying out, you probably have curly hair, you may wish to contemplate attempting a hydrating hair masks or a software like Sample’s hair steamer, which may help high-porosity hair take in humectants and different moisturizing elements extra simply.

“Kind 4 textures, notably 4b and 4c hair, will be tougher to work with if the hair isn’t correctly moisturized and detangled,” Boozer says. “This curl kind is vulnerable to dryness, breakage, and shrinkage, and with out the proper prep, the hair can tangle or snap throughout styling. Moisture is essential, together with mild detangling strategies and protecting styling decisions that protect the integrity of the hair.”

{Photograph}: Louryn Strampe

WIRED reviewer Louryn Strampe steams her Kind 2a wavy hair.

Syed additionally notes the significance of utilizing the proper merchandise—from leave-in conditioner and masks to mousse—on your kind of hair. How nicely your hair absorbs product is determined by its kind as nicely. Kind 1 has considerably much less porosity than kinds of curly hair, however the porosity will increase with the diploma of curl, with Kind 4 hair being probably the most porous.

Hair porosity “has particular significance on the subject of weather-related styling points, and likewise the product penetrations and the way they make the hair behave in styling,” says Syed. “Typically the hair can grow to be very unruly if the hair could be very porous, as a result of then it’s absorbing humidity.”