When it comes to looking after your hair, you often have to choose from a multitude of products. Some are particularly suited to fine hair, others to hair that is oily or dry and brittle. How do you know for sure what your hair type is?
Why is it important to know your type of hair?
While it is rather easy to tell if you have straight, wavy, or curly hair, it is a bit more tricky to pinpoint precisely what type of hair you have.
And as if it wasn’t already complicated enough, our hair can change roughly every seven years, mainly due to hormones, illnesses, treatments, or diet. It is not uncommon to have oily hair, particularly in your teenage years, which becomes dry hair over time. In the same way, straight hair won’t necessarily stay straight throughout your life.
It is important to know how to identify your hair type so you can use the right shampoo and treatments for your hair. For example, you can’t use shampoo for dry hair on oily hair to take care of your beautiful mane, as you risk weighing your hair down even more.
Fine, normal, or thick hair?
We are all different, and we all have different hair. Some people have fine hair, others very thick hair. It is worth bearing in mind that what we are talking about here concerns the thickness of the hair itself and not its volume. It is perfectly possible to have a lot of fine hair, which gives the impression of thick and dense locks.
To find out if you have fine, normal, or thick hair, wait until your hair is clean and dry, and then carefully pluck out a hair strand, place it on a piece of white paper and compare it to a sewing thread. If your hair is thinner than the thread, you have fine hair. If it is roughly about the same thickness, you have normal hair. And if your hair is thicker than the thread, you have thick hair.
Another test you can do is to hold the hair strand between your thumb and your index finger
If you easily feel it, it is thick.
If you can feel it slightly, it is normal.
If you can hardly feel it or not at all, then it is thin.
And for more precision, you can enjoy the experience offered by e-HairDiag by ELENATURE, an online hair diagnostic that makes it possible to learn more about your hair and receive a personalized hair care routine.
ELENATURE has developed HairDiag, a high-tech device that allows you to know everything about your hair and scalp thanks to a 100x zoom. This device is available in its points of sale at special events and soon in the L’Atelier du Sourcil by IEVA permanently.
Dry, normal, or oily hair?
While it is a bit more obvious to know if you have oily or dry hair, it can sometimes be complicated to tell them apart from normal hair. We are talking about the condition and not the type of hair.
- Oily hair has an excess of sebum. It gets greasy and shiny just a few hours or the day after washing. The hair is weighed down and quickly loses its volume.
- Dry hair is fragile, brittle, and dull. It is not soft to the touch, can often feel like straw, and gets easily tangled. As it lacks moisture, your hair can become damaged, and split ends may appear.
- Normal hair is easy to comb and untangle. It stays clean, lightweight, shiny, and soft to touch for several days after washing.
- Mixed hair: your hair is oily at the roots with dry ends. This is not normal and is often the result of unsuitable treatments or not properly taking care of your hair. The oily hair with dry ends effect is mostly caused by too much dying or bleaching, blow-drying, straightening treatments, or heating devices.
Andre Walker hair typing system
The famous American hairstylist, Andre Walker, created a hair classification system, which divides the hair into four different categories, which are themselves split into several sub-categories.
Hair categories
Type 1: Straight
Type 2: Wavy
Type 3: Curly
Type 4: Kinky
Sub-categories
1A: Straight and very thin.
1B: Straight and medium-textured.
1C: Straight and thick.
2A: Loose waves or almost straight, medium-textured.
2B: Wavy from mid-lengths and thicker than type 2A.
2C: Very wavy from the root, coarse, and prone to frizz.
3A: Fine, frizzy with large curls.
3B: Medium-textured, frizzy with tight, well-defined curls.
3C: Thick, frizzy hair with very tight curls.
4A: Tightly coiled curls from the root with a “z” shape pattern.
4B: Extremely tightly z-angled curls, poor curl definition with cotton wool texture.
4C: So tightly coiled that the curls are barely visible. Hair is fine and fragile.
