Long Healthy Hair Care. How to Type Your Hair

Growing your hair long? Or maybe just wanting to grow out naturally? In this series of articles you will learn the following:

How to type your Hair.

Basics of ‘Safe’ or Low-damage Care

A good set of Tools for most Hair types.

Treatments and Products

Updos and Handling for Low Damage

I’m guessing you opened this up because you either want to grow out your hair, are in the middle of growing out your hair… or are having a bad hair day and are looking for some information to avoid having it happening again. I will first say that I am not a professional stylist. My livelihood is not dependent on selling goop in a bottle to anyone. I don’t have an ax to grind when it comes to haircare, I just want to share what I have learned. This will be the first in a short series of articles on this subject.

Most of my knowledge comes from the very wise people of the Long Hair Community forum. What I can offer is by necessity but a brief overview of all the knowledge out there on natural hair care. It goes without saying that there is always more to it then just this! Look around! Read! Don’t be afraid to try something new! And most important, enjoy your hair!

For the best hair care possible it is best to know what kind of hair you have on your head to start off with. I will use the system I know best, FIA’s. FIA has split hair into four main categories, straight, wavy, curly and kinky. It is my opinion that truly kinky hair may be better served by the LOIS system; it is more exacting to that hairtype. I will lay that out as well. Within the first three classes of FIA are three further subdivisions to signify the exact extent of the wavy or curl.

To find your natural hair type you must wash your hair. Clarify if you normally use a lot of product. Use a good conditioner too. Then allow your hair to dry naturally with as little toweling or touching as you can stand. Don’t comb, brush or put it up. You want what your hair does on it’s own… not so much what you can get it to do! The LOIS system will also ask you to examine a clean and naturally died single strand of hair that comes from what the majority of your hair looks like.

First I will quickly run through FIA and then I will lay out LOIS to avoid confusion between the two. Again, FIA is suitable for every hairtype, if it is a little vague towards the top of the curly scale. LOIS was designed for kinky-curly hair like that often found on people of African decent as such doesn’t cover the straight hair’d people.

Curliness.

The number 1 is given to those with naturally straight hair.

Straight (1)
1a – stick straight (stereotypical Asian hair)
1b – straight but with a slight body wave
1c – straight with body wave and one or two very small S waves.

Wavy. (2)
2a – Big loose S waves throughout the hair
2b – Shorter and more noticeable S waves throughout the hair.
2c – Shorter S waves with a few spiral curls forming here and there.

Curly. (3)
3a – Big, loose curls with the rough diameter of a sidewalk chalk.
3b – Tighter, bouncy curls or ringlets roughly the size of a pencil.
3c – Tighter still, small corkscrews.

Kinky. (4)
4a – tightly coiled S-curls
4b – tightly coiled hair with a Z pattern

Texture.

Texture has nothing to do with wave or curl pattern or ethnicity. It only has to do with the thickness of the individual hair strands in FIA.

For comparison get yourself a strand of sewing thread. Snip it into three pieces. Pull one of them into two strands by separating them. Keep one of them normal. Wind the last one with that half a strand you pulled from the first. While this is not exact as to fine and coarse hair, medium textured hair is normally roughly the same size as that intact second thread.

Fine hair is often almost translucent. Loose hairs may be hard to see on any background. Often people with a Scandinavian heritage will have fine hair.
If you roll a strand of fine hair between your fingers you may not feel it or it will feel like a thin strand of silk.

Medium hair are neither fine nor coarse. Similar to hair found on many Caucasians.
Rolling a strand between your thumb and index finger will be like rolling the sewing thread. You can feel it, but it isn’t stiff, rough nor is it fine and silky.

Coarse hair has thick strands. Shed hair is easily identified against most backgrounds. It is often found on many people of Asian or Native American heritage.
Rolling a strand between your thumb and index finger feels hard and wiry. It may actually make a noise!

Volume.

Simply put, this is a measurement of just how much hair you have on your head. There is no ‘good’ thickness, it is just the luck of genetics and the work of diet and care at play here. Each thickness has it’s ups and downs. Thinner hair makes for lovely updos and cute buns. Thicker hair lends itself well to fat braids.

First make a ponytail that holds as much of your hair as possible. If your hair is thickest at the top of your skull, then that is where you put the ponytail. Using either a string or a dressmaker’s soft ruler, wrap your measuring device around your ponytail right underneath the holder. Measure. The number given is the circumference of your ponytail. If you have bangs that take up a lot of hair, take this into account.

i – ‘thin’ (less than 2 inches/5 centimeters)
ii – ‘normal’ (between 2-4 inches or 5-10 centimeters)
iii – ‘thick’ (more than 4 inches/10 centimeters)

The LOIS Hair Typing System.

This is a system aimed specifically at the curliest hair there is, kinky-curly, the 4s of the FIA system. It is generally found on people of African heritage but not always.

Curl pattern:

The bends, kinks and coils of your hair will resemble one or more of the letters L, O, I or S.

L – If the hair has all bends, right angles and folds with little to no curve then you are a L.

O – If the strand is rolled up into the shape of one or several 0s or a spiral, then you are an O.

I – If the hair lies mostly flat and straightish with no distinctive curve or bend you are an I.

S – If the strand looks like a wavy line or a winding road then you are a S.

You may have a combination of the LOIS letters. One may be dominate or not. If you cannot see one letter over the others, then combine the letters to get your hair type. Example, if a man has half his hair all bends and no curves and the other half coiled up like a stack of 0s then he would be a LO.

Strand thickness in LOIS is the same as in FIA’s definition of ‘Texture’.

Texture In LOIS deals with how the hair looks and behaves as a whole.

Shine is a sharp reflection of light while sheen is a dull reflection of light.

Thready” – Hair has a low sheen, with high shine if the hair is held taut (as in a braid), with low frizz. Wets easily but water dries out quickly.

Wiry” – Hair has a sparkly sheen, with low shine and low frizz. Water beads up or bounces off the hair strands. Hair never seems to get fully wet.

Cottony” – Hair has a low sheen, a high shine if the hair is held taunt and has high frizz. Absorbs water quickly but does not get thoroughly wet very fast.

Spongy” – Hair has a high sheen with low shine with a compacted looking frizz. Absorbs water before it gets thoroughly wet.

Silky” – Hair has low sheen, a very high shine, with a lot or low frizz. Easily wets in water.

And that is basically it as far as visible typing goes. There are other systems and methods, yes. These two however capture the vast majority of human hair out there quite nicely.

Not so Obvious Typing.

Now that we know the degree of curl, the thickness and other visible properties of your hair we can move onto the harder to test but just as important qualities. There are two I will briefly cover here.

Elasticity.

This is a measure of how far your hair will stretch wet and dry. Normal and highly elastic hair as a rule will stretch around 50% when wet without damage. It should stretch around 20% without damage when dry. It should then return to its normal size. Hair with low elasticity will not return to it’s former size and may even snap in two when pulled. This is important as hair with low elasticity will have problems holding styles, may break easily and take damage faster.

Porosity.

This is the measurement of how well your hair absorbs moisture. This is controlled by the cuticle of the hair, the tiny overlapping fish-like scales found on each and every hair. In normal hair the cuticle is compact and does a good job controlling both the entrance and exit of moisture in the hair shaft. When the cuticle is overly-compact you get low porosity hair. This hair type is harder to chemically process and harder to both dry out and moisturize. Highly porous hair has an open cuticle. This hair type sucks up moisture but dries out fast. Chemical treatments easily damage this hair type. There are a number of tests to learn this quality.

Why is this Important?

I will tell you why. Those of us with fine hair will treat it differently then those of us with coarser hair. “Fine’ hair does not always mean ‘thin’ hair and ‘thin’ hair may have a lot of body due to the curls in it. Porous hair cannot handle the same amount of abuse as non-porous hair and needs different care. The products you choose, the methods you employ to get good hair, should be guided by an understanding of what Nature has seen to give you. Otherwise you may never get the good hair you deserve.

In my next article I will be covering Basics of Care and Good Tools. Stay tuned!


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