Women’s Hair Types

While there is more hair to control when your hair is coarse, it’s not harder to control if you

• Have carefully considered hair cutting techniques, layers, and shapes.
• Use the right home care products, that are moisture based.
• Get regular salon trims
• Have a haircare regime that works for you

It is not bad at all to have coarse hair, in-fact as a hairstylist for over 30 years it has only been on a handful of occasions that I have struggled with coarse hair, and this was to do with penetrating the hair shaft with hair color.

For devising a great haircut for coarse hair, or indeed styling hair to last, coarse hair was always obedient and was easy to work with.

Coarse hair is generally identified by a thick hair shaft, measured at around 120 microns and above. Another way of knowing if your hair is coarse is to grab just one hair and roll it between your fingers, if you feel it as textured and it looks wider than a piece of sewing thread it is coarse.

Having medium hair diameter is actually a very good thing, and something that strangely is not mentioned nearly enough. Perhaps it’s because as hairstylists we are too fixated on solving problems, that is to try and find solutions for people that have fine or coarse hair types.

Medium hair types are easy to work with, are the most malleable, and adaptable.

The best hairstyles for hair that has a medium thickness really depends on the hair texture (straight wavy, or curly), the overall condition of the hair, and then other important attributes such as a person’s face shape, personality, home hair styling ability, and time factors. The best hairstyles are the ones that save time, and look great without too much effort.

Medium hair thickness is the diameter of a single hair shaft, measured at around 70 to 80 microns which is roughly the thickness of a piece of copy paper.

Fine hair is not bad at all, in-fact it can be cut to make it appear thicker than it really is by keeping layers longer and blunt cut, all to one length. Fine hair can also be made to look fuller and thicker chemically using permanent waves, and curls.

Fine hair is where the diameter of your hair’s circumference is less than 60 microns and this in hair talk is measured as 16 hairs per millimetre.

Fine hair can be straight, wavy, or curly in texture.

The best haircut for curly hair is the one that suits your curly hair type, face shape, personality, and lifestyle. Above everything else, people with curly hair need a hairstylist that understands geometry and how to shape hair when cutting it.

The shape of your hair follicle, the tube that hair grow out from is what determines curls. For example, people with an oval shaped follicle produce curly hair, while round follicles produce straight hair.

A: Curly hair or Type 3 hair as it’s known is described as where hair grows in coils, spirals, starting with a bend in a hair strand that continues to bend until it forms a ringlet.

Curly hair is considered a dominant gene trait, yes natural curls are determined from well before you are born, made up as a part of your DNA.

Wavy hairstyles come in many shapes and forms that include

• Short wavy layer cuts
• Beach waves hair
• Wavy bobs
• Shag bobs
• Wavy lobs
• Long wavy hair
• Shoulder length wavy hair
• Short wavy pixie cuts
• Wavy hair with bangs
• Mid length wavy hair

Wavy hair types are considered the best hair texture types because;

• Wavy hair can be made smooth and straight looking, with lots of body.
• Wavy hair can also be curled, scrunched where it will hold better and last longer.
• The wavy hair texture can be trained overtime by adjusting the weight distribution by how wavy hair is cut, for example keeping wavy hair long and all one length will make it appear less wavy, while adding layers that reduce weight will do the opposite and make it bounce up.
• Wavy hair and wavy hairstyles are generally much easier and faster to style and manage when left in their natural state.

There are many benefits to having naturally straight hair and these include;

• Straight hair has more shine due to how light hits and reflects back off the smooth surface, and also due to how the cuticle sits smooth down without any bends in the hair shaft.
• Straight hair can be precision cut into classic bobs, eye catching bangs, face framing layers, and solid straight lines.
• Straight hair can be curled either permanently or temporarily just until the hair is wet again.

While all straight hair has no bend or curves, there are 3 categories of straight hair.

1. Type 1A (fine)
2. Type 1B (medium)
3. Type 1C (coarse)

Straight hair can be best described as a strand of hair that when completely dry has no bend, curve, or curl to it.

hair texture can be best described as the diameter and thickness of each individual strand of hair and includes

• Fine
• Medium
• Coarse

However, most people will say their hair texture is straight, wavy, or curly, with rarely ever mentioning the thickness of each hair strand. Indeed, hairstylists around the globe will often say a person has straight, wavy, or curly hair texture on a thickness of hair type.

In some countries, hair stylists will insist that hair texture is all about the thickness of hair strands, while hair elasticity relates to straight, smooth, wavy, or curly hair types.

On HSC, we use the term hair texture as straight, wavy, curly, or very curly hair.

Wavy hair is also known as Type 2 hair, also best described as hair that has a twist, where soft S shapes form that don’t really ever complete the (S) into an (8), or curl. Some wavy hair is mistakenly described as big open soft curls, however a way to tell way form curly is how the large elongated diameter between the S appears like waves in the ocean, hence why we it’s called wavy hair.