Dianne is the co-founder of Natural Haircare News and Coils To Locs.com. She's been blogging about natural hair ever since she made the decision to break free of the creamy crack in 2012.
Latest posts by Dianne Austin (see all)
Curl typing or hair typing is important if you want to achieve the best results in terms of caring for, managing and styling your natural hair.
A lot of women though, who wear their hair natural, are opposed to curl typing because it ‘divides the natural community’.
Although identifying your curl type is not the perfect solution to understanding your hair, it does offer you a very good starting point. If you know your curl type, it will be easier for you to choose products that are suitable for your hair and find guidance for proper handling of your particular hair type.
This article on Tribe Called Curl simplifies hair typing and offers tips on how to make it work for you.
From: Lazy Naturals: Three Ways to Make Hair Typing Work For You
1) Make It Your Cheat Sheet
Hair typing shorthand is easy to grasp if you keep your eye on the big picture and ignore the details (those pesky letters). It’s most useful for styling and moisturizing cues. Bottom line, most Black women fall into either the type 3 or type 4 categories. Type 3 curls range from big fat ringlets to pencil sized spirals. Type 4 crosses over the curl border into kinks, which may have no discernible curl pattern. Coils are somewhere in the middle of type 4. The A, B, C lettering originally referred to thickness and strand size, but are now used to indicated the size of a curl or coil. (So a 3c is tighter than a 3a, and so on). That’s the cliff notes version of the system. For an excellent, thorough analysis, read this Natural Hair Rules article. If you’re new to the natural world, use the system to figure out where your hair falls in the curly hair pantheon. Be sure and examine a cross section of curls, because the loose nature of the system means there are many discrepancies when it comes to categorization For example, popular and adorable vlogger Naptural85 describes her hair as “4a/4b” while we would place her in the “3c/4a” based on her wave pattern. Most people have multiple textures on their heads. The curlier your locks, the more fragile they are. Each bend or curve is a weak point on the hair strand. Contrary to popular belief, kinky hair is NOT coarse, it’s actually quite fragile and needs the gentlest care.
Author: Pamela
 “Changing attitudes about natural hair” is what we do at Natural Haircare News. Through informative articles, podcasts and videos, we go beyond just sharing the latest advice and tips on kinky, curly, wavy haircare – We shake things up and focus on the realities of wearing our hair natural. |
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