HOW TO KNOW YOUR HAIR POROSITY

What is Hair Porosity?

Simply put, hair porosity refers to the ability of your hair to absorb and retain moisture.

If you have ever wondered why water or any form of liquid seems to bounce off your hair and your friend’s hair seems to easily absorb moisture; well, this is for you. The answer is simply in the level of your hair porosity.

Rice Water Treatment

Let’s take a trip down the most highly recommended hair treatment of all time, yes, I am talking Rice water. If you have keyed into this hair treatment and suffered a great deal of disappointment or seen no changes to the volume, length or the overall condition of your hair – this could be as a result of your hair porosity.

This is because it does not work the same for everyone.

For Instance: Low porosity hair may have rice water simply sitting on the surface of your hair, no penetration whatsoever.

Whereas high porosity hair would have rice water treatment working better as your hair absorbs moisture and can lead to more effective result.

Speaking about Types

Moving on, this is an eye opener that your hair porosity can also be at different level; and that brings us to talking about the three different categories of hair porosity. Which are: Low, Medium, and High categories of porosity.

What are the Contributing Factors to Hair Porosity?

If you’ve got this question nabbing at you, well here’s the gist.

Genetics: That’s rights your genetics are a significant contributing factor as to what level of porosity your hair falls into, now that should not be much of a surprise there.

External Factors: As we all know the general rule: you reap what you sow, well, this also applies to our hair. We all can’t resist putting those heating treatments on and applying those perming chemicals all in the name of rocking the next trendy styles or rocking them to parties. Well news flash, these treatments sometimes contain harsh chemicals with long-term damages to our hair porosity.

How to Discover your Hair Porosity Level

If you do not already know, here are simple steps to discover the level of your hair porosity:

The first basic step is simply paying more attention to how your hair feels when you touch it. but you may already know this, and thus we proceed to the second more practical step.

How long it takes your hair to dry out: Let’s say you are having your routine hair wash day, without external heating equipment, pay attention to how long it takes to dry out. It is recommended to use a timer or stopwatch in order to get the most accurate result.

How much it retains moisture: You also need to pay extra attention to just about how much moisture your hair can absorb and retain.

The Float Test: Our most reliable and most recommended determinant would always be the float test. Discovering your hair porosity level is easy and can be done in the comfort of your home, and that’s why the most reliable technique still remains the float test.

How to Carry out the Float Test

Here is a simple step by step guide on how to carry out the float test.

Step one: Take a couple of hair strands from your brush or comb. Ensure the hair is clean and free from hair oil or whatnots.

Step two: Get a cup and fill it up with water.

Step three: Drop the strands of hair into the cup of water and let it sit for 5 -10 minutes.

If your hair floats: Then your hair has low level of porosity.

If it sinks/ remain at the bottom of the water: Your hair porosity is high.

If it stays in the middle: You have medium porosity hair.

And there you have it, now you know your hair porosity- how then should you care for it appropriately?

Watch out for our next article on how to give your hair type the actual care it requires.