Everything you Need to Know about Hair Porosity

What is Low Hair Porosity?

Low porosity hair is a description of how much moisture can enter and leave your hair. Hair porosity determines how open and closed hair cuticles are, and how this affects its ability to absorb and retain water (how porous it is). Low porosity means your curly hair is not very porous, meaning it has incredibly tight cuticles. 

Hair that has low porosity is not too dry and can maintain moisture quite easily. 

This also makes it very difficult for moisture to penetrate through the cuticles when needed. 

No matter your type of curly hair, you may have low porosity hair and need to find the necessary curly hair products to manage it.

6 Characteristics of Low Porosity Hair

Low porosity hair has certain traits and characteristics that will affect the curl pattern and your hair texture. You can start to determine how your hair reacts to moisture by seeing how your curls, waves, or coils behave. Here are some key characteristics of low porosity hair:

1.Leave-in products tend to sit on the hair rather than penetrate, so it’s very easy to apply too much which might result in scalp build-up.

2.The hair is easily weighed down and can struggle to achieve volume, which may make you want to use volumizing hair products.

3.When you spray some water on a clean, product-free strand, the water forms little beads on the surface rather than penetrating into the hair.

4.It takes a long time for the hair to get fully wet.

5.It takes a long time for the hair to fully dry.

6.The hair doesn’t take color very well.

How Do You Test Your Hair’s Porosity?

If you can identify some of the above characteristics of how your tresses behave, you may have a good indication that you have low porosity hair. If you need more help determining if you have low porosity hair, you can test your hair using some simple methods.

Spray Test 

1.Start with clean, product-free hair 

2.Spray some water on a strand of hair

3.Observe how your hair responds to the droplets of water

4.If the water forms lots of little droplets on the hair surface without sinking in, you have low porosity hair.

Float Test

1.Get a clean, product-free strand of hair (perhaps from a hairbrush)

2.Fill a container with room-temperature water

3.Place the strand on to the water

4.If the strand floats it is likely to be low porosity.

Once you have determined you have low porosity hair, you can begin to find the best products for curly hair to look after it. If you need more help identifying your curl type, and what to use to care for it, you should take our curl quiz.

What Causes Low Porosity Hair?

If you have low porosity hair, you may be wondering what has caused it. Your hair’s porosity can be influenced by your genes, and can be hereditary. Curly hair in its untreated state is naturally higher in porosity than straight hair. Therefore, the curlier a strand is, the higher porosity it tends to be.

Using chemical treatments and frequent heat styling can also affect your hair’s porosity. This is because these can cause hair damage which leads to gaps and tears in your cuticles. That, in turn, will impact how porous they are.