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Hair & barber

Hair types & curl patterns

A classification from straight to tightly coiled – helpful for choosing care and products.

A widely used system sorts hair into four groups: type 1 straight, type 2 wavy, type 3 curly, type 4 tightly curled to coily. Subgroups a to c describe how tight the pattern is.

What the classification is good for:

It is orientation, not a label: the tighter the curve, the harder it is for natural sebum to travel to the ends – so the hair needs more moisture and oil. Straight hair, by contrast, gets oily at the roots faster.

Just as important:

Porosity (how quickly hair absorbs and loses moisture) and density often influence product choice more than curl pattern alone. A good consultation looks at all three.

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