What is Hair Porosity & Different Types of Hair Porosity - How to Test Hair Porosity

You may wonder why does your hair takes so long time to dry after washing it, and not easy to absorb moisture, this may be kind of associated with hair porosity. What is high porosity and how to know whether you have low hair porosity or high porosity? In this post, we are going to go over the hair porosity definition, types, and test. 

What is Hair Porosity?

Hair porosity refers to the ability to absorb and maintain moisture. Normal hair can absorb water quite easily, and it contains water, not only the ability of hair to absorb water, but also the ability of hair to maintain water. Porosity is usually determined by your genetics, but heating and chemical damage can increase the ferocity and change your levels. You can also choose wholesale virgin hair with different porosity. 

Different Types of Hair Porosity - Low Hair Porosity and High Hair Porosity

There are three types of porosity levels: low, medium, and high. Here we’ll focus on the low hair porosity and high hair porosity. Let's figure out what type of hair porosity you have. 

Low hair porosity

Starting with low porosity, if you have low porosity hair that means that all the cuticles of your hair strands are extremely sealed and closed shut, so it's really hard to allow moisture to come in. It is difficult for hair to absorb new water, but low porosity hair is also difficult to lose protein, low porosity hair is also known as protein sensitive hair, so you will find that in this case, you need much less protein, because generally speaking, the healthiest hair is pretty much going to be low porosity. Typically with lower porosity, you're gonna need something that's a little bit more aggressive in order to get the job done just because it's so resistant. 

Here are some signs to let you know if you have low porosity hair. The first one is products are really absorbed into your hair, they kind of just feel like they sit on your hair and you often get a lot of product build-up your hair does not absorb hair color very easy, takes a long time to actually change the color of your hair and to do any type of treatment, you might notice water beads on your hair when you leave your hair what you actually see the water droplets just sitting on your hair or it takes a very long time for your hair to get completely wet waiter in the shower. Another sign is that your hair takes hours to dry or if you use a lot of products that are like butter and it's just too thick and leaves your hair oily, it might be too much for your hair because of its low porosity.

High hair porosity

On the contrary, high porosity is easy to absorb water, but it is also easy to lose water. For high porosity, you should focus on using sulfate-free substances. The reason is that these cuticles will naturally be more open. Using a more gentle cleaner will help keep the cuticle down. If you have high porosity, the cuticle is way more open, so it can absorb moisture really easily but it does not retain the moisture easy, high porosity hair is also referred to damaged or highly processed hair because the cuticles are damaged, so they are torn making them more open, you also might notice that your hair tangles extremely easy because all the cuticles are getting cut onto each other. If you have high porosity hair, then your hair dries extremely fast, if you notice that your hair continuously always tends to get frizzy could be because of high porosity or if you use products like lotions and milk and they just don't work for you, might not be enough for your high porosity hair. High porosity hair actually likes protein, so if you can use products with protein or do a DIY wash using eggs, your hair will love it.

Hair Porosity Test - How to Test Hair Porosity

How to do a hair porosity test and how to tell the results?

1. Cup test

There are a couple of tests we can do, the first test that you might have heard about is the cup test. The cup test means you take a glass of water and a strand of your hair, just place it in the water, if your hair is floating that means that you have low porosity hair, means the cuticles are sealed, it's not letting any moisture in, so it's not sinking to the bottom, if it's normal hair, it's kind of just in the middle floating, and if your hair has sunk all the way down to the bottom of the cup, that means it took in the moisture and was able to sink really easy because it's able to absorb the moisture really easy. You're supposed to let it sit there for like two to four minutes and see how long it takes to float. But technically, hair does have natural oils and oils float in water, so some say that even no matter what kind of strand you put in there, your hair has oil, that's gonna float and then some people say that depends on the temperature of the water, because hot water will open up the cuticles, so then it could sink or cold water could close the cuticles, so it'll float and some say that has to be on clean hair, so if your hair product in it, it might just float because of the product. 

2. Spray test

The second porosity test you could try is the spray test, if you get a water bottle with a spray top and you spray your hair, if you notice there are beads of water just sitting on your hair, then you have low porosity hair, it's not letting the moisture in, it's just kind of sitting there and it's really hard to moisturize your curls if you spray your hair and the water instantly absorbs then your cuticles are open and just ready to take in the moisture, so you might have high porosity hair. 

3. Strand test

The last test you could do is be strand test, so take one strand of your hair and then when you move your fingers up and down if it feels smooth and straight then you might have low porosity hair, but if you go and feel like small little like ridges or bumps, then that means your cuticles are open and you have high porosity hair.