What to Do & Avoid with Low Porosity Hair - Low Porosity Hair Care Tips

The maintenance method of your hair may differ depends on your hair porosity, then what to do and not to do when you have low hair porosity? Now, let’s get over four tips on low porosity hair care, to figure out what to avoid with low porosity hair. 

What to Avoid with Low Porosity Hair - Low Porosity Hair Care Tips

Proper maintenance will help you hold healthy hair rather than wearing hair bundles or wigs all the time. 

1. 

Avoid: not shampooing or solely co-washing

Do: shampoo your hair at least once a week

If you have low porosity hair, it's very important to shampoo your hair at least once a week. Most of the time, low porosity hair is easier to accumulate dirt. If you have build-up from the whole week, you shouldn't be co-washing your hair to remove the buildup, because co-washing doesn't necessarily clean your hair the way it should be every week. If you use thick products, you can't use co-washing and feel clean at all, you don't want to have the product build-up on your hair and scalp, which will prevent hair growth. Therefore, it's very important to make sure you wash your hair with shampoo to remove all dirt, make sure your hair is clean, and you don't want to work on a dirty canvas.

2. 

Avoid: adding cold water to seal the cuticle

Do: heat your deep conditioners

Low porosity hair naturally has a tighter cuticle which makes it difficult for moisture to make its way in, this is why we highly recommend the next tip. It's very important for you to add heat to your deep conditioners, because it allows your cuticle to open up, so the moisture can make its way through your hair. When you use deep conditioners, if you feel like they just leave on top of your hair, try to sit under the hooded dryer or throwing on a hooded cap or putting on a plastic cap then keep walking around, to let the heat from your scalp penetrate the product, this will make sense. It’s important for you not to use cold water when you're styling your hair, because what you're doing is continuously leaving your cuticle closed, what you really want to do is allow it to open and what opens up your cuticle is heating. Keep in mind that if you have low hair porosity and want to allow moisture to make its way through your hair, add a little bit of heat to make the cuticles open up. If you don’t want to sit under a hooded dryer, there are lots of other great ways to add heat. For example, you can just throw on a mask and walk around the house with a mask. 

3. 

Avoid: completely miss proteins

Do: try both products with and without proteins

People with low porosity hair are typically protein sensitive, that is the case for a lot of people but not always the case. The theory is if you add protein to your hair when you already have protein, you may become sensitive to it, maybe your hair doesn't react well to it. Although your hair porosity is low, you may be still not protein sensitive. How to know whether you are protein sensitive? The only way you find out is by trying products that have protein, testing it out in your hair, your hair feels straw-like stiff hard, then that product doesn't work well for you, and just follow up by using protein-free moisturizing products, don't completely cancel proteins if you haven't tried them, most products do contain proteins, but there are a ton of amazing products that are protein-free.

4. 

Avoid: just styling without water

Do: try styling with soaking wet hair

There's a lot of theories that say low porosity hair should not style with soaking wet hair, but it’s not always right. You can style with wet hair. If you have tried styling with soaking wet hair, try using warm water, it doesn't have to be hot water just make sure it's warm, and it makes it easier for products to work their way through hair and just ties back to the structure of low porosity hair, being that we have tightly bound cuticles, using warm water will help open it up and allow the product to moisturize hair versus just sit on top of the hair, but it's all dependent on what works best for you. But on top of wet hair, it does take so much time for the hair to dry, that's the only con of styling hair with soaking wet hair. The best way to find out what works is just to try different methods for you.