Curl type is shorthand for how tightly your hair coils. It's useful — but not because it tells you which products to buy. It's useful because it predicts how easily your scalp's natural oils travel down the strand, and therefore how dry your hair runs and how much moisture you need to add back.
The tighter the coil, the harder that journey, and the drier the hair.
How to find your type
Look at your hair clean, air-dried, with no product in it. Wet hair and styled hair both lie. Most people also have more than one pattern on their head — looser at the crown, tighter underneath is extremely common. Type to the pattern that dominates.
Type 2 — Wavy
2A: Loose, barely-there S-waves. Hair falls fairly straight from the root, bending in the mid-lengths.
2B: Defined S-waves starting closer to the root, with some frizz at the crown.
2C: Strong waves with a few actual spiral curls mixed in. Prone to frizz.
What wavy hair needs: Less than you'd think. Wavy hair flattens easily under heavy creams and oils. Lightweight products, foams and mousses over rich creams, and applying product to soaking-wet hair rather than damp.
Start with: mousses and light gels, and a leave-in used sparingly.
Type 3 — Curly
3A: Large, loose spirals roughly the width of a wine cork.
3B: Springy ringlets about the width of a marker.
3C: Tight corkscrews, pencil-width, densely packed.
What curly hair needs: Moisture and definition in equal measure. This is the range where a proper leave-in plus a curl cream plus a gel actually earns its three steps. 3C especially benefits from layering.
Start with: a leave-in, a curl cream, and a gel to lock it in.
Type 4 — Coily
4A: Tight, springy coils with a visible S-pattern.
4B: Sharp Z-shaped bends rather than curves.
4C: Very tight coils with little visible definition and significant shrinkage — hair can appear a fraction of its actual length.
What coily hair needs: Moisture, consistently, and gentleness above all. This is the driest and most fragile hair type. Rich creams and butters, deep conditioning weekly or more, and detangling only with conditioner in and a wide-tooth comb.
Start with: rich curl creams, weekly deep treatments, and a wide-tooth comb.
What matters more than your number
Two people can both be 3B and need completely different products, because curl type is only one of three variables:
Porosity — how readily your hair absorbs and holds moisture. Low porosity resists water and sits products on the surface; high porosity soaks everything up and loses it just as fast. This drives product choice more than curl type does.
Density — how many strands you have. Determines how much product you need.
Width — how thick each individual strand is. Fine strands get weighed down by products that coarse strands barely notice.
A fine, low-porosity 3B and a coarse, high-porosity 3B are genuinely different hair, and they need genuinely different routines.
Still not sure?
Bring it to us. A consultation at either our Babylon or Dix Hills location includes reading your curl pattern, porosity and density in person, and building a routine around what your hair actually does rather than what a chart says it should.