You’ve read lots of blogs and watched lots of vlogs on healthy natural hair tips and you’ve heard them mention about low porosity hair, medium and even high porosity hair.
But you’ve never quite got around knowing what exactly it is.
Well, there is a reason why hair porosity is important. Knowing your hair type and hair porosity will help you tweak your products and practices to suit your hair type and hair porosity.
In this article we look at 5 effective low porosity hair care tips. But first, let’s learn a bit more about hair porosity.
What is hair porosity?
Primarily, hair porosity is the ability of your hair to absorb and retain moisture. This affects how the outer layer of your hair that is, your cuticle, allows moisture to move in and out.
- High porosity hair. This type of hair easily absorbs moisture and at the same time easily loses it.
- Medium porosity hair. This type of hair moderately absorbs moisture and moderately loses it.
- Low porosity hair. This type of hair takes time to absorb moisture and at the same time retains that moisture for a longer time.
How do I know my hair’s porosity?
There is a simple test, called the floating test, that you can perform to find out your hair porosity.
- Fill a glass or a bowl with water
- Brush or comb your hair to get some strands of hair. Make sure your hair is clean, the best time to do this test is probably after you’ve washed your hair.
- Place it in the water and observe for a few minutes.
-If the strands float for a while before sinking then you have,
low porosity hair.
-If the strands quickly sinks then you have, high porosity hair.
-If the strands floats to the middle, then you have medium porosity hair.
Tips on Caring for Low Porosity Hair
- When caring for low porosity hair, the idea here is to try and get your hair to absorb moisture. It may take a while though, hence you will need to be patient.
- When shampooing, do take time to wet your hair as it takes some time for your hair to absorb the moisture.
- Add some heat. This is mostly done through steaming. Steaming gets your cuticles open and allows for moisture to be absorbed. Steam as you pre poo and after applying deep conditioner. There are several ways of steaming your hair.
- Using a natural hair steamer.
- I f you don’t have one, you can use a shower cap but you’ll have to put it on for a longer time.
- To ensure maximum hydration, place a hot towel over the shower cap.
- Take time to really wash your hair on washday. Low porosity hair tends to have product build up as products tends to sit on hair rather than get absorbed. You can go ahead and use our Cocoa Mint Moisture Rich Shampoo to shampoo your hair. This sulfate-free shampoo is uniquely formulated with rich essential ingredients to purify the hair, while delivering intense moisture to each strand.
- Use light-weight products to prevent product build up.
Have any other tips? Do share them below and help a fellow Dynasty Diva!