All About Low Porosity Hair and How to Nourish it

Wash day for certain hair types can be strenuous and annoying, especially when it comes to treating your hair with the specific care it needs. That’s why it’s important to know your hair’s porosity. Do you have low or high porosity hair. This article will help you discover what hair porosity means and define what you may have.

What is Hair Porosity

Hair porosity simply defines the ability for your hair to soak up and retain moisture. It’s important to know the mechanisms needed to keep your hair moisturized and healthy. Each hair strand has a root which is embedded in the scalp and fed nutrients at the bulb from blood vessels. On the shaft of the hair, which comes out of the scalp, are the cuticles which is the outermost layer(overlapping dead cells) of the hair. It works as a protective layer for the hair. The middle layer is the cortex containing fibre mass and keratin proteins. The medulla is the inner most, loosely packed layer surrounded by the cortex.

Low Porosity

Low Porosity hair doesn’t absorb moisture easily. The cuticles are tightly bound making it difficult for water or hair products to enter into the shaft. Build up can also easily occur due to the limited absorption rate.

Other characteristics include:

• water beads sitting on hair/ difficulty saturating hair with water
• Likewise, hair products sitting on hair rather than absorbed.
• Hair may take longer to dry

Care for Low Porosity Hair

Because it’s difficult for moisture to enter the cuticles of the hair it is important to hydrate in effective methods.

• Use heat to open the cuticles while applying a deep conditioner. Steam and shower caps are effective methods to generate/apply safe heat to hair
• Make sure to thoroughly wash hair with clarifying shampoo to rid hair of build up (twice a week, every week or every two weeks depending on what’s applied to the hair, how often and if buildup is visible or if hair appears to be drying even when applying moisturizing agents)
• Use lighter leave ins and oils to make sure follicles aren’t clogged and the moisturizing agents can actually enter the cuticles.
• Humectants such as honey, aloe vera, and glycerin are great ingredients to draw in moisture to hair especially when adding controlled heat to open follicles.

High Porosity

High Porosity hair has wider spaced cuticles allowing moisture to enter the shaft easily but also releasing moisture readily, causing dryness and frizziness. Prone to breakage. Hair can have higher porosity genetically or due to heat damage.

Characteristics

• Hair may dry easily and take in water easily
• tangles easily
• Tends to feel dry and brittle

Tips:

• Trim damaged ends
• No need to shampoo too often so you avoid stripping hair of natural oils (once a week or every two weeks depending on products applied to scalp)
• Deep Condition
• After conditioning, rinse hair with cold water to help close cuticles and seal in moisture.
• Protein treatments may be an extremely effective way to repair porous hair as very porous hair tends to lack protein

Conclusion

Finding out your hair porosity involves trial and error. If you’re wondering if you have low porosity or high porosity hair and you try a protein treatment that ends up stiffening your hair, then likely protein is not needed for your hair. You could have protein overload (adding too much protein to hair through protein treatments) or low porosity hair which does not need protein treatments nearly as much as high porosity hair does as low porosity hair is protein sensitive. If you’re applying moisturizing agents to the hair and it doesn’t appear to be absorbing or the product is sitting on top of the hair than it may be low porosity or if it’s absorbed but then you find your hair gets dry and frizz shortly then you may have high porosity hair. Find out what works for you and stick with it.

The suggested way to test your porosity is by applying your clean hair strand to a bowl of water. If the hair floats in the bowl of water you most likely have low porosity hair, if it floats in the middle then medium porosity hair and if it sinks then it indicates high porosity hair.

Also Read: Hair Porosity Test: Find Your Hair’s Needs – Sonderbeaut