Is Your Hair High Porosity... Or Is It Just Dry?
Do you have high porosity hair?
. . .Or is your hair just so dry it's grabbing all the moisture it can get?
Here's how to tell the difference. . .
The high porosity hair trend
It took a while to take hold, but porosity has finally gripped the imagination of the natural hair movement.
Now everyone who hasn't already found out their porosity wants to know: Do I have high porosity hair or low porosity hair?
If you don't know yours yet, you can take this test and find out:
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Why hair porosity is important
Finding the right product and routine that for your hair can be a hit and miss. Curl typing will only get you so far, which leaves people looking for a more reliable approach to finding what works. For an increasing amount of people, that approach is porosity testing.
The appeal behind this is simple: Figure out your hair's porosity and you'll know exactly what kind of products and routines work best for you. Your hair will flourish and your natural journey will be that much smoother. At least, that's the theory.
Knowing your hair's porosity can help you find products that match your hair. Image by Lucas Miranda.
What is porosity?
So here's a quick primer on how hair porosity is defined in the natural hair community. (Hair scientists and hairdressers traditionally have a different concept).
Porosity for naturalistas is all about how much (water or product) your hair can absorb. Generally, people use these three categories of hair porosity:
- High porosity hair takes in (and loses) moisture the fastest
- Low porosity hair takes in moisture more slowly and loses it slowly too
- Medium or 'normal' porosity hair is somewhere in between.
What causes porosity in hair?
Your hair's porosity is the result of several factors: how compact your cuticle layers are, how raised your cuticle is (naturally or through damage), and how intact the surface of your hair is.
High porosity or porous hair will usually have one or more of the following: a less than compact strand, a higher cuticle scale angle, or a damaged surface, full of 'pores', often with the outermost layer missing.
How common is high porosity hair?
Back in the day, there was a (wrong) assumption that all Afro hair was porous. These days, it's becoming more obvious that textured hair types, more often than not, tend to have low porosity.
That said, some hair is naturally more absorbent. And, while natural hair textures are increasingly popular, so are not-so-natural hair colours. As a result, porosity changes due to bleach are very common in the natural hair community.
Using hair dyes and bleach can turn naturally low porosity hair into high porosity hair. Image by Anderson Miranda.
So whether it came out of the scalp with its cuticles at a slightly higher angle, or got that way via a texturizer or some bleach, a lot of people have hair that takes in moisture fast and loses it fast too.
To naturals, both these types of hair count as "high porosity hair."
Do I have high porosity hair?
If your hair sucks up moisture like there's no tomorrow, only for it to disappear within the hour, you might be thinking you're firmly in this high porosity category. But you might not be. Here's why:
Reason #1: Porosity isn't the same as absorbency
People in the natural hair community often use the two terms interchangeably, but while they're definitely connected, they're not the same.
That's because how absorbent your hair is can vary at any given moment, but porosity is structural. It depends on the physical features of your hair which can't be altered that easily.
When people talk about natural hair and moisture, sponges are the go-to metaphor. They come in just as handy for illustrating the difference between high porosity hair, and hair that's just really absorbent because it's really dry.
So imagine you have two identical sponges. Same material, same number of holes, same size, same weight, same everything. In terms of their inbuilt capacity to soak stuff up, your two sponges have the same porosity.
Both of these sponges are dry to begin with, but then you spray a large amount water onto one of them.
After that, you put each of those sponges into identical bowls, filled with exactly the same amount of water, and let them soak for the same amount of time.
What happens when you pull them out?
The sponge which was already partially hydrated — the one you sprayed — won't have taken in that much water.
That's no surprise; it was already wet, so there wouldn't be much space left inside to hold more water. But the dry sponge? It might soak up all the water in the bowl.
This difference in absorption happens even though both sponges naturally have the same porosity.
Wetting a sponge makes it less absorbent but doesn't change its porosity. Image by Tumisu.
It's exactly the same with hair. Say you have a hair twin whose hair has roughly the same porosity as your hair. If you keep yours moisturised and she leaves hers desert-dry most of the time, her hair is going to seem like it's more porous than yours.
Should the two of you apply the same conditioner at the same time, her dried out, desiccated hair will likely absorb way more conditioner than yours.
In other words, it's going to act like the porosity is high. Even if structurally speaking, it's not.
Her hair is just so dry and empty inside it has room for all that extra hydration.
If these virtual hair twins have the same porosity, who has the most absorbent hair? Image by Andrea Piacquadio.
Hair with a high 'Moisture Debt' like this, will need to take in more moisture over time, gradually balancing its levels before its true porosity is revealed.
Which brings us to Reason #2.
Reason #2: Low porosity hair sometimes acts 'just like' high porosity hair
Low porosity hair can do the whole, "I just moisturised it and look now it's dry again!" thing very well. Contrary to popular belief, if your hair's porosity is low enough, it runs a pretty high risk of getting extremely dry — often way drier than high porosity hair.
This happens very often on 4c hair, which tends to have extremely low porosity but is often mistaken for high porosity hair, because it too struggles to retain moisture.
But they're not dry for the same reasons.
On super low porosity hair, you're starting off with hair that has a naturally low capacity to take in moisture.
Low porosity hair has a limited capacity to absorb moisture. Image by Agatha Ezepue.
If you then use products that aren't favourable to moisture absorption, like most people with low porosity hair do, you effectively bring your strands' chances of getting moisture down to nil.
And once your hair is that dry, it can start to act thirsty, the way high porosity hair does. Whenever it gets the chance — like when you're applying leave in — it absorbs more moisture than you would expect.
But if your low porosity hair doesn't get enough time to take enough moisture in — which is very likely to happen since it's so slow at absorbing stuff — guess what happens?
It'll feel dry again soon after, just like high porosity hair does.
Moisture (aka water) isn't going to stick around and wait forever for your strands to absorb it. If your hair doesn't take it in in time, it's just going to evaporate from the surface, especially if you're in a dry environment.
Water droplets evaporate easily from the surface, but the process is slower in high humidity. Image by Jernej Graj.
This is why your hair might seem like it's 'flash drying', which something high porosity hair does pretty often.
The difference is that on low porosity hair, most of that moisture is leaving the surface. It's not leaving from the inside of the strand, which is what happens in high porosity hair.
Reason #3: The Drying Oils Scandal - Another Way Hair Can Fake High Porosity
Ever heard of a drying oil?
If you're the type of natural that uses oils to "moisturise" your hair, this might come as a surprise.
But oils can dry out your hair. Some of the most cherished natural oils are classed as drying oils; because of their natural chemistry, these oils are actually added to paint to help it dry faster.
If you use them on your hair, don't be shocked if you get dried out strands that seem to soak up moisture and spit it back out; strands that behave just like high porosity hair. But it's not your hair's fault. It's just the oil that did it.
Oils can often block out hydration on low porosity hair. Image by Silviarita.
Other oils which aren't classified as drying oils can still build up on the surface of your hair and act as a barrier to hydration.
If you've ever felt like the more oil you apply, the drier your hair gets, it probably isn't because you have high porosity hair; it's more likely because the oil's blocking all the moisture out.
What if I have the type of hair that just drinks up everything?
Your hair doesn't really absorb everything. Nobody's hair does. Most of the stuff we apply to our hair never even makes it inside; that's because only ingredients with the right size and chemical structure can actually penetrate the hair's surface.
Water can make it in (with varying degrees of difficulty) but the size and shape restrictions rule out most oils and butters aside from coconut oil.
Some deep conditioning ingredients can penetrate the hair if you give them enough time; cetrimonium bromide is one. But most won't.
So if you're putting product on your hair and it's just disappearing, it's not all going inside your hair. Some of the water is, but the rest is just evaporating, rubbing off on your clothes, drying and flaking off, or just sitting on the surface of your hair. Even if you can't necessarily feel it on your strands. That's because many products are designed to leave you feeling like there's nothing on your hair, when there's actually a good bit of residue.
That same residue could be tricking you into thinking your hair's high porosity when it's not.
High porosity hair vs hair that's just dry: How to tell the difference
If you don't have high porosity hair and your hair is just dry for one of these three reasons, how would you know?
You might have to repeat the process a few times to know for sure, but it's super simple. The first step is to clarify your hair: Use Curly Love Shampoo Detox to remove the buildup that is stealing all your moisture at the strand level. Most sulfate-free options won't work for this.
Deep-cleansing like this will take care of dryness due to buildup from drying oils or other residue.
Then, you need to give your hair deep moisture. If you find you have to work in your conditioner to get it to penetrate, then you'll know you actually have low porosity hair. High porosity hair will take any moisture in easily.
If you don't have high porosity hair, once you increase the moisture you give your hair and keep it steady for a while (basically, pay off your hair's moisture debt) that thirsty behaviour should change.
Deep conditioning with a hydrating treatment will make the biggest difference in your hair's moisture level, so make sure you use the most concentrated formula you can find.
On super dry low porosity hair especially you'll need a deep conditioner like Afro Love Detox Mask that can penetrate and bind well to a resistant strand. Steaming can also accelerate moisture penetration; here's how to steam your low porosity hair even if you don't have a steamer.
Follow that up with Afro Love Detox Mask or La Aplanadora Leave In designed for both instant and slow-release moisture before applying styling products.
Over time, the high porosity-like symptoms will disappear and you'll notice your hair starting to retain moisture more easily than before.
But on hair that's truly high porosity, whether by nature or by damage, you're always going to have the advantage of hair that's easy to moisturise — and the work of going that extra mile to lock moisture in.
For dry high porosity hair, your focus isn't getting moisture to penetrate your hair; it already does that easily. Instead, you need to focus on insulating your hair to reduce moisture loss.
Insulating goes a little further than sealing; it means using different layers of water-loving and hydrophobic products to trap moisture inside your hair.
This process starts with your conditioning step: you can blend super hydrating treatments like Afro Love Detox Mask with other powerful conditioners that act more at a surface level like Silicon Mix Treatment.
After that, every product you use, all the way down to your styler, should contribute to the insulating process.
Regularly insulating your hair is the best way to combat extreme dryness — whether you really have high porosity hair or not.
For more high porosity hair information, check out our full-length DHA High Porosity Guide.