HairAdvice

What hair do you actually have?

Twelve questions about what your hair does in the shower, while it dries and when you put product on it. At the end you get your pattern, your porosity and a routine built from both. Nothing to sign up for, and nothing leaves your browser.

Four of the twelve patterns. The quiz finds yours.

The quiz needs JavaScript. Without it, the porosity tests and the hair type chart cover the same ground by hand.

The twelve patterns, side by side

Each strand links to its guide. Width of the bend matters as much as the shape.

  1. 1Afine straight
  2. 1Bstraight with body
  3. 1Ccoarse straight
  4. 2Aloose S
  5. 2Bdefined S
  6. 2Cdeep waves
  7. 3Aloose curls
  8. 3Bringlets
  9. 3Ccorkscrews
  10. 4Atight coils
  11. 4Bzigzag
  12. 4Ctight zigzag

Why porosity comes before curl pattern

Most product advice is sorted by curl type: "for 3C curls", "for wavy hair". Pattern tells you how to style. It says very little about how your hair handles water, and that is what decides whether a conditioner sinks in or sits on top as a greasy film.

Porosity is how easily water gets past the cuticle, the outer layer of overlapping cells on each strand. Two people with identical 3B curls can need opposite routines: one with a flat, tight cuticle that repels heavy creams, one with a cuticle lifted by bleach that drinks everything and stays dry anyway.

The quiz scores porosity from five behaviors you can observe (how fast hair soaks, how long it takes to dry, what product does, chemical history and heat use) instead of the float test, which is less reliable than its popularity suggests.

What the result gives you

A pattern from 1A to 4C, a porosity level, and a short routine: how often to wash, whether you need a chelating or clarifying shampoo, how heavy your leave-in should be, whether to bring in protein, and how to style for your pattern. Each step names a few specific products on Amazon, each chosen from what its own listing says, plus a link to compare others. No brand pays to be there.

If you already know your type, the guides go deeper: low porosity hair, high porosity hair, and the full chart of types. Each pattern also has its own page: straight, wavy, curly and coily.