Some women are born with naturally straight hair, but many women want curly hair or want to curl their hair for one reason or another. It’s true that some of us were born with curly locks and others have found a way to attain them, but there is still a vast knowledge gap when it comes to everything we can do with the way our hair grows naturally. How to debulk curly hair?
We’ll start by crawling out of this vast knowledge gap and then move on to finding the perfect products and techniques for each type of curl in your hair.
1. What Does Curly Hair Look Like?
When we speak of curly hair, we’re talking about the natural formation of your hair follicles in response to the direction they naturally grow. The follicle provides structure and a root for your hairs to grow on its way out of your scalp. It’s important to know how these follicles are arranged on your head because they are the main influencer of your curl pattern and will be discussed in-depth later on.
Now that you know roughly what kind of hair you have, let’s break it down into four major categories:
2. Types Of Curly Hair
There are multiple types of curly hair, but we’re going to discuss four: spiral curls, wavy hair, tight curls (or ringlets), and loose curls.
3. Spiral Curls
These curls are characterized by their overall circular shape and they tend to be tighter in the center than they are at the ends. Think of a corkscrew and you’ve got the idea! These spiral curls come in tighter and looser waves depending on the tightness of their wave pattern. Loose spiral waves will likely be less defined than those that are more tightly wound.
Spiral curls are the most popular type of curl pattern in the world with about 80% of the female population embracing them at some point in their life. Spiral curls are basically coils of hair that look like a corkscrew, but they’re shaped much differently than your standard barrel curl. Here’s how it comes together:
As mentioned earlier, spiral curls form tighter and looser waves depending on how you care for them. These tight spirals can be created by wrapping a towel around your head while you’re showering or even by curling irons on rollers. Loose spiral waves also require some practice as well, so let’s move on to give you an idea of what this look looks like.
4. Wavy Hair
Unlike spiral curls, which have tight and loose waves, wavy hair tells the story of its curl pattern through various lengths of waves. Wavy hair will start out curly and become looser as it moves towards the ends of your hair.
Similar to tight spiral curls, wavy hair forms a tight corkscrew on your hair that moves farther apart as it reaches the end of each strand. Your wave pattern is categorized by its length, so a shorter wave is considered tighter than a longer one.
If you’re looking for some tips on how to manipulate your curl pattern, here’s an easy way to do it: whatever your hair length is (short, medium, or long) it will fall into the category of medium when you’re letting your hair air-dry without any manipulation. If you want to style your hair shorter, you’ll need to apply some form of heat (like a blow dryer or an iron) to style it. The same goes for longer hair that you’d like to make look shorter.
5. Tight Curls
These curls are tightly coiled like a corkscrew, but they’re usually tighter at the ends because they require more emphasis on your part than what spiral curls require (more on this later). Tight corkscrew curls can be created by several different methods like wrapping a towel around a comb or even curling irons on rollers. These tight curls come in both loose and tight forms depending on how you deal with them in your styling routine.
6. Loose Curls
Loose curls are pretty much the opposite of tight curls. They are loose and don’t have much definition until you style them with products, which help define their shape.
Now that you know what kind of hair you have, it’s time to explore various curl patterns that can fall under each category. In this article, we’ll look specifically at the spiral curl, wavy hair, and tight curl (or corkscrew) categories because they’re the most common types of curls and most women can relate to at least one of these curls.
7. The Spiral Curly Hairstyle
The spiral curl is the most popular hairstyle in the world. It comes in a few different varieties, but there are basically two categories of spiral curls: loose and tight.
8. Loose Spiral Curls
This type of curl is characterized by its overall softness towards the ends, which aren’t very defined in their shape. You’ll notice that these waves are longer than they are thick, so it takes some practice to be able to manipulate them into any hairstyle you want!
Some women have looser curls than others and will still want to manipulate their hair into a hairstyle that looks more defined than what it would naturally look like.
