Hair Type Quiz: What Is My Hair Type, Really?
This hair type quiz asks eight questions about how your hair dries, frizzes and holds a style, then tells you if it's straight, wavy, curly or coily and how to care for it.
Quiz questions
1. Wash your hair and let it air-dry with no product. What does it do?
2. Pull a single wet strand straight and let go. It...
3. How quickly does your hair look oily after washing?
4. What happens on a humid day?
5. How well does your hair hold a curl from a curling iron?
6. What's brushing your dry hair like?
7. How does your hair feel to the touch, with nothing in it?
8. Which product do you reach for most?
All possible results
Your result
Type 1: Straight
Sleek, shiny and stubbornly flat.
- Reflects light well
- Gets oily fastest
- Struggles to hold a curl
Your hair grows straight from root to tip with no bend. Because oil from the scalp travels easily down a straight strand, it shines beautifully and also looks greasy sooner than other types. Curls from an iron tend to fall out by lunchtime.
Care tips: wash as often as you need to, use a lightweight conditioner on the ends only, and skip heavy oils and butters, which will weigh it down. For volume, blow-dry the roots upward and use a texturizing spray. If you curl it, let the curls cool in your hand before you let go.
Your result
Type 2: Wavy
Not straight, not curly, and often misunderstood.
- Loose S-shaped bends
- Frizzes in humidity
- Easily weighed down
Your hair has a natural S-shaped wave, usually flatter at the roots and wavier toward the ends. A lot of people with wavy hair spend years thinking it's just frizzy straight hair, because brushing it dry pulls the waves apart.
Care tips: stop brushing it dry. Scrunch a light mousse or gel into soaking wet hair, then leave it alone until it's fully dry and scrunch again to soften it. Use light products, since creams made for tight curls will flatten your waves. A diffuser on low heat gives you more definition.
Your result
Type 3: Curly
Springy spirals with a mind of their own.
- Defined ringlets
- Dry ends
- Big volume
Your hair forms real curls, from loose loops to tight corkscrews, and it has plenty of body. Scalp oil has a hard time traveling around all those bends, so your lengths dry out and frizz when they're thirsty.
Care tips: moisture is everything. Use a rich conditioner every wash, detangle with a wide-tooth comb while the conditioner is still in, and apply curl cream and gel to very wet hair. Dry with a diffuser or an old cotton T-shirt, not a rough towel. Wash less often, and sleep on a satin pillowcase to keep the curls from flattening.
Your result
Type 4: Coily
Tight coils, serious shrinkage, lots of versatility.
- Tight coils or zigzags
- Very dry by nature
- Shrinks when wet
Your hair grows in tight coils or a zigzag pattern and can shrink to a fraction of its real length as it dries. It's the most fragile type, because every bend in the strand is a weak point, and it's also the driest, since scalp oil barely makes it down the hair at all.
Care tips: be gentle and generous with moisture. Detangle only when it's wet and full of conditioner, working up from the ends with your fingers. Layer a leave-in, then a cream, then an oil or butter to seal it in. Deep condition regularly, and use protective styles such as twists or braids to cut down on breakage. Don't judge your length by how it looks when it's dry.
The four hair types
The system most stylists and brands use sorts hair into four types by curl pattern: type 1 is straight, type 2 is wavy, type 3 is curly and type 4 is coily. It was popularized in the 1990s by the hairstylist Andre Walker, and it has stuck around because it’s a quick way to work out which products and routines are likely to suit you.
Your type is decided by the shape of the follicle the hair grows from. A round follicle produces a straight strand. The more oval or flattened the follicle, the more the strand bends. That’s why your pattern is something you’re born with, and why products can define or loosen it but won’t change it for good.
What do the letters mean, like 2B or 4C?
Each type is split into A, B and C, running from loosest to tightest. So 2A is a faint wave and 2C is almost curly, 3A is big loose loops and 3C is pencil-sized corkscrews, 4A is a visible coil and 4C is so tight the pattern is hard to see. Type 1 is sometimes split too, from fine and flat (1A) to thick and coarse (1C).
This quiz gives you your main type, 1 to 4. To find your letter, look at a clean, product-free strand next to photos of each subtype. Don’t be surprised if you find two patterns on one head. It’s very common to be wavier underneath and straighter on top, or to have tighter coils at the crown.
How the hair type quiz works
The eight questions are all things you can check at home: what your hair does when it air-dries, how a single strand behaves, how fast it gets oily, how it copes with humidity. Each answer gives a point to one type. For the most accurate result, think about your hair freshly washed with nothing in it, not styled or heat-straightened.
Curl pattern isn’t the whole story
Two people with the same type can need different products, because pattern is only one of three things that matter. The others are porosity, meaning how easily your hair absorbs and loses water, and thickness, meaning how wide each strand is. If products made for your type sit on top of your hair or vanish in an hour, porosity is usually the reason. I’ll cover that in a separate quiz.
If your result surprised you
It happens most with wavy hair. Lots of people who get type 2 have spent their lives brushing it straight and calling it frizzy. Try one wash day following the wavy tips above before you decide the quiz got it wrong.
