Have you ever wondered why your hair doesn’t retain any moistures while you regularly well-cared of it? You may search for various methods to treat dry hair but you may forget the basic thing help to manage your hair with proper product regimen is hair porosity. And low porosity hair can be the main reason for many hairdo problems. 

So, what is low porosity hair? What are the signs of low porosity? Why does it happen? How to take care of it? Keep reading to find the answer.

What is hair with low porosity?

Hair porosity refers to the hair’s ability to obtain and hold moisture and oils. It can be affected by the outer layer of hair, hair cuticles or by externals factors such as heat treatments, chemical process or exposure.

Low porosity hair is hair that moistures or oils are not allowed to absorb in hair shaft due to its certain structure. Hence, if you have low porosity breadth, it means the water cannot well rinse out your hair when it is washed. The reason is that this type of hair is unable to retain moisture when you get it wet, making it hard to take care or style hair.

What are the reasons?

This problem is affected by genetic factors. External ones such as exposure, chemicals or heat treatment do not trigger hair with it.

Low porosity happens when the cuticles (the outmost layers of hair, overlapping with each other like a tiled roof to protect hair) packs tightly with each other, leaving no space for water, as well as moisture from hair care product, get through to the hair shaft.

What are the low porosity hair characteristics?

Hair cannot absorb products

Low porosity makes your tresses harder to absorb and moistures or essence from haircare products, which means just a little amount of products can be retained into your strands. Hence, once you use them, the product tends to sit on your hair.

Let us take you a simple example, when you apply moisturizers such as oils or hair cream onto the ends of your hair, about 30 minutes later you may see that the products still sit on your hair and your fingers still can slip it off from your strands.

Hair takes time to wash and dry

If it’s hard for your hair to absorb things, the washing and drying process may take longer than usual. Because low porosity makes it harder for water to penetrate into your hair. So, when you wash your hair, you may see that it takes a long time to get wet totally.

And then, when your hair is fully watered, drying hair will take longer as well. You can notice that even use blow dryer, low porosity strand is hard to be dried out than others’ hair with the same density and length.

How to know your hair is low porosity or not?

To test your hair to find out its type of porosity, you can follow the easy steps below.

– Clean your hair, wash your hair with shampoo and rinse it well to remove any build-up product before testing. The cleanest hair will give you the most accurate outcome.

– Dry your hair as you usually do

– Next, get one strand from your hair and drop it to a glass of water

– Observe where this strand float to determine the type of hair porosity.

If your hair is not porous enough, the strand will float on the top for a moment, then sink down to the bottom of the glass.

If your hair is medium porosity hair, the strand will float to the middle of the class or somewhere near it.

In contrast, if you possess high porosity breadth, the strand will sink down to the bottom of the class immediately since it is more porous.

How to take care of low porosity hair?

How to moisturize low porosity hair? This may be the major question by those who own that type of hair. If you have hair with low porosity, you may want to try as many moisturizing products as possible to see the result, or try to add a large scale of moisturizers to your hair with the hope it can absorb somehow. But they are not wise ways to take care of low porosity locks. So, if you want to know what are the right ways, keep reading for some useful low porosity tips:

Choose the right products. No matter how much amount of product you apply to your locks, there will be no result if it is not the typical one that contains the right formulation for low porosity tresses.

Apply the product when your hair is damp and warm because heat can open up the cuticles overlapping, allowing moisture or oils to penetrate into your hair shaft.

Now, you may wonder what are the right products for impenetrable breadth. Below are some suggestions for you.

Shampoo

The best clarifying shampoo for low porosity hair will not leave any residue to your hair after washing. Looking for shampoos contain honey or glycerin rather than oils since it will make it easy for your hair, especially curly hair, to absorb their ingredients.

Condition and deep condition

Fine hair is the one that needs to be cared most; hence, condition to enhance the health of hair is important.

When conditioning your hair, dilute the product with a small amount of water before applying it onto your hair. This will help the product penetrate to your hair shaft more easily

When deep condition the low porosity tresses, you can use a shower cap to cover your hair, then heat it by a blow dryer since the high temperature will open the outmost layer, enable the moisture to get into your hair.

Try to avoid protein treatment conditioners since it will make your hair repel the moistures, increasing the chance of hair breakage.

To sum up

Knowing your hair porosity will help you to have better care for your hair. So if you have low porosity hair, don’t worry, follow the tips we provide you then you will get the best result.

Hopefully, you find this article useful and informative. If you want to read more interesting writings like this, follow the Layla Hair blog right know.

Feel free to drop us a message when you have any questions!