Confused about my measurements ...

[diddiedaisy]

I have been measuring my hair since last December and I get 1cm every 4 weeks. Over the year this totals 13 cm or 5 inches of growth. I get my measurements from my roots at the top of my head, there's not so much demarcation around the rest of my head.

Ive been wondering lately though if the back grows quicker than the front as my measurements and my growth on my striped tshirt don't seem to match. So I got my notes out and totted up my growth since January expecting to see 10 cm, but it comes to 12cm. I'm a bit anal with my hair notes so I know there not wrong. The 12cm also matches up to the growth shown on my tshirt.

Secondly ive chopped about 6.5 cm this year which would leave me with 5.5 cm of net growth. But in reality I have retained quite a bit more growth than that. In fact if I hadn't cut this year I would be a solid bsl.

Why??????

does anyone else have this problem, not that I'm complaining as my growth must be better than I thought. Maybe I should stop measuring ;)

[Squiggy]

Oh, I'm horrible at measuring! It seems like such a straight forward thing, but I can measure 3 times in a row and come up with 3 different measurements, each varying by a half inch or more. If you think about it, there is a lot of room for error with measuring - did you pull the tape taught each time/the same amount? Did you stretch your hair out the same amount? Was the tape exactly centered on your head? There's even more variables, but those seem to be the ones that trip me up!

Like you, I always seem to have more growth than the tape measure says I do! So I stopped measuring as often; I used to measure every month, but cut down to every 3 months or so. And once I passed BSL I basically stopped measuring altogether, except once or twice when I hit a milestone and want to measure for curiosity. For me, not measuring as often made me a bit less obsessive over how much and how fast it has grown.

[butterflybutton]

Yes, the back seems to grow faster on most people.

I just measured my hair and my virgin growth on top is 7" and behind my ear is just shy of 8". The top I can measure to the old colour line, but underneath all the colour has been cut off, so it very well could have been more (although unlikely)

And I've just realised it's my one year growing out colour this week!

[torrilin]

If you measure your root growth (say every time you dye) and you don't measure the overall length, you're taking a pretty small measurement. Measuring around 1cm on your head is going to be tricky, since your head curves and humans can't look at the top of their own heads without the help of tools. Lots of opportunity for error. Your overall measurement is pretty easy to get right. 30cm is a way bigger share of a tape measure than 1cm, and being off by 1mm or 2mm over 30cm is a much smaller error than 1mm out of 1cm. And if your hair is 90-100cm, even better. At that point being off by 1cm or so is not very much error.

The other factor is well... the hairs on your head don't actually grow uniformly, no matter how harsh a roots demarcation line looks, and how consistent it appears. It's a pretty safe bet that some hairs on your head will not grow at all over the course of a month. Good luck finding them in the 50-100k hairs on your head :D. Other hairs might grow 2cm or more. A typical hair might grow 1cm, but again, good luck finding an individual hair that did exactly that. So the demarcation line is somewhat blurry, and not in a way humans are going to see well. That's also going to add error.

If you're trying to measure your growth accurately, it would be better to measure your overall length. If you do trim, it would be a good idea to do a wet measurement before every trim and after as well. (assuming you do wet trims, if your trims are dry do a stretched measure instead) Measuring the "spring" of curly and wavy hair is tricky, and it will vary from day to day and based on the handling you do. Whatever method you use, be consistent. If you always stretch, a wet measure will often read as longer. If you always measure curly, it'll seem like your hair length varies from day to day... because it does!

[diddiedaisy]

I stopped doing a full length measurement as my tape measure doesn't work properly!!! I was stuck on 18 inches for ages even though my hair was growing, then one day it suddenly said 20 inches. Its too hard, I think I'll just stop measuring, I've got an idea on how my hair grows now. Maybe when I get to BSL I wont be so obsessive.