Hair texture typing? (Individual strands thickness.)

[pepperminttea]

I recently asked you guys for help typing my wave pattern (thank you for all the responses!), but Diamond.Eyes got me thinking about texture. I've had people refer to my hair as fine in texture for a long time, but I don't think it's 'baby fine' or 'cat fine' like many of the fineys round here are working with, which is why I went with F/M. But the more I think about it, I'm not really sure, and my sources for comparison in real life are a bit limited. Help? :flower:

Here's a close-up shot from yesterday. (Just ignore any tinsy bits of lint or splits! :p )

http://i.imgur.com/nkXzD.jpg

When I roll my hair in between my fingers as per the hair typing guide (http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/vbjournal.php?do=article&articleid=227), I can normally feel it but not always, it's as if it's barely there. But I generally don't have trouble seeing my individual hairs as long as the light is good enough.

Incidentally, though it probably looks like it was a frizz fest in that photo, that was actually quite a decent hair day. My hair just goes a bit cloud-like. ;)

[HintOfMint]

From your description you could be a F/M.

Texture can also be determined by overall feel, like when you scrunch your hands in your hair. Fine hair tends to be very soft and tends towards silky. Coarse hair isn't by definition rough, but it is... not as silky? Hard to say.

Another way is (if your ends are healthy) to take the ends of your hair and make a sort of tassel with them. If the tassel is more pokey than soft, then I would tend towards the coarse rather than fine.

[MissManda]

I was very confused about my hair texture, too and still am sometimes. I don't know if you've read it, but myself and some other members were discussing a similar topic over in the Fine and Thick Hair thread (http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=24724). It's in the last few pages.

Here (http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showpost.php?p=2153843&postcount=166) is the post I made in that thread since this post kind of builds upon what I was talking about over there.

I have some hairs that I can feel between my fingers, but as you said, they kind of have a feeling of being barely there. A lot of my other hairs can't be felt at all, which is saying something because I have an very acute sense of touch. When comparing my shed hairs with those of my coarser-haired DBF, a clump of mine feels softer, almost downy, while his feels more like, um, hair. If I take same-sized clumps of my and DBF's hair and drop them, mine is much floatier, if that makes any sense. :lol: Hopefully I can come up with a better description than that.

Your close-up pic of your hair just reminded me that I have a few like that. You can find them here (http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/album.php?albumid=8239&pictureid=109071) and here (http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/album.php?albumid=8239&pictureid=119209) if you would like to compare. Both were taken a few feet away by the same very high-quality camera. One observation that I have made is that what might look like a single hair (in pics and IRL) is most likely a bunch of hairs that have clumped together and if I want to get down to just a single hair, I'll spend forever pulling that strand apart because there are so many teeny-tiny hairs. It's much easier to grab/find a single strand of DBF's hair. I think they kind of look like your pic, but then again it is hard to tell from just pictures alone. The fact that I use henna might throw it off a bit, too. :o

Maybe I can get some similar close-ups of DBF's hair sometime to make a better comparison? :p

That's all I can think of for now. I hope you've found my rambling somewhat helpful.

PS: I just remembered that there was another thread that might be relevant to this discussion:

How Do You Know If You Have Fine Hair? (http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=50861)

[lapushka]

I'd say that's F hair, pepperminttea. Not F/M, but F. Kinda looks like mine.

[vindo]

I agree, it could be F or close to F-M, my sister has F-M hair with 0.04mms, M starts at 0.05mm, so I think yours might be somewhere around that.
But typing from pictures is hard, especially since we only see your hair and noones hair next to it. Measuring with a micrometer is most accurate.

M= 0.05-0.07

[pepperminttea]

HintofMint: It's quite silky when it's detangled, but when it's been worn down for a little while and has tangled up again, it feels almost like thin muslin, with all the little crossed-over strands. The ends feel soft in the tassel test too, but they aren't super-blunt, so I'm wondering if that contributes. :hmm: Thanks for your help! :)

Manda: I'm glad it's not just me. Thank you for the links! Your hair does look quite similar to mine in the photos, I can only imagine how fine your hairs are without the henna! I should keep up with that thread, the low porosity/fine stuff was particularly interesting, as I have gone overboard with conditioning several times, it's difficult to find a balance. And if I comb or brush my scalp hair at all, I end up with literally no volume too. One of my friends mentioned my hair was "so flat" - but she has 3a curls and volume to spare, so. :p

That other thread, too; I must see if I can find a laser pointer, I know I've got one somewhere. An interesting method certainly!

Thanks lapushka. :)

It is a bit tricky Emichiee, I thought about including something for scale, but I had no idea what. Thanks for your help. :)

[Phalaenopsis]

To me, it looks like F :)

[ariesfairies]

I'd say.... maybe F?

I find it very hard to define texture unless you have another around you with something obviously different.

I was thinking of a way we could all compare hair types, and that was using a scanner, set to generic setting of 150 ppi (pixels per square inch) so it could be compared via sight easier, by simply measuring what comes out of on the scan.
Just means we all gotta know how to work the scanner settings, not to mention all own one.. :P

[pepperminttea]

Thanks Phal. :)

Agreed ariesfairies, though my scanner is quite ancient; it thinks Windows XP was quite modern, let alone Win 7. :p But it would be nice if there was an article with photos of strand thickness as well as wave/curl pattern.

[jeanniet]

This is all kind of a mystery to me. I used to think I had coarse hair until I realized that I also have very fine hairs as well (and M hairs, too). I put M for typing because I didn't know what else to put, but it's not really true. There isn't a designation for mixed. Your hair looks like what I would call F/M.

[Tia2010]

Your hair description sounds a lot like mine :) so I would say F/M

I had one stylist say my hair was fine, but not baby fine... then I had another say it didn't feel fine, but average (medium I guess)...so I have no idea.

When I first found LHC I spent days trying to figure it out.. looking, feeling, looking again under a microscope (oh yes I did :rolleyes:) Grumbling to myself " how is this so difficult?" :p I finally settled on F/M for the sake of my own sanity :D I think I have equal amounts of both, so it fits.

[ladylowtide]

I have a mix of definitely M and definitely F hair on my head naturally. I think.

If my hair texture is right. I would say that your hair is definitely finer than my M hair. And definitely thicker than my very fine strands. So I guess that would leave you somewhere in the range of F-F/M