Find your hair type: the curl-pattern guide (1A to 4C)

There is a specific reason most people can't name their hair type: they have never seen their own hair in its native state. Daily styling — heat, product, brushing, the way it's tied at night — masks the pattern. The hair you've owned your whole life looks different to a stylist who is reading the wet-then-air-dried version of it for the first time.

This is the front door to our hair-type cluster. Once you have your type, the next read is the deep-dive for your dominant note: Type 2 wavy, Type 3 curly, or Type 4 coily — each with the cuts that work, the products that respect the pattern, and the Studio prompts that render honestly on your own face.

#Why hair type matters more than face shape for daily life

Face shape decides which cuts flatter you. Hair type decides what those cuts will actually do on your head. A "long layered cut with face-framing layers starting at the cheekbone" on a Type 1B head is a different garment than the same cut on a Type 3C head. Same drawing, different physics.

Once you know your hair type, three things become easier:

1. Cut decisions. Curly cuts are dry, straight cuts are wet, wavy cuts can go either way. The wrong technique on your texture produces a result you cannot style at home.
2. Product decisions. A leave-in cream that hydrates Type 4 coily hair will weigh down Type 1B straight hair into a greasy curtain. A volume mousse that lifts Type 1B will flake out of Type 3C on day two.
3. AI try-on decisions. Most diffusion models smooth the curl pattern toward Type 2 — they were trained on straight-hair-heavy datasets. Knowing your type means knowing when a render is honest and when it's been quietly straightened out.

#The 30-minute self-test

The honest test takes 30 minutes including the air-dry. There is no shortcut. Quizzes that show you a wet head, a brushed head, or a celebrity photo and ask you to match are giving you the styled version of someone else's hair, not your own.

Step 1 — Wash, no product. Use a sulfate-free or gentle shampoo. Rinse. Apply conditioner only on the mid-lengths and ends, rinse out. Do not apply leave-in, mousse, gel, oil, cream — nothing.

Step 2 — Let it air-dry, hands off. Do not towel-rough-dry. Do not run your fingers through it. Do not put it in a bun. Wrap a microfibre or a soft cotton tee around your head for 5 minutes to soak the worst of the water, then let the rest air-dry undisturbed. This part is the discipline; touching the hair imprints a shape that isn't its native shape.

Step 3 — Read four observations once the hair is completely dry:

1. The pattern. Straight? Wavy (S-shape)? Curly (ringlet)? Coily (Z-pattern or visible tight loop)?
2. The shrinkage. Stretch a strand between two fingers and let it go. How much shorter does it land compared to stretched? (Type 1: 0%. Type 2: 5-15%. Type 3: 30-50%. Type 4: 50-75%.)
3. The strand thickness. Hold one strand against a sewing thread. Thinner = fine. Same width = medium. Thicker = coarse.
4. The density. Pull the top half of your hair up. Can you see scalp easily through it? Low density. Need to push hair aside to see scalp? Medium. Almost no scalp visible? High.

Pattern is the type. Shrinkage is the subtype tiebreaker. Strand and density modify which products and cuts work but don't change the type.

#The twelve subtypes

The Andre Walker system divides hair into four types, each with three subtypes ranked by intensity. Read down for your dominant note, then click into the deep-dive for the long version.

Two notes on this grid. Most people are between two adjacent subtypes — 2B-leaning-2C, 3A-with-some-3B, 4B-with-pockets-of-4A. Pick the dominant note, treat the other as a constraint. The Type 4 row is the most under-documented in mainstream beauty press, and the row where the AI try-on industry is weakest — we wrote the coily-hair deep-dive specifically to fix both gaps.

#You are probably between two subtypes — that's fine

A real head of hair is not a single subtype. Common combinations:

• 2A at the temples, 2B everywhere else — common for fine-haired wavies. Style the temples last; they will sit straighter than the body.
• 3A on top, 3B underneath — gravity stretches the top, density holds the underneath. Cut for 3B; style for 3A.
• 3C at the crown, 4A at the nape — denser at the back, looser at the front. The cut needs to respect the denser zone; the products need to respect the drier zone.
• 4B with patches of 4A near the face, 4C at the nape — most common in Type 4 heads. The nape pattern is the hidden truth; trust it.

The Studio detects this zone-by-zone automatically. The mirror test is the fallback — and useful as a sanity check on the app's read.

#What changes your hair type (and what doesn't)

The follicle shape is mostly genetic. The visible pattern is the follicle shape plus a list of modifiers:

What changes the visible pattern:

• Hormonal shifts — pregnancy, post-partum (3-6 month re-growth in a different pattern), menopause, thyroid changes. Re-test after any of these.
• Chemical processes — relaxers, keratin treatments, perms, repeated bleach. These either physically rearrange the protein bonds (relaxers, perms) or damage them enough that the pattern slackens.
• Heat damage — cumulative, often invisible until a wash reveals it. Curls that "don't bounce back" are heat-damaged, not "changed." This is reversible only by growing it out.
• Heavy weight loss / gain — affects scalp blood flow and follicle activity; usually a temporary modifier.

What does NOT change your hair type:

• A haircut. A cut changes the length and shape of the cut, not the pattern of growth.
• A new product. Products coat the hair shaft; they do not alter the follicle.
• A new climate. Humidity and dry-air cycles affect how the pattern appears day-to-day but not the underlying type.
• One bleach session. Slightly modifies the pattern; serial bleaches change it.

#The Studio shortcut

If you're using Mademoiselle, the app's segmentation step reads your pattern by zone — crown, temple, nape, ends — and tags each zone with a primary and secondary subtype before any render runs. The classification is visible in the Studio's Texture tab.

The 30-minute mirror test is what you run before you've ever opened the app, or when you want to verify the app's read against your own eyes. Most of the time the two agree. When they disagree, take a fresh wash-and-air-dry selfie in daylight and re-run the Studio; the disagreement usually resolves on a clean input.

#Three common mistakes that wreck the read

1. Testing on wet hair. Wet hair shows you the looser version of every pattern. A 3B head looks like 2C when wet. Always read the dry-from-air-dry state.
2. Touching the hair while it dries. Fingers, towel, scrunching, plopping — all of these modify the pattern from its native shape. Hands off until completely dry.
3. Reading your hair when it has product in it. Yesterday's gel, last week's leave-in, even dry shampoo from this morning — all coat the hair and modify the appearance. The test runs on a clean wash, no product, full air-dry.

#What to do with the answer

Once you know your type — and your secondary note — the next reads in order:

• The deep-dive for your dominant type. Type 2 wavy covers cuts and styling for 2A/2B/2C. Type 3 curly covers the largest texture in MENA. Type 4 coily covers the most under-documented hair, including the Afro-MENA experience.
• Find your face shape. Hair type tells you what can happen on your head; face shape tells you what should. Together they decide a haircut.
• Hairstyles by face shape. Once you have both inputs, this is the five-cuts-per-shape reference.
• AI hairstyle try-on: the 2026 guide. The render mechanics. Critically: AI try-on is least honest on Type 4 hair and most honest on Type 2 — the deep-dives explain why, and what to do about it.
• How to talk to your stylist. Bring your hair type to the chair as a fact, not a question. Stylists who specialise can adjust technique on the spot; generalists need it spelled out.

#Authority and further reading

The Andre Walker classification was originally published in Andre Talks Hair! and is now the de-facto industry standard — referenced in stylist training programmes worldwide. The L'Oréal Professionnel education library at lorealprofessionnel.com covers the same system in their hair-mag and education sections. The American Academy of Dermatology at aad.org keeps an educational hub for hair and scalp health that is genuinely useful for any type — particularly the entries on traction alopecia (relevant to all four types but most documented in Type 4), heat damage, and chemical-process recovery.

For an alternative reading of texture, the LOIS system (L bend, O coil, I straight, S wave) is worth knowing if you have unusual strand-pattern variation. It is not the standard the salon industry runs on, but it produces a more granular read for some Type 3 and Type 4 heads.

If the Studio's read and the mirror test disagree, trust the mirror — it has the longer relationship with your hair.