The six things a hair analysis reads, and what each one changes

People want to come out of this with one word. Curly. Fine. Damaged. One word is not enough to build anything on, because two of the six readings can point in opposite directions on the same head.

Take a common combination: type 3 curls, fine strands, low density, an oily scalp, and heat damage in the last 10 cm. The curl pattern says use rich creams. The strand width says those creams will flatten it. The scalp says wash more often than a curl guide would tell you. The damage says stop using heat before changing anything else. A one-word answer cannot hold that.

So a good reading gives you six answers and then an order to act in. The order matters more than any single line. Fixing the heat first, then the scalp, then the product weight, works. Buying a cream for the curls and carrying on with the iron does not.

Curl pattern is the shape the hair grows in, read on clean hair with no product after air drying. Straight with no bend, a loose S, a defined spiral, or a tight zigzag.

What it decides is how far your own scalp oil can travel down the strand, and therefore how often you wash and how much moisture you add back. Oil moves down a straight strand quickly and stalls on a coiled one. That is why the American Academy of Dermatology's curly hair page sets a floor of washing a minimum of every 2 to 3 weeks, and its Black hair care page says once a week or every other week, while people with fine straight hair are often washing daily.

It also decides how you detangle. The AAD says to comb textured hair and tight curls while damp, with a wide-tooth comb and a leave-in conditioner, and to let straight hair dry partly first. The hair type chart has the full pattern-by-pattern breakdown. Most heads carry two patterns, so expect two answers.

Strand width is what the word texture means in a professional reading: how wide one hair is, judged by rolling a single strand between finger and thumb and comparing it against a piece of sewing thread. Thinner than the thread is fine. About the same is medium. Clearly thicker is coarse.

This one reading decides product weight, and product weight is where most routines fail. Fine hair takes liquids, sprays and light mousses, and collapses under creams and butters. Coarse hair takes creams, butters and oils, and a light spray does nothing at all on it. A well-reviewed product that did nothing for you was usually the right product at the wrong weight.

Strand width is also the reading most likely to have changed since you last thought about it. UCLA Health notes that strand diameter declines with age, and that hair can turn coarse when ageing follicles make less sebum. A routine built at 30 can stop fitting at 50 without anyone doing anything wrong.

Density is how many hairs grow per area of scalp, judged by how much scalp shows through when you part the hair in two or three places, and by how thick the base of a ponytail is. It is a separate fact from strand width, and mixing the two is the most common mistake in this whole subject. Fine and dense is normal. Coarse and sparse is normal.

Density decides how much product you need, how heavy a style your hair can carry, and how much weight can be cut out before the shape collapses. It also sets the baseline you compare against later: low density is not hair loss, and knowing your own baseline is what lets you tell a change from a fact of life.

The measurement itself, including the ponytail circumference method, is on hair density and thickness. Take the measurement once and write it down. It is worth more next year than it is today.

The scalp is read at the part and at the crown, on day two after washing, for colour, flaking, redness, tenderness and how oily the roots have become.

It decides wash frequency more than anything else does, and it decides which shampoo. This is where naming the problem pays off. The AAD separates dry scalp, which is skin that has lost water, from dandruff, which flakes and is often linked to seborrhoeic dermatitis, and from psoriasis, where patches are raised and the flakes carry a silvery sheen. Three conditions, three different treatments, one identical symptom in the mirror.

Even within dandruff the instruction splits. The AAD tells people with fine or straight hair, or an oily scalp, to wash often and use the dandruff shampoo twice a week. It tells people with coarse, curly or coily hair to wash when needed and use it about once a week, if tolerated. That single pair of sentences is the clearest proof that a reading has to come before a recommendation.

Damage is read by position and by type, and both halves matter.

Position first. Damage at the ends only is age plus wear, and hair that hangs 30 cm below your scalp has been there about two and a half years at roughly 1 cm of growth a month. Damage in a band at the mid-lengths usually points at a hair tie, a seatbelt, or a bag strap. Damage at the roots points at tension, chemistry or the scalp, and is the one worth acting on fastest.

Type next. Splits and white dots at the tips are mechanical wear. Rough, dry mid-lengths that feel like they grip a comb usually come from heat or lightening. Short broken pieces standing up across the top of your head are breakage, not regrowth, which is a distinction people get backwards and then celebrate.

What damage changes is your heat budget and your cut. The AAD's advice on hot combs and irons is to use the lowest heat setting and aim for once a week or less often. On hair that is already breaking, that is a ceiling rather than a target. Heat damage and heat protection covers the rest.

Everything above is visible. This one is not, and it changes the advice more than any of them.

The questions are narrow. When was the last colour, and was the hair lightened or darkened. Has there been bleach, a keratin treatment, a perm or a relaxer, and when. How often is heat used, and at what temperature. Is there a regular tight style. The AAD suggests relaxer touch-ups no more often than every two to three months and only on newly grown hair, so a person on a six-week cycle has a different starting point from a person on a twelve-week one.

Dates matter because hair carries the record forward. A bleach in March is still in the strand in September, and it will still be there next March if the hair is long. If you cannot remember, give the season rather than guessing a month. A rough date you believe is worth more than a precise one you invented.

Porosity is how readily the hair takes water in and how quickly it lets it go. It is the reading that decides whether your conditioner is sitting on top of the hair doing nothing, or soaking in and leaving as fast as it arrived.

It matters because it explains failures that look like nonsense. Hair that takes ages to get wet in the shower and stays wet for hours is low porosity, and heavy creams sit on the surface of it. Hair that soaks water instantly and air dries in twenty minutes is high porosity, usually from colour or heat, and it needs sealing rather than more moisture.

Here is the honest limit. You cannot read porosity from a photograph. A picture shows shine, frizz and how the ends sit, all of which correlate loosely with porosity and none of which prove it. It takes hands, water and a few minutes. The tests that work, and the float test that does not, are on hair porosity. Any reading that claims to have measured your porosity from a picture has guessed.

Put two people side by side who would both be told 'you have curly hair' by a shop assistant.

Person one: type 3 curls, fine strands, high density, a dry scalp, no colour, no heat. Their plan is a light leave-in, conditioner from the mid-lengths down, washing perhaps weekly, and nothing heavy at the roots because density plus weight equals a flat crown.

Person two: type 3 curls, coarse strands, low density, an oily scalp, lightened eighteen months ago with breakage at the mid-lengths. Their plan is a richer cream, conditioner right to the ends, washing more often than a curl guide would suggest because the scalp decides that, a stop on heat, and a cut to remove the broken band.

Same first word. Almost nothing else shared. This is why a reading is worth having done once properly, and why a plan built from it should say the reason next to each instruction rather than only the instruction. The Kurli AI Specialist writes it that way on purpose.

It cannot tell you why. A reading records that your part has widened; it cannot say whether that is genetics, iron, thyroid, a medicine, or the year you had. Those answers come from a doctor and usually from a blood test.

Timing is another blind spot. The AAD separates hair shedding from hair loss, and increased shedding often begins around three months after a stressful event and settles over the months that follow. A reading taken in the middle of that window shows a density that is not your normal one.

Nor can it promise a result. A reading tells you what your hair is and what it needs. What happens next depends on doing the routine for long enough, which for anything involving new growth means at least three months, because hair grows about 1 cm a month and you are waiting for hair that has not appeared yet.