You may notice that when your hair is healthier, it takes longer to air dry. Damaged hair can release moisture quickly when it's frizzy and covered in split ends because your cuticle is open. Hair is made of 90% keratin, a fibrous protein that swells when wet.
According to Colombini, healthy hair actually takes the longest to dry. While it's less than ideal, your hair may take a long time to dry simply because you maintain healthy hair practices and your strands are able to easily absorb and retain moisture.
Your hair porosity levels have a lot to do with how quickly your hair dries. Hair porosity refers to how readily your hair accepts and releases moisture. Low porosity hair has tightly closed cuticles that hold onto water, resulting in slower drying times.
Q: How long does hair take to dry? A: It depends upon the length of the hair and the method you are using to dry your hair. If you want to know how long it will take to dry your hair naturally, it will take almost fifteen minutes if you have short hair and two hours if you have long, thick hair.
Thickness has to do with how much volume your hair takes up, how much, essentially, it weighs. Imagine the difference between drying a single bed sheet in the dryer versus drying a big fluffy towel. Hair density rule is - The denser the hair, the longer it will take to dry.
Fine hair is the only hair type that she absolutely says should be cut dry. "When fine hair is wet, it doesn't seem as thick — in fact, it may look like a quarter the amount of hair as when it's dry," Tripodi explains. "If it's wet, you might wind up taking more hair off than you need to cut." The takeaway?
Your Hair Dries Quickly After a Wash
That's one of the hallmark signs of high porosity hair. The porous nature of the strands lets the water enter the hair shaft more easily, but it also quickly escapes so it takes less time for hair to dry.
First, let your hair dry naturally, about 70-80% of the way dry. Then, with your dryer on the coolest setting (don't touch that hot setting!), blow your hair dry, keeping the dryer about 6-inches away from hair at all times and moving it around continuously. Voilà: gorgeous, healthy hair, without the heat.
You Have High Porosity Hair
While low porosity hair holds onto water more tightly, high porosity hair has the opposite problem. Although high porosity hair dries quickly, your hair's loose cuticle allows much more water to enter your strands.
One aspect that's important to your hair health but not talked about as often is your hair's porosity. Hair porosity can affect the way your hair looks and feels and its overall health. Having high porosity hair can lead to damage, but proper care can give you happy and healthy hair.
Medium porosity hair has little to no difficulty absorbing or retaining moisture, and tends to be relatively healthy with minimal exposure to damage from UV, chemical or heat processing. Products that are balanced in moisture can help medium porosity hair remain healthy.
Air drying (like over washing) over an extended period can cause scalp to compensate, over produce oil leaving hair more oily, and causing you to fight the imbalance with more and more shampoo for oily scalp and hair.
The first tell-tale sign of hair damage Opens in a new tab is usually that dry and brittle feeling. It's lacking in natural shine, it's permanently parched, and it's more difficult to style as a result.
What are the signs of healthy hair? Healthy hair strands have a sheen and a luster, little breakage, minimal shedding, are moisture rich (so not dry), reflect light, do not break when brushed, and do not contain dandruff.
READ THE SIGNS
“It can be confusing because the signs of dry and damaged hair are similar, if not the same most of the time. Undesirables to look out for include hair feeling rough, brittle or scratchy; it will look dull too.
When your fingers touch your hair too much, they can actually steal away essential oils, leading to dry and easily broken hair strands.
Even for healthy hair, high humidity environments can lead to frizz when your hair absorbs excess moisture. When your hair is dry, frizz can happen when it absorbs moisture from the environment. Over-styling damaging the hair cuticle and causing frizz. Heat damage and styling is another common culprit of frizzy hair.
Thicker strands of hair are more likely to have a defect, making them more prone to breakage, the researchers believe. Lustrous, thick hair may be desirable but it is not necessarily the strongest. Scientists said thin hair tends to be stronger than thicker locks, after looking at the way they break.
In straight type, thin hair was judged most attractive, whereas in wavy type, hair with mean diameter received the highest attractiveness judgments. In conclusion, there was considerable variation in age, health and attractiveness perception of hair with regard to effects of hair diameter, type, and color.
It can be normal to see your scalp through your hair, particularly if you have naturally fine or light-colored hair. Hair density, color, and thickness all play a role in how visible the scalp is.