According to hairstylist Levi Monarch, knowing your hair type is the first step toward dissecting all the hair care products lining market shelves: “Understanding your hair is so important. Then from there you can figure out how to go about enhancing your curl,” he previously told mbg about hair types. Of course, you can have a hybrid of multiple textures (in fact, most people do!), so figuring out your true hair type isn’t so cut and dried. It may take some personal guesswork to figure out what methods work for your specific locks, but identifying your general strand pattern—say, through a hair type quiz—is step one on the journey. We should also note that this quiz doesn’t take density, porosity, and strand thickness into account—while those do tend to associate with certain hair types, it’s not the be-all and end-all. For instance, anyone can have coarse or fine strands, regardless of whether their hair dries coiled or stick-straight. For the purposes of this quiz, we’re sticking to tried-and-true hair types (to test your strands for porosity and coarseness, meander on over here and here). Then, move right along with this quiz.
