A Guide on Every Curl Type and How to Nurture Each Pattern

Those that know, know: Learning about different curl types is key to decoding your own—and it can be a game-changer in more ways than one.

“Understanding your head of hair, its behavior, and what can be achieved with it can lead to a happy, healthy relationship with it,” says Vernon François, celebrity hairstylist and texture educator. “It helps inform how you approach it for the best outcomes all around.”

The most common way to determine curl types is the traditional system of types 2 to 4 with sub-categories of A to C. “Type 2 wavy hair features an ‘S’ pattern, type 3 features a tighter ‘S’ and/or corkscrews, and type 4 features a tight coil or zig-zag pattern,” says Sharley Butcher, lead educator and textured hair specialist at Curlsmith. “Subcategories A, B, and C, refer to the diameter of the wave, curl, or coil. A is loose, B is medium, and C is tight.”

However, it must be acknowledged, that often individual hairs will have their own intricacies and even a few different textures on each strand. As a person with dyslexia, François adds that it’s vital that charts are as universal as possible; to that end, he created his own visual language for hair with simple visual icons back in 2015.