Wavy Hair Information Archives

Irish Curls and Celtic Curls – Tiktok Trends

September 5, 2024 by Emily Evert 1 Comment

If your TikTok algorithm shows you content about wavy curly hair, you’ve almost certainly come across content for Irish curls in the last couple of months. It’s become a really commonly discussed concept in the wavy curly community on there. I’ve also seen some content about Celtic Curls lately! I thought I’d address these topics here on the blog because I’ve never covered these before and I know people are coming across some of it on TikTok and are curious!

By the way, if you aren’t following me on TikTok, please do! My username is WavyHairCareBlog.

@wavyhaircareblog

What Are Irish Curls?

Irish curls refers to hair that is straighter on top, and wavier or curlier underneath. Many people on TikTok have linked this type of hair with having Irish heritage.

It is very common for people with wavy hair to have straight or at least straighter hair on top (aka on their canopy). Whether or not this has anything to do with Irish heritage is extremely debatable. To be honest, my best guess is that it is unrelated! Of course people who are Irish can have this hair type, but they may also have straight hair, wavy hair all over, or curly hair all over. Also, lots of people have this hair type but do not have Irish heritage.

That being said, if people are Irish and have this hair type and enjoy using this phrase, then of course that’s fine for them to use this terminology. Also, even if you choose not to refer to your hair as Irish Hair, if you have this hair type and want help styling it or caring for it, you’re in the right place!

Far less often, but I have also seen some people say that they think Irish curls are unique from other curl types because they believe people with Irish hair are more likely to have fine hair strands and low porosity hair. Hair porosity and thickness definitely vary, but having a combination of low porosity and fine hair is not particularly rare in general, it’s my own hair type and is pretty common for people with wavy hair. It does require some specific care vs other types of wavy or curly hair but I believe that to be true of all hair types. If you aren’t sure of your own hair thickness and porosity, check out my blog post how to determine your wavy hair type.

What are Celtic Curls?

Some people are expanding the idea of Irish Hair or Irish Curls to also include other Celtic heritage. It’s essentially the same thing as Irish Hair.

Do Irish People Have An Exclusive Hair Type?

Since starting this blog and trying to really “nerd out” with reading hair research, I have been SHOCKED at how little research is done on hair. Companies sometimes do research about how hair responds to their particular products, but studies being done on hair just for the sake of learning more about human hair, are surprisingly rare.

I read a hair chemistry textbook that essentially apologized for how what research we do have on human hair largely was based on the idea of there being three main human hair types. They broke hair down by caucasian, African-American, and Asian categories. People of other ethnicities or nationalities were just left out, and they don’t have any great reason for why these three categories were chosen! In some cases, caucasion hair was broke into categories based on straight or curly, and brunette vs blonde, or sometimes gray hair was analyzed separately as well.

There were common differences found in those three categories, not just in texture but also in the percentages of different proteins in the hair, the thickness of the hair cuticle and more. I suspect that genetic differences in our hair, largely correlated to our heritage, may impact how our hair looks, feels and how it responds to different styling techniques. Whether or not there is a particularly unique property to Irish hair or Celtic hair just isn’t well researched as far as I have been able to determine. My personal suspicion is that human hair comes ina lot of varieties that exist on somewhat of a spectrum, rather than there being 3, or 5, or even 500 strict hair types.

Another View Of Irish Hair And Celtic Hair

Another way of looking at this hair type that is wavier or curlier underneath and straighter on top is to call it an uneven curl pattern. Having an uneven curl pattern is extremely common, if not the norm, for people with wavy hair. Images in media leave us feeling like wavy and curly hair “should” be perfectly uniform, but that isn’t how the vast majority of people with naturally wavy hair or naturally curly hair find their hair to be. It’s normal for your hair to be curlier in the back of your head than the front, or on the underside of your hair rather than the top. It’s also common for people to have tighter curls at their temples and/or at the nape of their neck where hair is usually more fine.

I have an article covering how I tighten my straighter section and manage my uneven curl pattern if you want to check it out. I also covered the same topic in a YouTube video which you can watch below. If you aren’t subscribed to me on YouTube, please subscribe!

Why Irish Hair Has An Uneven Curl Pattern

The most important thing to know about Irish hair or Celtic hair is that it’s highly likely that the reason the top layer of your hair is straighter than the bottom is the exterior hair is more damaged. I do not mean to suggest that there isn’t some genetic or natural difference in your curl pattern from the top to the bottom. There likely is! However, when there is a big difference in curl pattern from one part of the the head to another, damage is almost always a meaningful factor. This damage is also pretty natural and happens for a variety of different reasons!

Did you know that the sun and even pollution in the air can damage our hair? It’s true, especially for hair that has been bleached, permed or chemically straightened, or is naturally light such as blonde or white/gray. The exterior of our hair gets more access to the sun, wind and environment in general.

The canopy or our hair also comes into contact with hats, our pillow and other surfaces more than the underlayer of our hair. When our hair comes into contact with hats and so on, it can be damaged by friction. Exposure to the elements allows moisture to be extracted from the exterior of our hair more rapidly, so the hair closer to our neck stays more moisturized which can help it stay wavy or curly. Finally, the exterior of the hair is often the first part of our hair to come into contact with the water from our shower head, so if you’re using a high pressure showerhead this can be rough on the exterior of your hair.

How To Care For Irish Hair

Everyone’s hair is a little bit different, including those within the same national background. As a result, what works for your Irish hair may vary some from what works for another Irish person’s hair. Finding the perfect hair care routine for you will require some trial and error. However, I’ll share some advice that is likely to work well for people with Irish hair, Celtic hair, or other forms of uneven curl patterns:

Treat your hair like wavy hair rather than straight hair. This means you don’t brush your hair after the shower, and you use a styling product like gel or mousse to help form your waves and curls. Diffusing instead of air drying is often really helpful. If the top layer of your hair acts really straight, you may not be convinced that all of your hair is wavy. In that case, I’d highly recommend reading my post How To Test If Your Hair Is Wavy. It’s my most popular post of all time and for good reason. SO many people have told me it has changed their life!

Give extra love to your straighter section. Giving extra care and support to the straighter portions of your hair can help really maximize their wavy or curly potential. For example, if you spend more time scrunching the straighter portions and diffuse them first, they might dry up a little tighter than they otherwise would. In some cases, also giving a bit less help to the curlier portions of your hair can help create more balance. For example, maybe you really scrunch the straighter portions of your hair tightly, and don’t scrunch the curlier portions at all so that when they dry they dry with a more even curl pattern. Another option is to finger-coil, finger-roll, or brush-style the top layer.

Get a layered haircut. Not just any layered cut, but one from someone who really knows wavy curly hair. Layered haircuts by a specialist who understands wavy hair and who understands that the canopy portion of your hair is straighter than the underside can help you get layers that give “lift” to your top layer to help it be as wavy or curly as it is capable of, while also letting your under layers peak out more!

How Much Gel To Use On Wavy Hair

May 8, 2024 by Emily Evert Leave a Comment

A really common question I get from people who are relatively new to the curly girl method or embracing their wavy hair, is how much gel should I use? Also, how to tell if you’re using too much gel or not enough!

It’s a really great question to be asking, and it has a little bit of a complex answer. I recently did my hair with too much gel, and then again with not enough gel, so that I could show you through images what each of those look like.

How much hair humans have REALLY varies

First though, I wanted to give a visual for why it is so challenging to know how much gel to use on wavy hair. It’s because how much hair you have on your head can be VASTLY different from how much hair another person has on their head, even if their hair is the same length as yours and even if neither of you are experiencing hair thinning or baldness at all. I’ve read that people with dense hair can have 6x as many hairs on their head as someone with low-density hair. That sounds a little hard to believe, but the tiktok embedded below helps illustrate this fact.

@ciera.hamilton No wonder people always confuse us for twins 🥰 #braid #twins #fyp #foryoupage #thickhair ♬ Ice Age – B

Causes and Solutions for Hair Build Up in Wavy Hair

March 2, 2024 by Emily Evert 3 Comments

What Causes Hair Build Up?

Hair build up is caused by hair products, your natural body oils, skin cells, hard water deposits, and even pollutants building up on your hair or scalp. At any given time, it’s natural for us to have tiny amounts of hair products, oil, pollutants and/or hard water deposits in our hair, as having 100% clean hair is nearly impossible. However, when we get ‘too much’ hair products, scalp oils, pollutants or mineral deposits in our hair it can start to cause problems with how our hair feels, acts or responds to styling. In severe cases it may even cause our scalp to feel irritated or itchy! So, it’s important to find a haircare routine that keeps build-up at a low level.

Does Hair Gel Cause Build Up?

Any products that you use on your hair or scalp can cause build-up, including shampoo! Yes, even shampoo. The more products you use, the more likely you are to get build-up. However, people often think that if they avoid using products like gel, mousse, curl cream, etc then they won’t get build-up, which is not the case. Everyone gets some amount of build-up, it’s just a matter of how much they get and how strong of a shampoo they need to use to clean their hair.

Not all shampoos are made equally, some are stronger than others, or work to remove certain types of buildup better than other products. You may find that some shampoos are not well-suited to remove build-up from certain products. The curly girl method attempted to simplify this by stating that if you avoid silicone products in your haircare products, then you don’t need to use a sulfate-containing shampoo. While this is commonly believed, it is not backed up with research or science (the curly girl method book sites no sources at all!).

Also, these days, there is a wide range of different strengths of shampoos even when looking at sulfate shampoos or non-sulfate shampoos. Meaning, even if you use all silicone-free products and use a sulfate-containing shampoo, you still may get build-up that needs to be removed with a stronger shampoo periodically.

Does The Curly Girl Method Cause Build-Up?

Wavy Curl Memory – Can You Take A Break From Styling Wavy Hair?

January 11, 2024 by Emily Evert 3 Comments

What if I’m going on vacation and can’t bring my diffuser with me. Can I take a break from styling my hair wavy?
I’m pregnant and the morning sickness has been lasting all day, I don’t have the energy for my full wavy curly hair routine. I don’t want to lose progress with embracing my waves. What can I do?
I’m in a wedding and the bride has asked us all to straighten our hair to coordinate. Am I doomed to lose all of my progress?

I Stopped Styling My Hair Wavy For 3 Months

I’ve seen questions like these all over wavy and curly hair groups, and I’ve received them in my blog comments and email inbox as well. A lot of people worry about taking a break from styling their hair wavy. Some worry about skipping it even one wash day, and others are worried about managing their hair during longer periods, such as during a pregnancy.

Regular readers may have noticed that I had a longer gap between posts than usual. The last few months, I’ve been really busy with my other blog and I’ve been really focused on putting all of my emotional energy into therapy. I have found it hard to find motivation to do my hair a lot of the time. It’s just not been as high on my priority list. So, I thought it was the perfect time to show you what happens if you take a break from styling your hair wavy.

I’d estimate that over about a 3 month period, I styled my hair wavy about 5 times. Is my hair now straight? Nope!

Here is my hair earlier this week. I styled with a medium hold gel in this photo, where I usually go for hard hold. I believe this is the primary reason why my waves weren’t as tight as they usually are. Also, I am in pretty bad need of a haircut.

Here are two photos from days in the last couple of months where I styled my hair wavy after days or weeks without.

Do you always have to style hair wavy to maintain your waves?

You can take a break from styling your hair wavy and your waves will come back as soon as you style it wavy again.

There is a myth that floats around which talks about ‘curl memory’. It claims that the more you style your hair wavy curly, the more your hair will ‘remember’ its shape. People then assume that if you take a break from styling your naturally wavy hair, that it will stop being as wavy. This just isn’t true as far as I can tell. I have attempted to find any sources for these claims of ‘curl memory’ and have found no research or even really well respected sources talking about this. It seems to be a commonly repeated concept on social media only.

Do You Always Have To Style Hair Wavy On The Curly Girl Method?

You can take a break from styling your hair wavy while following the curly girl method. If you use curly girl method approved products while not styling your hair wavy, you won’t need to clarify or do a reset wash. However, if you use non-CGM products during your break, the curly girl method book says you should use a clarifying shampoo when you go back to following the curly girl method. Check out my blog post on clarifying wavy hair to learn more.

Is Curl Memory Real?

I have tried, but have been unable to find any evidence to support the concept of curl memory. I have instead found that hair texture (meaning straight, wavy, curly or coily) is determined by the shape of your hair follicles. Hair texture sometimes changes with age (often around hormone changes such as puberty, pregnancy or menopause) but generally speaking, you can’t “train” your hair to be a certain texture.

The hair you have is the hair you have. You can use methods that embrace or enhance your texture (such as using gel and diffusing in naturally wavy hair) or you can use methods that stretch out your texture (such as brushing it before letting it air dry). Different types of treatment or styling like this can make your hair look wavier or straighter, but it doesn’t change your hair itself. It’s just a difference in styling technique.

Choosing to wear your hair straighter for a while, or choosing to wear it wavier for a while, won’t change what your hair is capable of doing after your next hair day.

Why Does Hair Get Wavier The Longer You Style Your Hair Wavy?

If curl memory doesn’t really exist, why do so many people see their hair get wavier or curlier the longer they follow the curly girl method or otherwise style their hair wavy?

Lots of reasons! For many people, they learn how to treat their hair more delicately when they start embracing their waves, so their hair grows out healthier and less damaged. For many, when their hair is healthier, it gets wavier or curlier.

There can be a pretty big learning curve to learning the techniques and products that work best for your exact hair type. I don’t mean straight vs wavy vs curly, but instead things like hair porosity and thickness. If you aren’t sure of your hair type, check out my how to determine your wavy hair type blog post.

Want to maximize the tightness of your waves? I have a whole blog post covering how to make your hair curlier.

The benefits of taking a break from styling your hair wavy

The benefits of taking a break from styling your hair wavy can largely vary from person to person. Here are a few to consider though!

Mental health. If you find that styling your hair wavy is stressing you out, you are likely to see a mental health benefit from taking a break.

Feeling for build-up. If you always use a styling product on wash day, then you won’t know exactly what your hair is feeling like when it is product-free. This can make it harder to catch on to build-up, to see how healthy your naked hair looks and feels, and so on. Occasionally washing your hair and just letting it air dry without any intentional styling can give you great insight into how your hair is doing.

Variety. Sometimes it’s just fun to have a variety of looks! Not always styling your hair wavy leaves you room to add some variety.

Save time. For most of us, styling our hair naturally wavy is more time consuming. Diffusing my hair takes almost an hour, while blow drying my hair when I don’t use any styling products takes maybe 20 minutes. Taking a break from styling my hair wavy saves me time.