Curl Pattern Guide: Types of Curly Hair and How to Find Your Curl Type

When you are trying to find the best products for your hair and how to care for your hair wigs, it’s helpful to know about your hair pattern and types. Follow us to learn about how to identify the curl pattern and some terms related to the curl type.

Curl Pattern Guide - Classification and Types of Hair Curls

Hair patterns describe the shape of your hair, which depends on the form of the follicle on your scalp. There are four basic curl types of your hair wigs, named from Type 1 to Type 4, and different sub-categories within each type, presented by A, B, and C. The numbers indicate the pattern of curls and the letters divided the hair into different types based on the width or diameter of the hair. Here is the breakdown of the hair pattern classification.

Type 1: Straight 

Type 2: Wavy 

Type 3: Curly 

Type 4: Kinky 

A: Widest

B: Medium

C: Tightest

How to Identify Your Curl Type? - Types of Curly Hair

It does not require much other than visual identification when recognizing your curls, but some factors may affect the look, for example, the longer hair will result in a looser curl pattern as the weight will stretch your curls. In addition, each person can have more than one type of curl in your hair, which means you may have a combination of wavy, curly, and kinky. Straight hair is the most intuitive, it does not have any waves and curls, so here we mainly focus on the other three types of curls.   

Type 2 Curl: Wavy Hair

Generally, waves or type 2 curls tend to have an S pattern, and the waves tend to start at mid-lengths, ranging from soft waves to deep waves. Wavy hair can’t form swirls or twists that wrap around itself, this is the main difference to distinguish between wavy and curly hair. 

- 2A: grows straightly at the crown and forms a wave towards the end. It is easy to comb and does not require heavy styling products.

- 2B: grows straight but starts forming defined S-shaped waves from the mid-length.

- 2C: grows with a well-defined S shape from the roots, has the thickest strands, and is more susceptible to frizzing. This type of curl looks somewhere between wavy and curly hair. 

Type 3 Curl: Curly Hair

When the waves start from the root and go all the way to the tip, this is what we are going to talk about - curly hair, with patterns ranging from soft curl to ultra curl. Wet curly hair looks like waves but dry curly hair takes on a 3D swirl shape. 

- 3A: a spiral curl similar in size to sidewalk chalk, large in diameter, and roll down from the crown. 

- 3B: going to be the same spiral curl but similar in size to a Sharpie.

- 3C: going to be the same spiral and is similar in size to a straw or pencil, more tightly packed than 3B. 

Type 4 Curl: Kinky or Coily

Kinky or coily hair forms very tight and small curls from the scalp, the type 4 hair curl can be fine or coarse in texture. Kinky hair is fragile and prone to shrinkage and breakage, make sure to protect your body wave hair when styling. 

- 4A: slash kinky curls, also tends to be a really tight coiled spiral that is similar in size to a crochet needle

- 4B: this is where it's extremely tightly packed and it's almost more of a z pattern.

- 4C: similar to 4B, the big differences are that it tends to have a little bit less obvious definition and the absolute most shrinkage of all the curl types.