The obvious categories of thick, thin, curly, or oily barely scratch the surface of what makes up hair types. Just like you, your hair is unique, and truly understanding the type of hair you have means putting time and money into products and treatments that will actually work for your hair and help you make the best hair care decisions.

Here are a few factors to consider in determining your hair type.

Diameter of hair strands
The best place to start in determining your hair type is to begin by measuring the diameter of a single strand of hair extensions. Take one strand of hair between your fingertips. Don’t feel anything? This is a sign of fine hair. If you do feel the lone strand, your hair is of medium width, and if it feels thick or textured, your hair is likely coarse.

Another strand test includes taking one single strand and laying it on a flat surface. If it’s barely visible, it is fine. If it looks textured and thick, Vietnamese hair is coarse. Anything in between is medium. Setting a single strand of hair next to a piece of thread can also help you gauge the diameter or width of your hair; if it’s about the same width, your hair is medium. If it is thicker than the thread, your hair is thick. Similarly, if it is thinner, your hair is fine.

People often confuse diameter and hair density to be one and the same, but this is far from the truth. A person may have a thin hair strand width but have a thick amount of hair. Essentially, hair density refers to how much wholesale hair you actually have – the number of strands themselves and not how thick each one is. Thin diameter does not always equal thin density, nor does medium diameter equal medium density. More often than not, people will have differing densities and diameters.

The method to determining your hair density is simple; take a handful of hair from the front of your head and gently pull it to the side. Is a lot of your scalp visible between the bunches of strands? If so, this means you have thin density, if you can barely see your scalp at all, your hair’s density is thick. Anything in between is medium density.