We know there is nothing “one-size-fits-all” about textured hair, which is why we created the NaturallyCurly Texture Typing System. With so much variety between textures, one woman’s holy grail may be another woman’s product fail. The Texture Typing System not only breaks down categories into wavy, curly and coily, but subgroups hair further into 3 specific groups within those categories. When using this guide, we hope that you do not feel the need to put yourself into only one category, and we especially hope you do not feel discouraged if you don’t see your exact texture and pattern represented.
Fun fact: most people are truly a mixture of several curl patterns!
Curl pattern is only one piece of the puzzle when hair type is concerned. Other important factors are porosity, length, width, and density. That is why one woman with fine 3c curls can look drastically different from a woman with coarse 3c curls.We want to show you just how diverse each curl pattern can be, so here are 20 women who are rocking their 3C hair!
As you’ll quickly see, 3c curls can take many forms.
1. @devrivelazquez
NaturallyCurly Editor Devri’s thick hair has a high porosity and density. She says she has so much of it that she can never see her scalp. In this article Devri explained why, although she and our Video Production Manager Nikki both have 3c hair, they’re not hair twins.
2. @nchanel
NaturallyCurly Video Production Manager Nikki has fine, low density hair, so they represent two different types of 3cs in the NaturallyCurly office. It’s always interesting listening to them battle it out over the products they’re loving and hearing what works and won’t work for both.
3. @heycurlie
@heycurlie describes her hair as coarse and dry with high porosity. For this particular look, she used Soultanicals Slip-N-Slide Knot-Proof Hair Glide and Soultanicals Can’t Believe It’s Knot Butta.
4. @thevicstyles
5. @itstoian
6. @thenotoriouskia
7. @sunitav_
8. @africamiranda
9. @_iamsimplyk
@_iamsimplyk’s curls span across different texture types at the nape area and the top of her head.
10. @grasiemercedes
11. @freshlengths
@freshlengths’ says her hair has low porosity and high density. Since she has some areas of tight coils and other areas of looser ringlets, she can “meet in the middle” with 3C.
12. @volitionofcgw
13. @raizarusito
14. @tinakunakey
15. Client of @evanjosephsalon
16. @lauriebot
17. @karinabaileyrae
18. @natashaleeds
19. @themindofmutiny
20. Client of @evanjosephsalon
Ultimately it can be helpful to find women who have similar hair to yours to see what styles work well on their hair and what products they love, but one thing that’s uniformly true for every curly hair journey is that it will take trial and error to discover what works for your unique curls.
We hope this variety of 3cs helped you understand the range of curl patterns, and we plan to continue doing these for all of the curl patterns so stay tuned!
What’s next?
If you’re still having a hard time figuring out your curl pattern, this might be why.
Have 3c hair? Drop your hair pics on our Facebook page, and show off those 3c curls!
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