Why do my curls look different in Colorado?
The thing about Colorado that nobody warns you about is not the dryness. It is how fast it changes. A week here can run from shirtsleeves to snow and back to bare pavement, with a cold front behind it. Curls feel that more than any other texture, because a curl is a shape being held rather than a length hanging down, and the air is one of the things holding it.
So why do your curls look different here? Two things at once. Frizz is driven by moisture in the air, so in drier air the frizzier, less-defined textures often settle down and clump into real definition, which is why some people arrive and find the best curls they have ever had waiting for them. But the air will not hold still, so that result will not either. Hair is hygroscopic, meaning it takes water up from the air around it and gives it back, so what your hair is carrying today depends on what the air has been doing this week. Same hair, same products, different week, different curl.
What decides whether yours reads defined or limp through all of that is the weight of the product you are using, matched to your curl type. Too light and you get dryness, frizz and no definition, because in a humid climate the air was doing some of the moisturizing for you and here it is not. Too heavy and the curl gets weighed down, greasy at the root and pulled straight. That is the balance, and it is why a routine that worked where you came from can stop working here.
Below is the long version: what the curl-type numbers actually mean, where they came from, what Colorado's dry air tends to do to each one, and how product weight should change as you move up the scale.
Where did the curl type numbers come from?
The 1 through 4 system with A, B and C subtypes was created in the 1990s by Andre Walker, who was Oprah Winfrey's personal hairstylist. It was built in part to help people match products to their hair, and it spread far beyond its original purpose once online natural-hair communities picked it up. Type 1 is straight, Type 2 is wavy, Type 3 is curly, Type 4 is coily, and the letters mark how loose or tight the pattern is within each type. (Andre Walker Hair Typing System, Wikipedia)
Is your curl type the whole story?
No, and we would rather say that plainly than pretend the chart does more than it does. The system describes one thing: the shape of the curl. It does not describe how many hairs you have per square inch (density), how thick each individual strand is (strand width), or how readily your hair takes on and gives up water (porosity). Two people who both call themselves 3B can need completely different products, because one has fine, sparse, low-porosity hair and the other has coarse, dense, high-porosity hair.
Treat the number as useful shorthand for a conversation, not a diagnosis. In the chair we look at the pattern, then at density, strand width and porosity, and the product weight comes out of all four together. Your pattern can also vary across your own head, which is normal and not a problem to fix.
What does each curl type look like, and what does Colorado do to it?
Type 1: straight
No curl pattern. It falls from root to end without bending, and it shows oil and shine readily because light travels down an unbroken strand.
What dry air tends to do: straight hair rarely frizzes on humidity the way curls do, so the Colorado change here is usually static, flyaways and ends that feel papery, especially in heated indoor air over the winter. It is a dryness story, not a frizz story.
Product weight: the lightest end of the range. A drop of oil through the mid-lengths and ends, nothing at the root. Heavy creams and butters will make Type 1 look unwashed within a day.
Type 2A, 2B and 2C: wavy
2A is a loose, barely-there S that reads as texture more than wave, and it straightens out under almost any weight. 2B is a defined S from about mid-length down, usually flatter at the crown. 2C is a strong wave that starts closer to the root and often has a few genuine spirals mixed in, and it is the most frizz-prone of the three.
What dry air tends to do: this is where Colorado's split shows up most clearly. If your waves were fighting humidity and puffing out at home, dry air can genuinely improve them, because the frizz that was hiding the wave settles down and the S pattern becomes visible. If your waves were already fine and soft, dry air can leave them looking flat and undefined instead, since there is not much pattern to reveal in the first place.
Product weight: light. Mousses, light gels and a very small amount of oil on the ends. 2A and 2B are the types most often ruined by a product that is one step too heavy. 2C can usually carry a little more than the other two.
Type 3A, 3B and 3C: curly
3A is a large, loose spiral, roughly the width of a piece of sidewalk chalk, with plenty of shine and movement. 3B is a springier ringlet, closer to the width of a marker, with more volume and more of a tendency toward dryness. 3C is a tight corkscrew, about the width of a pencil, densely packed, with the least natural shine of the three because the curve breaks up the light.
What dry air tends to do: Type 3 hair is where we see the biggest improvement in people who move here with frizz-prone texture. The curl pattern was always there, and in dry air it stops swelling and fuzzing and starts clumping into defined pieces. The trade-off is that the same dry air pulls moisture out faster, so definition without moisture turns into crunch, split ends and a curl that will not hold past day one.
Product weight: medium. A conditioner with real slip, a cream or gel with enough body to hold the clump, and oil on the mid-lengths and ends to seal it. This is the range where under-weighting is the common mistake, not over-weighting.
Type 4A, 4B and 4C: coily
4A is a tight, visible coil, roughly the width of a crochet needle, with a defined S shape you can see. 4B bends in sharp angles rather than curving, closer to a Z than an S, and it shrinks noticeably. 4C has the tightest pattern with the least visible definition, and it can shrink dramatically in length, so it looks far shorter than it is.
What dry air tends to do: Type 4 hair is the most vulnerable to a dry climate, because the natural oils from the scalp have the hardest time traveling down a strand that changes direction constantly. Colorado tends to increase breakage and dullness here rather than delivering the frizz-relaxing bonus that Type 3 gets. If you moved here and your coils feel brittle rather than better, that is consistent with what we see.
Product weight: the heaviest end. Rich conditioners, butters and creams, layered and reapplied more often than you would have needed in a humid climate, with oil to seal on top. Under-weighting is nearly always the problem here, and there is far more room before it tips into greasy.
Why does frizz drop in dry air?
If it is your scalp that is unhappy rather than the curl itself, start with why your scalp is so dry in Colorado. Hair is hygroscopic, meaning it takes water in and gives it back depending on the air around it. The proteins in your hair form weak hydrogen bonds that break and reform every time hair gets wet and dries, and water molecules let neighboring protein strands bond to each other indirectly. Humid air simply has more water molecules available, so more of those bonds form, and strands fold back on themselves at a greater rate. That is frizz. (Smithsonian Magazine, "Why Humidity Makes Your Hair Curl")
Run that backwards and you have Colorado. Less water in the air means fewer of those bonds forming after your hair has dried, so the shape you set holds and the fuzz that was competing with it never shows up. That is the whole mechanism behind "my curls have never looked this good." It is not the altitude and it is not something in the water doing you a favour. It is the absence of atmospheric moisture.
The catch is that the same absence of moisture is working on the water inside your hair, not just the water around it. Which brings us to the other half of the mail we get.
So why did my curls go limp when I moved here?
This is the opposite complaint and it is just as common. Both experiences are real, and they usually come down to one of four things.
Your product is under-weighted for your curl
The most common one. In a humid climate the air was doing some of the moisturizing for you, and your routine only had to hold the shape. Here, the product has to carry the moisture as well, and the routine that worked at sea level is now doing half the job. The result is dryness, frizz and a curl that never clumps.
Your product is over-weighted for your curl
The second most common, and the one people arrive at by over-correcting for the first. Colorado made your hair feel dry, so you reached for the heaviest mask, butter or cream on the shelf. On a 2A or a 3A that is too much load. The curl gets dragged out, the root goes flat, and it reads as greasy by the afternoon. Limp is not always a moisture problem. Sometimes it is a weight problem.
You are washing too often
Dry air plus frequent shampooing strips the oil your scalp is producing before it ever reaches your ends. Stretching time between washes is the single change most people can make for free, and it is the one that comes up most often when curly clients compare notes about moving here.
Humectant-heavy products in dry air
You will see this advice constantly online: cut the glycerin and other humectants, because in dry air they pull moisture out of your hair rather than into it. Plenty of people say it worked for them. We want to be straight with you that we have not found a solid source establishing the mechanism, and it is genuinely disputed. If you have tried everything else, it is worth a two-week experiment with a lower-humectant styler, but treat it as a personal test rather than settled fact.
Water is worth a mention too. Some visitors report their curls behave better on Colorado water than on the water back home, though that is anecdotal and varies by where you are coming from. What our local water does to hair is a longer subject and we wrote it up separately in our piece on Broomfield's water. Winter indoor air is its own factor, covered in what Colorado winters actually do to your hair.
What do you actually recommend for curly hair in Colorado?
For curls we point you at a curl-specific line rather than a general moisture line. Both of the brands we carry have built one, and in Miles's experience both have put serious development into their curl ranges, which is why those are what he reaches for on textured hair.
From Davines that is LOVE CURL. It runs LOVE CURL Shampoo and LOVE CURL Conditioner, with LOVE CURL Co-wash for the washes in between, and on the styling side LOVE CURL Enhancing Milk, a lightweight leave-in you spray onto towel-dried hair, LOVE CURL Cream, a curl-defining cream with a soft hold, and LOVE CURL Mask when the hair is asking for more. That range is the whole product-weight idea inside one line: the Enhancing Milk on its own for waves and looser curls, the Cream through the middle of the scale, and the Cream with the Mask in rotation as you move toward coily. More on our Davines page.
From Aveda it is be curly advanced, and it is built the same way. Be curly advanced shampoo and conditioner, be curly advanced co-wash between washes, then for styling the be curly advanced curl perfecting primer as the light leave-in, the be curly advanced curl enhancer cream for definition on curls and waves, and the be curly advanced coil definer gel for the tightest patterns. The be curly advanced intensive curl perfecting masque is the heavy end of the line. Same rule again: lighter items on the looser patterns, heavier ones on tighter, denser hair. More on our Aveda page.
What clients tell us they notice on either line is more definition with less frizz, and a curl that still looks like something on day two. How much you use is the part we adjust by curl type, which is the point of everything above: the right product at the wrong quantity behaves like the wrong product. Either line is on the shelf in the salon if you want to be walked through it.
What happens if you come in?
Miles and Nicole both have curl training, and any appointment starts the same way. We talk through your hair, what it was doing before you moved, what it is doing now and what you actually want it to do day to day, and then we get to work. You leave with the cut and the result, and with a routine and a product weight that suits your hair rather than someone else's.
Mahne Roots Collective is at 11566 Colony Row in Broomfield, in the Arista community, with free parking at the door. Book online or call (720) 240-9391.