Co-founder and Managing Partner, Curl Centric
Kenneth Byrd
Kira is the face of Curl Centric. I am the operator behind it: the one who reads the studies, checks the claims, and builds the tools, so that what you read here is sourced instead of guessed.
How this started, and what I do
Years ago Kira would stay up late researching hair. Article after article, night after night. I did not know at the time that she was building the base of a business that would end up supporting our family.
We started Curl Centric in 2008. She was the one who knew hair. I knew how to run something. That split has not changed.
I am the one reading the studies
Kira handles hair. I handle everything else: the business, the numbers, the research, and lately the software.
In practice the research part matters most to you. When an article on this site says a technique works, somebody had to go find out whether that is actually true, and usually that somebody is me. I have spent the last few years going deep on the science of textured hair: the growth cycle, porosity, surfactants, the protein and moisture balance. I did that because there is an enormous amount of confident advice in this space and very little of it is sourced.
The rest of my time goes into building things you can use in ten seconds instead of reading for ten minutes: the hair type chart, the calculators, the natural hair dictionary.
One I had been chasing for a while
For years I kept a list of things I wanted to do, and one of them was getting a Curl Centric article cited by a scientific journal. In 2022 the International Journal of Women’s Dermatology published a paper on curl pattern classification, and our hair typing system is its first listed reference. That one took fourteen years.
How we decide what goes on this site
More than 800 articles have been published here since 2008. This is the standard every one of them has to clear, and the short version of our editorial guidelines.
Claims get sourced
If we say something makes hair grow, break, or hold moisture, there is research behind it, or we say plainly that the evidence is thin.
We say when we do not know
Some questions about textured hair genuinely have not been studied well. Pretending otherwise is exactly how bad advice spreads through this community.
Recommendations are not for sale
Brands do not pay for placement in our product guides. We use affiliate links and we disclose them, but nobody buys a recommendation here.
We fix what we get wrong
Articles get revisited and updated as the evidence changes. An old post that is still wrong is worse than no post.
Where this work shows up
You do not have to take our word for any of it. Open any row to see the citation itself.
Peer-reviewed citationInternational Journal of Women’s Dermatology
Krueger, Aguh, Peterson, Thomas, James & Lo Sicco. “Curl pattern classification: a potential tool for communication and risk stratification.” International Journal of Women’s Dermatology, vol. 8, 2022.
Curl Centric’s hair typing system is the paper’s first listed reference.
They linked to Hair Type Chart
Read the paper on PubMed Central →Referenced in the press
Wikipedia
Cited as a numbered reference on Wikipedia’s “Hair” and “Human hair growth” articles, as “How many hairs are on a human head in total and per square inch?” curlcentric.com. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
A formal encyclopedia reference, in both articles. It sources Wikipedia’s statement on how hair count varies by hair color.
They linked to How Many Hairs Are on a Human Head
See the reference on Wikipedia →VICE
“…tightly-coiled natural hair referred to as 4C, an Andre Walker term.”
“What the Natural Hair Movement Looked Like Before Influencers”, VICE.
They linked to Hair Type Chart
Read the article →Bustle
“These Z-shaped coils can be hard to find in 4B hair as this curl type tends to lack curl definition.”
“How to Tell Your Curl Type”, Bustle. Four separate Bustle articles link to Curl Centric.
They linked to Hair Type Chart
Read the article →Reviewed
“…my past-shoulder-length, 3c/4a curly-textured natural hair.”
“Flawless by Gabrielle Union review”, Reviewed. The words “3c/4a” link to our chart.
They linked to Hair Type Chart
Read the article →Romper
“I looked on the Curl Centric website, which provided a thorough though perhaps not conclusive list of hair types.”
“5 Things That Happen When You Wash Your Hair Too Often or Too Little”, Romper.
They linked to Hair Type Chart
Read the article →mindbodygreen
“Thanks to celebrity hairstylist Andre Walker, hairstylists and aficionados know that the four main hair types are Type 1, 2, 3, and 4.”
“Type 3C Hair: What It Is & How To Care For It, From Experts”, mindbodygreen.
They linked to Hair Type Chart
Read the article →Cited as a source by hair care brands
PATTERN Beauty
Listed in the article’s Sources: “How to Wrap Your Hair at Night Like a Professional Hair Stylist.” Curl Centric. Their hair wrapping guide also links to our pineappling article.
A formal source citation, not a passing link.
They linked to How to Wrap Your Hair at Night
Read the article →Mielle Organics
Listed in the article’s sources: “Curl Centric. How to Use Rice Water on Natural Hair for Hair: Side Effects, Before and After Results, and More.”
A formal source citation, not a passing link.
They linked to Rice Water for Hair
Read the article →CurlMix
“You do not have to do the ‘big chop’; it is not a requirement.”
“Transitioning Hair: 5 Essential Reminders”, CurlMix.
They linked to The Big Chop
Read the article →Six of these ten cite the same page: our Hair Type Chart.
Tools I have built
Free, no sign-up, and built because the answer should take ten seconds and not ten paragraphs.
Reference
Hair Type Chart
All twelve curl types on one chart, including how wide each curl actually is compared to an everyday object.
Open the chart →Tools
Hair Calculators
Growth, shrinkage, length, and porosity, with the math worked out so you do not have to do it on a notepad.
Open the calculators →Reference
Natural Hair Dictionary
234 textured hair terms defined in plain English, from anagen phase to the LOIS system.
Open the dictionary →Outside Curl Centric
Operations
I have had a long career in leadership roles at financial services companies. I lead an organization of more than 1,000 people across the United States and offshore, with budgets over $200 million. In 2020 the Birmingham Business Journal named me to its Top 40 Under 40. That is the day job, and it is where I learned most of what I know about running something at scale.
Writing
I have written freelance for years, including for the Birmingham News and the Birmingham Post-Herald, mostly product reviews and features. I have also been published on a range of websites, on hair care and on business topics.
Service
I have served on the board of Oasis Counseling for Women and Children in Birmingham since 2014, including terms as board chair and as treasurer, and I spent five years on the executive leadership team of the March of Dimes. In 2026 Oasis honored me with the Anne Bruno LaRussa Visionary Award.
What I would read first
The five pages I point people to most often.
Questions about how we work
The ones worth answering before you decide whether to trust anything else on this site.
Who actually writes the articles on this site?
Kira and I do, and we have since 2008. There is no content farm behind this site and no rotating cast of freelancers who have never touched textured hair.
Kira brings the hands-on side - she trained as a barber and a hairstylist. I do the research, the sourcing, and the tools.
Are you a licensed stylist?
No, and I do not pretend to be. Kira is the one with the training.
What I bring is different: I read the studies, I check whether a popular claim actually holds up, and I build the tools. When you read something on this site about the hair growth cycle or porosity, I am usually the one who went and found out whether it is true.
How do you decide which products to recommend?
We start from what the product has to do for a particular hair problem, then look at what is actually in it. Ingredients first, marketing last.
We also say when we do not have a recommendation. Some categories are genuinely full of products that do the same thing at different price points, and pretending one is a breakthrough would be dishonest.
Do brands pay you to be included?
No. Brands do not pay for placement in our guides, and we do not sell recommendations.
We do use affiliate links - if you buy something through one, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you - and every one of them is disclosed. That is how a free site with no subscription stays free. It does not decide what goes in the guide.
What makes this different from any other hair blog?
Two things. The first is time: publishing on one subject since 2008, and more than 800 articles, which means we have watched a lot of trends arrive and leave.
The second is that our work gets checked by people with more authority than us. A peer-reviewed dermatology journal cites our hair typing system as its first reference. Very few sites in this space can point to that.
Can I ask you a question directly?
Yes. Email me at kenneth@curlcentric.com, or Kira at kira@curlcentric.com if it is a hair question rather than a business one.
We read everything. We cannot always answer quickly, and we will not diagnose a scalp condition over email - that is a dermatologist's job, not ours.