Co-founder, Curl Centric
Kira Byrd
Trained barber, hairstylist, and natural hair educator
I have been teaching people how to care for textured hair since 2008. Not with trends, and not with whatever product is having a moment. With the things that actually hold up: what your curl pattern is, how your hair takes in water, and what to do about it on a Tuesday night.
What I get asked about most
Three things account for most of the questions that land in my inbox. These are the ones I have spent the most time on.
Protective styling
Braids, twists, locs, and wigs, plus the tension rules that keep a style from costing you your edges.
Building a regimen that fits
Wash day, deep conditioning, and what order things go in, built around your porosity and density instead of somebody else’s routine.
Hair typing and classification
What 3C, 4A, 4B, and 4C actually mean, what they can tell you, and the places the type systems fall short.
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 & Shapiro. “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.
My story
I did not start with my own hair. I started with my daughter’s.
Back in 2006 she was going natural, and the hardest part was not the wash days or the products. It was what she believed about her own hair before she ever picked up a comb. So I told her the same thing over and over: regardless of what anyone else says, you have to believe you have good hair. Period.
Then I had to take my own advice. When I was transitioning and I would see a woman with looser, shinier curls, the negative self-talk started right up. I had to learn how to answer it, and my faith is where I found the ground to stand on.
“We all have a choice to decide what we accept as truth. I have decided that all hair, regardless of its texture and curl pattern, is good hair.”
Kira Byrd
Helping her is what taught me how to help myself. Two years later, in 2008, my husband Kenneth and I started Curl Centric.
What I have done since
I trained as a barber and a hairstylist. I have written hundreds of guides on textured hair and built the 90-day Natural Hair Regimen Manual. Before that, under our old name, we ran Natural Hair Box, a monthly subscription box of products from small natural hair brands.
I have also published three children’s books, because the mental part of this starts a lot earlier than most people think.
Curl Centric is my full-time work now. It was not always. I spent my career in accounting, most of it at Jefferson County, the largest county in Alabama, where I finished as chief accountant leading a team of fifteen. I am also a certified fraud examiner.
That sounds like a detour from hair, and it is not. A certified fraud examiner is held to a professional code of ethics. It requires me to obtain evidence sufficient to establish a reasonable basis for any opinion I give, and it forbids me from taking work where a conflict of interest exists. That is not a slogan I picked; it is a standard I am accountable to.
Read it back as a hair care standard and you have most of what this site does. Source the claim. Say so plainly when the evidence is thin. Never let anyone buy a recommendation. The natural hair industry runs on confident claims that nobody has checked, and checking claims is literally what I was trained and certified to do.
All these years later, the reason has not changed. Most of the advice out there is guessing, and you deserve better than a guess.
Books I have written
All three are for kids, and they exist because a child decides how she feels about her hair long before she learns how to care for it.
Children’s book
Curly Kids Coloring Book
More than 60 pages of activities that celebrate kids with naturally curly hair, and show curls as something worth having.
View on Amazon →Children’s book
The Loosey Goosey Tooth
Kennedy is the last in her class to lose a tooth. A story about patience, written and illustrated by me.
View on Amazon →Children’s book
Boys Are Curly Too
A coloring book for boys with curly hair, made with my husband Kenneth, because boys get left out of this conversation.
View on Amazon →These three links are affiliate links. Curl Centric may earn a commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. They are the only affiliate links on this page.
Start here
If you are new to the site, read these five in this order.
Questions I get asked all the time
Short answers to the six that come up most. If yours is not here, email me.
How do I figure out my hair type?
Wash your hair, put nothing in it, and let it air dry. Then look at a single strand rather than your whole head - most people have two or three patterns growing at once, which is normal.
Type is the least useful number about your hair, though. Porosity - how easily your hair takes in and holds water - tells you far more about which products will work for you.
My hair grows but never gets longer. What is going on?
That is almost always a retention problem, not a growth problem. Textured hair grows at roughly a third of an inch a month for most people regardless of what you put on it. If length is not showing up, the ends are breaking off at about the same rate the roots are growing.
So the fix is not a growth product. It is finding what is snapping the ends: dryness, rough detangling, heat, tight styles, or cotton pillowcases.
Do I need a protein treatment?
Only if your hair is telling you it does. Hair that needs protein feels mushy or limp when wet and stretches too far before it snaps back.
Hair that has had too much protein feels stiff, straw-like, and snaps quickly with almost no stretch. Those two problems look similar from the outside and get treated in opposite directions, which is why so many people make it worse.
Is there a product that will loosen my curl pattern?
No. Your curl pattern is determined by the shape of your follicle, and no conditioner, oil, or cream changes that.
Anything that permanently loosens texture is a chemical - a relaxer or a texturizer - and it works by breaking bonds inside the strand. What products can genuinely do is make the pattern you already have look more defined and less frizzy, because well-moisturized hair clumps.
How long can I leave a protective style in?
Six to eight weeks is the outside edge for most braided or twisted styles. Past that, the new growth at the root and the shed hair caught in the style start working against each other and you get matting at the takedown.
Tension matters more than duration. If a style hurts, gives you bumps along your hairline, or you can see your hairline lifting, it is too tight - and that is how traction alopecia starts. A style should never hurt.
How often should I wash my hair?
Most textured hair does well on somewhere between once a week and once every two weeks, but that is a starting point, not a rule.
Scalp decides it, not curl pattern. An oily scalp or a workout habit means washing more often, and that is fine - a clean scalp is where healthy hair comes from.