If going natural taught me anything, it's that I don't know everything there is to know about my hair—no matter how many YouTube videos I watch. According to YouTube, I have a 4c hair type, and according to how coarse and dull my hair gets after some time (mainly due to my laziness), my hair veers toward the dry side. But what I didn't realize is that I could adopt different methods and use a bevy of products to give my hair its best life, but none of that matters if I don't understand my hair's porosity.

In layman's terms, hair porosity is the hair's ability to retain and absorb moisture and affects how your hair responds to products and styles. Frizz and dryness are clear indicators of high porosity hair and can put a damper on the two-strand twist out you worked so hard to achieve. To break down high porosity hair even further, celebrity hairstylist and Cantu ambassador Angela Stevens explain everything you need to know.

How can you tell if you have high porosity hair?

First things first, there are three porosity categories: low, normal, and high. To determine your hair's porosity, you can perform a porosity test by taking a strand of your hair and dropping it in a cup of water; if your hair sinks to the bottom, it's highly porous. If your hair floats to the top, it's low porosity, and if your hair just rests in the middle, it's normal. But the easier way to figure out your porosity, Stevens says, is to think about how long your hair takes to dry. "If your hair takes a long time to dry, it typically means it's highly porous," she explains. "For example, if it takes a day to dry or it takes a longer time than average to blow dry your hair, then you know you have high porosity hair."

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