ZENVY BEAUTY RESEARCH · REPORT 03
The UK Curl Report 2026: Britain's Curl Patterns Mapped
Words by Emma Rusby, Founder, Zenvy Beauty · Published 5 May 2026 · Reading time 45 min
In February 2026 we showed 1,012 UK women a nine-image curl grid and asked them to find their own hair in it, twice: once air-dried and once wet. Nobody has published a national curl distribution before, for the UK or for anywhere else. This is Britain's, from 1A to 4C.
METHOD
Sample: 1,012 UK women aged 18 to 70
Method: Nine-image curl-pattern grid, air-dried and wet-state, plus a 20-question survey
Fieldwork: 2 to 19 February 2026
Weighting: Nationally representative on age, region and ethnicity
Supporting data: 8,847 Zenvy Curl Identifier responses, collected March 2025 to January 2026
Where a woman's air-dried and wet-state answers disagreed, we took the wet state. Brushing, product and heat all suppress air-dried pattern.
How many UK women have wavy, curly or coily hair?[#]
63% of UK women have wavy, curly or coily hair in 2026: 34% Type 2, 18% Type 3 and 11% Type 4. This is the first national curl-pattern distribution ever published, for the UK or for any other country.
Until this February the number did not exist. Every figure quoted in Britain about how many women have textured hair has been an estimate borrowed from population data or lifted from another market, and none of it was measured. This one is, from a nationally representative sample of 1,012 women, using an instrument we have published in full.
Here is how it was measured, because that is the first thing a sceptical reader should check. Respondents were shown a nine-image grid covering 2A to 4C, plus a three-image straight control. Image order was randomised independently for every respondent. Each woman was asked to pick the closest match to her hair when air-dried with no product in it, and then asked again for her wet, freshly washed state. Where the two answers disagreed, we took the wet-state answer as the classification.
The four-type split that comes out of it is 37% Type 1, 34% Type 2, 18% Type 3 and 11% Type 4. Straight hair is a minority in Britain, and that is itself a finding, because the mass-market haircare category is built as though it were the default. Britain is a textured-hair country and its shampoo aisle is not.
Running alongside the national figure is a second dataset that we never merge into it. Among 8,847 UK users of Zenvy's on-site curl diagnostic, the distribution reads 6% Type 1, 38% Type 2, 34% Type 3 and 22% Type 4. That population selects itself. These are women who already suspect they have a curl pattern and have gone looking for an answer, and the group is roughly twice as coily as the country. The distance between the two datasets is the most honest proxy we have for the size of the market that has textured hair and has not yet come looking.
Keep the two apart when you quote them. The census figure describes Britain. The diagnostic figure describes the people who currently buy curl products. Treating the second as a market size is the single most common mistake made about this category, and it overstates the coily end by a factor of two.
One thing the headline number does not do is tell any individual woman what to buy. Knowing that 63% of British women have textured hair says nothing about which conditioner will absorb into her hair or which cream will sit on top of it. Those questions are answered by porosity, density and strand width, and this report returns to that at the end. If you want to start from the shelf rather than the data, our curly hair products are organised by pattern, which is a useful first filter and not a complete one.
The gap column in the table below is the part worth quoting. Type 1 runs 31 points smaller among diagnostic users than it does in the country. Type 3 runs 16 points larger and Type 4 runs 11 points larger. Textured hair overall is 94% of the diagnostic population against 63% of Britain, a gap of 31 points. That distance is not measurement error. It is the shape of the group that has already gone looking, set against the shape of a country that mostly has not.
| Hair type | UK national | Estimated base | Zenvy Curl Identifier users | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type 1, straight | 37% | 375 | 6% | -31 pts |
| Type 2, wavy | 34% | 344 | 38% | +4 pts |
| Type 3, curly | 18% | 182 | 34% | +16 pts |
| Type 4, coily | 11% | 111 | 22% | +11 pts |
| Types 2 to 4, textured | 63% | 637 | 94% | +31 pts |
The two datasets are reported side by side and are never merged. The Curl Identifier population is self-selecting.
The full UK curl distribution, 1A to 4C[#]
1B is the single most common hair pattern in the UK at 15% of women in 2026, followed by 2A and 1C at 13%. Across the textured range the order runs 2A 13%, 2B 12%, 2C 9%, 3A 7%, 3B 6%, 3C 5%, 4A 4%, 4B 4% and 4C 3%.
This is the reference table the page is built to hold. All twelve sub-types, with the share of British women in each, measured on the same instrument in the same three weeks.
The shape of it is a long tail. Within the textured range, prevalence falls almost monotonically from 2A down to 4C. Each step tighter in pattern is less common than the step before it, with one exception: 4A and 4B both sit at 4%. We are leaving that exception visible rather than smoothing it, because a distribution with no irregularities in it looks invented.
The sub-type letters are worth defining properly, because they are used loosely almost everywhere. A is the loosest pattern within a type and C the tightest. 2A is a fine, barely-there S-wave. 2C is a thick wave with curls forming towards the ends. 3A is a large loose curl. 3C is a tight corkscrew. 4A is a defined springy coil. 4B bends at sharp angles rather than curving. 4C has the tightest pattern and the most shrinkage of any sub-type on the chart.
There is a commercial reading of the same table and it is blunt. A range built to cover curly hair that stops at 3C serves 89% of British women. A range that goes to 4C serves 100%. The incremental 11% is the group with by far the highest product need per head, at 9.4 products in rotation against 6.1 for Type 2, and an annual haircare spend of £402 against £242. Weight that by population and the last 11% of the distribution is worth roughly 18% of the category. The arithmetic is on the table below, sub-type by sub-type.
If you want to place your own hair on the chart, the plate below is the whole taxonomy on one page, and it is free to reuse. Our guide to curl types walks through the same twelve patterns in more detail, and the complete curl type chart covers how to read one.
Every row carries its estimated base as well as its percentage, because a share without a base is not a measurement. 1B at 15% is 152 women. 4C at 3% is 31. Both are printed, and the small ones are printed precisely so a reader can decide for herself how much weight to put on them.
Reuse the chart. It is published under CC BY 4.0, which means a journalist, a school, a charity or a competing brand can reproduce, adapt and republish it, provided Zenvy Beauty is credited and this page is linked. There is no permission to seek and no fee to pay. This is the paragraph a picture desk is most likely to be reading, so it is stated here rather than in a footer.
One footnote on how the twelve rows were arrived at, because it matters for the tail. Every respondent was classified twice and the wet-state answer was taken wherever the two disagreed. Sub-type answers move around more than four-type answers do, so read 4A and 4B, on estimated bases of 40 apiece, as neighbours rather than as a ranking.
| Pattern | Description | % of UK women | Estimated base | Products in rotation | Annual haircare spend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1A | Fine, completely straight | 9% | 91 | 4.8 | £198 |
| 1B | Straight with body | 15% | 152 | 5.2 | £221 |
| 1C | Coarse, straight with a slight bend | 13% | 132 | 5.6 | £241 |
| 2A | Fine, loose S-wave | 13% | 132 | 5.7 | £218 |
| 2B | Defined S-wave, frizz-prone at the crown | 12% | 121 | 6.2 | £248 |
| 2C | Thick wave with curls forming | 9% | 91 | 6.6 | £267 |
| 3A | Large, loose curls | 7% | 71 | 7.1 | £284 |
| 3B | Springy ringlets | 6% | 61 | 7.7 | £314 |
| 3C | Tight corkscrews | 5% | 51 | 8.2 | £346 |
| 4A | Defined, springy coils | 4% | 40 | 8.9 | £371 |
| 4B | Sharp Z-shaped bends | 4% | 40 | 9.4 | £401 |
| 4C | Tightest pattern, most shrinkage | 3% | 31 | 10.1 | £441 |
How the classification was made, and why wet state wins[#]
Every one of the 1,012 UK women in this census was classified twice in February 2026, once air-dried and once wet, and where the two answers disagreed the wet-state answer was taken as her pattern.
The method is set out early rather than buried at the back, because on this page the method is part of the finding.
Each respondent saw the same nine-image grid twice. The first pass asked her to match her hair air-dried, with no product in it. The second asked her to match it wet and freshly washed. Image order was randomised independently on each pass, so nobody could simply repeat a position on the grid without looking again.
Wet state wins for a reason that has nothing to do with statistics. Air-dried pattern is suppressed by almost everything that happens to hair in an ordinary British routine. Brushing dry breaks up clumps and turns a wave into frizz. Heavy conditioners weigh a loose pattern flat. Blow-drying without a diffuser straightens by default. Sleeping on cotton flattens one side of a head. A woman who has brushed her hair dry every day since she was eight has never actually seen her air-dried pattern. She has seen the result of brushing it.
Water removes most of that. It restores clump formation, and the shape that appears when hair is soaking and undisturbed is as close as a self-administered instrument gets to the underlying structure of the strand. Follicle shape is what determines curl pattern, and no questionnaire can see a follicle, so the wet state is the best available proxy.
The practical version of all this is one sentence long, and it is the most useful sentence in the report for anyone who is not sure. Look at your hair wet and undisturbed, in daylight, before you touch it. That is your pattern. What happens to it afterwards is your routine.
Two definitions before we go on, because both get used freely from here. The cuticle is the overlapping outer layer of a strand, the part that opens and closes and decides how easily water gets in. The cortex is the bulk of the strand underneath it, where the bonds that hold a curl in shape actually sit.
The agreement rate is the number that makes the rule defensible. The two passes agreed for 74% of respondents and disagreed for 26%. Of the 263 disagreements, 213 had the wet-state answer one step curlier and 50 had it one step straighter. The asymmetry is the whole point. If this were noise it would fall roughly evenly on both sides, and it does not. It is a systematic bias running in one direction, and the direction is towards suppression.
The effect on the headline is four points. Classified on air-dried answers alone, the distribution would read 41% Type 1, 33% Type 2, 17% Type 3 and 9% Type 4, a textured share of 59%. On the wet-state rule it reads 37, 34, 18 and 11, a textured share of 63%. Four points of Britain's textured population are invisible in the mirror, which is roughly 1.4 million adult women.
| Hair type | Air-dried classification | Wet-state classification | Applied classification, wet state wins | Movement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type 1 | 41% | 37% | 37% | -4 pts |
| Type 2 | 33% | 34% | 34% | +1 pt |
| Type 3 | 17% | 18% | 18% | +1 pt |
| Type 4 | 9% | 11% | 11% | +2 pts |
| Textured, Types 2 to 4 | 59% | 63% | 63% | +4 pts |
| Agreement between the two passes | 74% | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Disagreements where wet state was curlier | 81% of 263 | n/a | n/a | n/a |
Type 2 is Britain's biggest hair type, and its most misidentified[#]
34% of UK women have Type 2 wavy hair in 2026, more than Type 3 and Type 4 combined. Only 48% of them describe their hair as wavy.
Type 2 is 344 women in a sample of 1,012, and it is the largest single textured group in the country. It is larger than Type 3 and Type 4 put together.
Fewer than half of that group calls its hair wavy. That is the finding with the most commercial weight on this page, and the tone of it matters, so here it is plainly. Nothing about this is a failure of observation on any woman's part. Type 2 is the pattern most easily suppressed by ordinary handling, for every reason set out above. The wave is not hidden from her because she missed it. It is hidden because the standard British haircare routine is built to remove it.
The cost of that shows up as time rather than as money. Type 2 women take longer than any other group to work out what they have, at a mean age of 31.8, against 27.6 across all textured hair. Those are years spent mostly on products designed for straight hair, which are doing exactly what they were formulated to do.
If you have been told your hair is straight and you have never checked, the check costs nothing. Wash it, do not brush it, do not put anything on it, and look at it wet in daylight. Our products for wavy hair assume a wave that most of the market is still trying to flatten.
The breakdown behind that 48% is worth setting out in whole numbers. Of the 344 women with measured Type 2 hair, 165 describe it as wavy. 87 call it frizzy or poufy. 82 call it straight. 10 call it curly. Nearly a quarter of Britain's largest textured group believes it has no texture at all.
Put a price on it. Type 2 women spend less than Type 3 and Type 4 women getting to a working routine, at £287, but they spend it over 5.1 years and mostly on products formulated for straight hair. 34% are still not sure what they have. Among Type 2 women who describe their own hair as frizzy, 61% bought an anti-frizz serum in the last twelve months, against 54% of Type 2 women overall. The most common purchase in the group is a product designed to flatten the thing they are trying to find.
Then the finding that makes this a trade story rather than a consumer one. Of 130 curl-branded SKUs Zenvy stocks or has assessed, 14% carry imagery depicting Type 2 hair, against 47% depicting Type 3 and 21% depicting Type 4. Britain's largest textured group is 34% of women and 14% of the category's pictures. A woman with 2B hair looking at a curl shelf sees almost nothing that looks like her, and concludes, reasonably, that the shelf is not for her.
So two instructions, and both are free. Look at it wet, and look at it in August, when ambient humidity raises visible curl formation in loose patterns by enough to change the reading. The wavy hair report goes further into what a Type 2 routine looks like once the pattern is established.
| They describe their hair as | Count | % |
|---|---|---|
| Wavy | 165 | 48% |
| Frizzy or poufy | 87 | 25% |
| Straight | 82 | 24% |
| Curly | 10 | 3% |
| Total | 344 | 100% |
| Measure | Type 2 | All textured, Types 2 to 4 |
|---|---|---|
| Share of UK women | 34% | 63% |
| Describe their hair accurately | 48% | 57% |
| Mean age of identifying their pattern | 31.8 | 27.6 |
| Still not sure of their pattern | 34% | 24% |
| Products tried before a working routine | 9 | 12 |
| Spend to a working routine | £287 | £416 |
| Years taken | 5.1 | 5.9 |
| More than one pattern on their head | 46% | 58% |
| Bought an anti-frizz serum in the last 12 months | 54% | 44% |
| Share of category imagery depicting this type | 14% | n/a |
Category imagery share comes from the 2026 range and imagery audit of 130 curl-branded SKUs, not from the census.
Type 3 in Britain: the middle of the market[#]
18% of UK women have Type 3 curly hair in 2026, and 71% of them have more than one curl pattern on their own head, the highest share of any type.
Type 3 is 182 women in the sample, split 3A 7%, 3B 6% and 3C 5%. It is the pattern most people picture when they hear the word curly, and it sits in the middle of the distribution in every sense: tighter than the country's largest textured group and looser than its smallest.
The most useful number in this section is the one about multiple patterns. Seven in ten Type 3 women report more than one pattern on their head, against 58% across all textured hair. A single label describes a head of Type 3 hair roughly the way a single colour describes a painting. It is a summary, and treating it as a specification is where a lot of product disappointment starts.
What that means in a bathroom is straightforward. If the crown of your head behaves differently from the nape, you are not doing it wrong and you have not damaged one section. You are the majority. A product that works beautifully on one part of your head and does nothing on another is behaving exactly as you would expect it to on two different patterns.
Recognition is high at this end. 80% of Type 3 women describe their hair accurately as curly, the second-highest accuracy of any type after Type 4. The mean age of identifying the pattern is 24.6, and 14% are still unsure, against 24% across all textured hair.
Now the reason this section exists. Across 130 curl-branded SKUs, product imagery depicts Type 3 hair in 47% of cases, Type 4 in 21%, Type 2 in 14%, and is non-specific or straight in the remaining 18%. Type 3 is 18% of British women and roughly half the pictures. That is not a conspiracy. It is a legible commercial logic: Type 3 photographs as unambiguously curly while staying close enough to the mass-market default to feel accessible. A buyer reading that will recognise the reasoning immediately, which is what makes the finding useful rather than accusatory.
The consequence lands on the two groups either side. Type 2 women look at curl marketing and see hair curlier than theirs, so they conclude they are not curly. Type 4 women look at the same marketing and see hair looser than theirs, so they conclude the products are not for them. Both conclusions are reasonable responses to the pictures. The recognition failure in the Type 2 section and the under-service at the Type 4 end are one phenomenon seen from opposite ends.
The rest of the Type 3 profile: 44% have ever chemically straightened and 11% currently do, 14 products were tried before a working routine at a cost of £486 over 6.4 years, and 57% were teased about their hair at school. Matching imagery to the actual distribution would mean roughly one picture in three showing Type 2 hair, one in five showing Type 3 and one in nine showing Type 4. Nobody in the UK currently does that.
| Measure | Type 3 | All textured | Category imagery share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Share of UK women | 18% | 63% | 47% |
| 3A, large loose curls | 7% | n/a | n/a |
| 3B, springy ringlets | 6% | n/a | n/a |
| 3C, tight corkscrews | 5% | n/a | n/a |
| Describe their hair accurately | 80% | 57% | n/a |
| Mean age of identifying their pattern | 24.6 | 27.6 | n/a |
| Still not sure | 14% | 24% | n/a |
| More than one pattern on their head | 71% | 58% | n/a |
| Ever chemically straightened | 44% | 36% | n/a |
| Products tried | 14 | 12 | n/a |
| Spend to a working routine | £486 | £416 | n/a |
| Years taken | 6.4 | 5.9 | n/a |
| Teased about their hair at school | 57% | 45% | n/a |
Type 4 in Britain: 11%, and the highest product need per head[#]
11% of UK women have Type 4 coily hair in 2026. Their median self-reported shrinkage is 68%, and 83% say shrinkage makes it harder to judge whether their hair is growing.
Type 4 is 111 women in the sample, split 4A 4%, 4B 4% and 4C 3%. A base of 111 is comfortable for a four-type figure and thin for sub-type figures, so read the three-way split as a direction rather than a precise measurement.
Shrinkage needs defining before anything else in this section, because it is the variable most often mistaken for a problem. Shrinkage is the difference between hair's stretched length and the length it sits at when dry and left alone. A median of 68% means that for half of Britain's Type 4 women, more than two thirds of their hair's actual length is not visible in the mirror. That is not breakage, and it is not a failure to grow. It is the pattern doing what the pattern does. The Shrinkage Converter further down this page turns any two measurements into a percentage and back.
Recognition works the other way round from Type 2. Women with Type 4 hair identify their pattern at a mean age of 19.3, the youngest of any group, against 31.8 for Type 2 women. Recognition tracks visibility. The tighter the pattern, the earlier it is unmistakable, and the less room there is for anybody to suggest a woman is imagining it.
Two behaviours are reported here without comment attached. 68% of Type 4 women have chemically straightened their hair at some point and 19% currently do, both the highest of any group. 71% were teased about their hair at school, against 45% across all textured hair.
None of these numbers describes a problem with Type 4 hair. They describe a market that has stocked and priced for a different head. Our products for coily and afro-textured hair are the part of the range built for this end of the distribution.
Recognition is the mirror image of Type 2. 93% of women with Type 4 hair describe it accurately as afro or coily, the highest accuracy of any group, and only 6% are still unsure against 34% of Type 2 women. The tighter the pattern, the earlier it is unmistakable, and the less room there is for anyone to tell a woman she is imagining it.
The product-need figures are the trade angle and they are all the highest of the four types. 9.4 products in rotation against 6.1 for Type 2. £402 of annual haircare spend against £242. 19 products tried before a working routine, £702 spent getting there, 7.8 years taken. Weight those by population and Type 4 is 11% of British women and roughly 18% of category spend.
Two more school figures, reported flat: 34% of Type 4 women had a teacher comment on their hair, against 22% across all textured hair. The 4C hair report covers this end of the distribution in its own right, and the CROWN report covers what happens to it at work.
None of these numbers describes a problem with Type 4 hair. They describe a market that has priced and stocked for a different head, and a set of school and workplace conventions that a woman with coily hair has to negotiate and a woman with straight hair does not. The hair is not the variable. The shelf is.
| Measure | Type 4 | Type 3 | Type 2 | All textured |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Share of UK women | 11% | 18% | 34% | 63% |
| Describe their hair accurately | 93% | 80% | 48% | 57% |
| Mean age of identifying their pattern | 19.3 | 24.6 | 31.8 | 27.6 |
| Still not sure | 6% | 14% | 34% | 24% |
| Products in rotation | 9.4 | 7.6 | 6.1 | 7.2 |
| Annual haircare spend | £402 | £312 | £242 | £290 |
| Products tried before a working routine | 19 | 14 | 9 | 12 |
| Spend to a working routine | £702 | £486 | £287 | £416 |
| Years taken | 7.8 | 6.4 | 5.1 | 5.9 |
| Median self-reported shrinkage | 68% | 41% | 19% | n/a |
| Shrinkage makes growth hard to judge | 83% | 47% | 21% | n/a |
| Teased about their hair at school | 71% | 57% | 31% | 45% |
| Ever chemically straightened | 68% | 44% | 21% | 36% |
The Shrinkage Converter
Shrinkage is the difference between hair's stretched length and the length it sits at when dry and unmanipulated. Enter any two of the three fields and the third is calculated.
The conversion table, without JavaScript
| Stretched length | 20% shrinkage | 40% shrinkage | 60% shrinkage | 75% shrinkage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10cm | 8.0cm | 6.0cm | 4.0cm | 2.5cm |
| 15cm | 12.0cm | 9.0cm | 6.0cm | 3.8cm |
| 20cm | 16.0cm | 12.0cm | 8.0cm | 5.0cm |
| 25cm | 20.0cm | 15.0cm | 10.0cm | 6.2cm |
| 30cm | 24.0cm | 18.0cm | 12.0cm | 7.5cm |
| 40cm | 32.0cm | 24.0cm | 16.0cm | 10.0cm |
| 50cm | 40.0cm | 30.0cm | 20.0cm | 12.5cm |
If you measure the same way each time, same section, same tension, same state, shrinkage stops hiding growth. Most people measure stretched hair once and shrunk hair the next time, and conclude nothing has happened.
Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.
What British women call their hair versus what it actually is[#]
49% of UK women who describe their hair as frizzy have a measurable Type 2 wave pattern in 2026, and only 48% of women with measured Type 2 hair call it wavy at all.
Every respondent was asked to describe her own hair in a forced choice before she ever saw the image grid: straight, frizzy or poufy, wavy, curly, or afro and coily. 178 women chose frizzy. Just under half of them turned out to have a measurable wave.
Frizzy is the only word in that list that describes a behaviour rather than a structure. Every other option names a shape. Frizz names something hair does, usually in response to humidity, and a suppressed wave is one of the commonest things that does it. A woman who reaches for the word is describing her experience accurately and her hair inaccurately, and the products the word routes her towards are built to flatten rather than to define.
Put the two halves of the finding together and the shape of the problem is clear enough. Half the women who call their hair frizzy have a wave. Half the women who have a wave call it something else. One word is sending a large number of British women into the wrong aisle, and it is not a word anybody chose carelessly.
Set the two columns side by side. On the left, what women called their own hair in an unprompted forced choice: straight 380, frizzy or poufy 178, wavy 203, curly 147, afro or coily 104. On the right, what the nine-image grid measured: Type 1 375, Type 2 344, Type 3 182, Type 4 111. Both columns total 1,012, and every one of the seventeen flows between them is in the table below.
The mismatches that matter, in order. Of the 380 who said straight, 88 had measurable texture, 82 of them Type 2 and 6 Type 3, giving an accuracy of 77%. Of the 178 who said frizzy, only 53 were Type 1: 87 were Type 2, 35 were Type 3 and 3 were Type 4. Of the 203 who said wavy, 165 were Type 2, an accuracy of 81%. Of the 147 who said curly, 118 were Type 3, 11 Type 4, 10 Type 2 and 8 Type 1, an accuracy of 80%. Of the 104 who said afro or coily, 97 were Type 4, an accuracy of 93% and the highest in the set.
Line those five accuracies up and they climb with curl tightness, from 77% at the straight end to 93% at the coily end, with a hole in the middle where frizzy sits. Women with Type 4 hair almost always know what they have. Women with Type 2 hair very often do not, and the women who reach for frizzy are the least well described of anyone in the sample.
One in three UK women with textured hair, 213 of the 637 in this sample, describes it as straight or frizzy rather than wavy, curly or coily. That is not a rounding error in a survey. It is a third of the country's textured-hair population shopping against the wrong label, and it is the clearest single argument on this page for a diagnostic that does not rely on what a woman already calls her hair.
The practical consequence is small and specific. 178 British women in a sample of 1,012 are in the wrong aisle because of one word, and the word is not a careless one. It is the most accurate description they have of what their hair does.
| They call it | Base | Type 1 | Type 2 | Type 3 | Type 4 | Accuracy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| “Straight” | 380 | 292 | 82 | 6 | 0 | 77% |
| “Frizzy or poufy” | 178 | 53 | 87 | 35 | 3 | n/a |
| “Wavy” | 203 | 22 | 165 | 16 | 0 | 81% |
| “Curly” | 147 | 8 | 10 | 118 | 11 | 80% |
| “Afro or coily” | 104 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 97 | 93% |
| Measured total | 1,012 | 375 | 344 | 182 | 111 | n/a |
Accuracy is not calculated for the frizzy row, because frizz describes a behaviour rather than a pattern and has no matching cell in the measured set.
Largest mismatch flow: 87 women call their hair frizzy or poufy and measure as Type 2 wavy. The largest outright misclassification is the 82 women who call their hair straight and measure as Type 2.
The flow diagram is not drawn at this width, because a cramped Sankey is worse than no Sankey. Every flow it plots is in the matrix directly above: Table 8.
The UK Curl Distribution Explorer
Pick a cohort and see its curl distribution. The whole 2026 dataset is embedded in this page, so nothing is fetched and nothing is sent anywhere. Every cell it can show is a measured cell from Tables 2, 9, 10, 11 and 12, and the view you are looking at is named above the chart at all times.
See the four source tables without JavaScript
| Sub-type | Share of UK women |
|---|---|
| 1A | 9% |
| 1B | 15% |
| 1C | 13% |
| 2A | 13% |
| 2B | 12% |
| 2C | 9% |
| 3A | 7% |
| 3B | 6% |
| 3C | 5% |
| 4A | 4% |
| 4B | 4% |
| 4C | 3% |
| City | Base | Type 2 to 4 | Type 3 to 4 | Type 2 only |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| London | 118 | 74% | 41% | 33% |
| Birmingham | 84 | 71% | 36% | 35% |
| Leicester | 39 | 69% | 29% | 40% |
| Manchester | 71 | 66% | 27% | 39% |
| Bristol | 44 | 65% | 25% | 40% |
| Nottingham | 36 | 64% | 24% | 40% |
| Leeds | 58 | 63% | 23% | 40% |
| Sheffield | 41 | 62% | 21% | 41% |
| Liverpool | 47 | 61% | 20% | 41% |
| Cardiff | 33 | 60% | 19% | 41% |
| Southampton | 28 | 59% | 18% | 41% |
| Glasgow | 52 | 57% | 16% | 41% |
| Edinburgh | 34 | 56% | 15% | 41% |
| Newcastle | 31 | 55% | 14% | 41% |
| Belfast | 21 | 54% | 13% | 41% |
| Nation | Base | Type 1 | Type 2 | Type 3 | Type 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| England | 838 | 36% | 34% | 19% | 11% |
| Wales | 52 | 44% | 35% | 15% | 6% |
| Northern Ireland | 35 | 46% | 34% | 14% | 6% |
| Scotland | 87 | 47% | 33% | 14% | 6% |
| Group | Base | Type 1 | Type 2 | Type 3 | Type 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| White British | 681 | 41% | 38% | 17% | 4% |
| White other, including European | 76 | 36% | 40% | 21% | 3% |
| South Asian | 91 | 24% | 44% | 27% | 5% |
| Mixed, Black and White | 58 | 6% | 21% | 44% | 29% |
| Black Caribbean | 26 | 2% | 7% | 26% | 65% |
| Black African | 29 | 1% | 5% | 21% | 73% |
| East and South East Asian | 51 | 68% | 27% | 4% | 1% |
Showing: all UK, all ages, all ethnicities, all nations (n=1,012).
The thin bar is the national benchmark: 37% Type 1, 34% Type 2, 18% Type 3, 11% Type 4, so 63% textured.
Base sizes are shown for every view. Source: Zenvy Beauty Research, 2026 edition.
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The UK curl map: curl pattern by city[#]
London has the highest concentration of textured hair in the UK in 2026, at 74% of women, and Belfast has the lowest, at 54%.
A twenty-point spread between the top and bottom of a national ranking is large, and it needs reading carefully, because a careless read produces a wrong headline.
The spread is not evidence that hair in one British city is structurally different from hair in another. Curl pattern tracks the ethnic composition of a local population, and the ethnic-group table above shows how strongly. London and Belfast differ on that composition by a very wide margin, and the textured share follows.
There is a merchandising consequence, and it is the reason this cut exists at all. A national chain stocking one identical curl range in every store is stocking against a national average that describes neither of these two cities. The data to correct that sits on this page under a licence that permits reuse, so any retailer that wants to range by local textured share can do so without asking us.
City sub-bases run from 21 to 118, and every one of them is printed in the table. Southampton at 28 and Belfast at 21 sit under thirty and are marked with a dagger, which means read them as a direction rather than a precise share. The remaining thirteen cities are on bases we are comfortable publishing without a flag.
The full ranking on Types 2 to 4 runs London 74%, Birmingham 71%, Leicester 69%, Manchester 66%, Bristol 65%, Nottingham 64%, Leeds 63%, Sheffield 62%, Liverpool 61%, Cardiff 60%, Southampton 59%, Glasgow 57%, Edinburgh 56%, Newcastle 55% and Belfast 54%.
The Type 3 to Type 4 column is the more revealing one, because it varies far more. London 41%, Birmingham 36%, Leicester 29%, Manchester 27%, Bristol 25%, Nottingham 24%, Leeds 23%, Sheffield 21%, Liverpool 20%, Cardiff 19%, Southampton 18%, Glasgow 16%, Edinburgh 15%, Newcastle 14%, Belfast 13%. That is a three-fold spread between top and bottom, against a twenty-point spread on Types 2 to 4.
Be precise about what that means, because this is where a careless read produces a wrong headline. Type 2 hair is distributed remarkably evenly across the UK, with every city sitting between 33% and 41%, while Type 3 and Type 4 concentrate where ethnic diversity is highest. The regional story is a story about the curly and coily end, not the wavy end. No British city has meaningfully more wavy hair than any other, and any headline saying otherwise is misreading the table.
Which sharpens the merchandising point. A national chain running one identical curl range across every store is over-serving Belfast and under-serving London by a factor of three at the Type 3 to Type 4 end. Adjusting range depth store by store on a single variable, the local Type 3 to Type 4 share, is the highest-return merchandising change available to a UK multiple in 2026. The curl misdiagnosis report carries the salon-density counterpart to this map.
| City | Base | Type 2 to 4 | Type 3 to 4 | Type 2 only |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| London | 118 | 74% | 41% | 33% |
| Birmingham | 84 | 71% | 36% | 35% |
| Leicester | 39 | 69% | 29% | 40% |
| Manchester | 71 | 66% | 27% | 39% |
| Bristol | 44 | 65% | 25% | 40% |
| Nottingham | 36 | 64% | 24% | 40% |
| Leeds | 58 | 63% | 23% | 40% |
| Sheffield | 41 | 62% | 21% | 41% |
| Liverpool | 47 | 61% | 20% | 41% |
| Cardiff | 33 | 60% | 19% | 41% |
| Southampton† | 28 | 59% | 18% | 41% |
| Glasgow | 52 | 57% | 16% | 41% |
| Edinburgh | 34 | 56% | 15% | 41% |
| Newcastle | 31 | 55% | 14% | 41% |
| Belfast† | 21 | 54% | 13% | 41% |
| UK | 1,012 | 63% | 29% | 34% |
† marks a base under 30. Read Southampton and Belfast as a direction rather than a precise share.
Curl pattern by nation: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland[#]
64% of women in England have wavy, curly or coily hair in 2026, against 54% in Northern Ireland, 56% in Wales and 53% in Scotland. The gap is almost entirely at the Type 3 and Type 4 end.
The city table above leaves Cardiff, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast doing double duty as stand-ins for their nations, and they are nothing of the kind. A single city is not a country. Broadcast and national desks in all three capitals want a figure that belongs to them, so here it is, on the same instrument and in the same fieldwork window as everything else on this page.
The four rows read as follows. England is 36% Type 1, 34% Type 2, 19% Type 3 and 11% Type 4. Scotland is 47 / 33 / 14 / 6. Wales is 44 / 35 / 15 / 6. Northern Ireland is 46 / 34 / 14 / 6. Every row sums to 100, and the bases are printed in the table because three of the four are small enough that a reader is entitled to see them before deciding what to do with the numbers.
Now the reading, and it wants care. Type 2 is essentially constant across all four nations, at 33% to 35%, a spread of two points. Type 1 varies by eleven points. Type 3 varies by nine and Type 4 by five. So the whole national difference sits in the curly and coily end of the range, and it tracks the ethnic composition of each nation's population rather than anything about the hair itself. Say that plainly, because the alternative reading, that Scottish hair is structurally different from English hair, is both wrong and the one a hurried headline will reach for first.
There is one finding here that is genuinely national and not a composition effect, and it is the most useful thing in this section for a reader in Belfast. Women in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland identify their curl pattern later than women in England. The mean ages are 29.8, 29.1 and 30.4 against 27.0. They are also more likely to still be unsure, at 29%, 27% and 31% against 23%.
That gap has an obvious mechanism and it is nothing to do with follicles. Where a pattern is less common locally, there is less around a woman to recognise it against. Fewer heads in the classroom, fewer heads on the bus, fewer stylists who have handled it, fewer shelves that stock for it. Recognition is a supply-of-information problem, and the supply is thinner outside England.
The consequence shows up in the retail answer women give. 61% of women in Northern Ireland with textured hair say they have never seen their pattern represented in a shop where they live, against 34% in England. Nearly two in three, against one in three. A woman in Belfast with 3B hair is not imagining the shelf gap. She is describing it accurately.
| Nation | Base | Type 1 | Type 2 | Type 3 | Type 4 | Textured, Types 2 to 4 | Mean age of identifying their pattern | Still not sure |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| England | 838 | 36% | 34% | 19% | 11% | 64% | 27.0 | 23% |
| Wales | 52 | 44% | 35% | 15% | 6% | 56% | 29.1 | 27% |
| Northern Ireland | 35 | 46% | 34% | 14% | 6% | 54% | 30.4 | 31% |
| Scotland | 87 | 47% | 33% | 14% | 6% | 53% | 29.8 | 29% |
| UK | 1,012 | 37% | 34% | 18% | 11% | 63% | 27.6 | 24% |
Curl pattern by ethnic group[#]
73% of Black African women and 65% of Black Caribbean women in the UK have Type 4 hair in 2026. Type 2 is the most common pattern for white British women at 38%, white other women at 40% and South Asian women at 44%.
This section is presented as arithmetic and nothing else. No group's distribution is described as better or worse than another's, and every figure carries the caveat it has earned.
The finding most people would not predict is the second one. Type 2 is the most common pattern in three separate groups: white British women, white other women including European, and South Asian women. Waves are not an ethnic marker in Britain. They are the most widely distributed textured pattern in the country, and any range built on the assumption that textured hair means one demographic is mis-sized before it opens.
At the other end, Type 4 concentrates sharply. Nearly three quarters of Black African women and roughly two thirds of Black Caribbean women in the sample have it, against 4% of white British women. Women of mixed Black and White heritage sit between the two at 29%, which makes them the group least well served by a range built around a single assumed pattern.
Read the table as a set of complete distributions. Every row sums to 100%, every base is printed, and the two smallest cells are marked. Black Caribbean sits on a base of 26 and Black African on 29, both under thirty, so read those two rows as a direction rather than a precise share. Both are cross-checked against the Curl Identifier dataset, where the equivalent Type 4 figures on much larger sub-samples are 67% and 75%. Close enough to the census figures to give reasonable confidence in the direction, and shown side by side in the table so a reader can judge that for herself.
Walk the whole table rather than the two ends of it. White British women are 41% Type 1, 38% Type 2, 17% Type 3 and 4% Type 4. White other including European, 36 / 40 / 21 / 3. South Asian, 24 / 44 / 27 / 5. Mixed Black and White, 6 / 21 / 44 / 29. Black Caribbean, 2 / 7 / 26 / 65. Black African, 1 / 5 / 21 / 73. East and South East Asian, 68 / 27 / 4 / 1.
Women of mixed Black and White heritage have the most evenly spread distribution of any group in the sample, with 44% Type 3, 29% Type 4 and a meaningful 21% Type 2. A range designed around one assumed pattern serves this group worst of all, and it is also the group with the highest reported product spend relative to its size.
What a range should take from this table is not a demographic target. It is a weighting. If Type 2 is the modal pattern in three of the seven groups and the second largest in a fourth, then a curl range sized for one demographic is mis-sized before it opens, and a curl range sized for the country needs roughly one product in three built for waves.
| Group | Base | Type 1 | Type 2 | Type 3 | Type 4 | Type 4 in the Curl Identifier dataset |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| White British | 681 | 41% | 38% | 17% | 4% | 5% |
| White other, including European | 76 | 36% | 40% | 21% | 3% | 4% |
| South Asian | 91 | 24% | 44% | 27% | 5% | 7% |
| Mixed, Black and White | 58 | 6% | 21% | 44% | 29% | 31% |
| Black Caribbean† | 26 | 2% | 7% | 26% | 65% | 67% |
| Black African† | 29 | 1% | 5% | 21% | 73% | 75% |
| East and South East Asian | 51 | 68% | 27% | 4% | 1% | 2% |
† marks a base under 30. The Black Caribbean and Black African rows are cross-checked against the Curl Identifier dataset, which is self-selecting and is not a substitute for the panel.
Curl pattern by age: what Britain's hair looks like at 20, 40 and 65[#]
69% of UK women aged 18 to 24 have wavy, curly or coily hair in 2026, against 55% of women aged 55 to 70. Britain's textured share falls fourteen points across the adult age range.
Five age bands, and the distribution moves steadily across all of them. At 18 to 24 the split is 31% Type 1, 36% Type 2, 21% Type 3 and 12% Type 4. At 25 to 34 it is 33 / 36 / 19 / 12. At 35 to 44, 36 / 35 / 18 / 11. At 45 to 54, 40 / 33 / 17 / 10. At 55 to 70, 45 / 31 / 15 / 9. Textured share runs 69%, 67%, 64%, 60% and 55%.
Two mechanisms are producing that slope and both are live. A cross-sectional survey cannot separate them, and this section says so rather than picking whichever one makes the better story.
The first is composition. Britain's younger cohorts are more ethnically diverse than its older ones, and the ethnic-group table above shows how strongly curl pattern tracks that. A good part of the fourteen-point gap is simply who is in each age band, and would be there even if no woman's hair had ever changed.
The second is change over a life. Curl pattern genuinely moves. 38% of women who have been pregnant report a permanent change afterwards, 44% of peri- and post-menopausal women report one, and 57% of that second group describe the change as looser or limper curl. A loosening effect concentrated at the top of the age range pushes in exactly the same direction as the composition effect, which is why the two are so easy to confuse.
There is one figure that lets a reader weigh them against each other. Among white British women only, where composition is held roughly constant, the textured share still falls from 61% at 18 to 24 down to 51% at 55 to 70. Ten of the fourteen points survive when the composition effect is stripped out. Both mechanisms are real, and change over a life is doing more of the work.
The practical consequence is the reason a woman over fifty should read this section rather than assume it is about somebody else. A curl pattern identified at 25 may not be the pattern at 55. 44% of peri- and post-menopausal women say theirs changed, and 29% of everyone who reported a life-stage change had to rebuild their routine from the beginning. The women most affected are the ones least likely to be looking for curl content, because they had already solved their hair once and had no reason to expect the answer to expire.
If your hair stopped responding to a routine that worked for a decade, the sensible first move is not a new product. It is a fresh wet-state classification, which costs nothing and takes as long as a shower.
One caution on quoting the age table. These are five cross-sections of different women, not one cohort followed for fifty years, so read the slope as a description of Britain now rather than as a forecast of any individual woman's hair.
| Age band | Base | Type 1 | Type 2 | Type 3 | Type 4 | Textured, Types 2 to 4 | Textured, white British women only |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 to 24 | 156 | 31% | 36% | 21% | 12% | 69% | 61% |
| 25 to 34 | 204 | 33% | 36% | 19% | 12% | 67% | 59% |
| 35 to 44 | 211 | 36% | 35% | 18% | 11% | 64% | 57% |
| 45 to 54 | 218 | 40% | 33% | 17% | 10% | 60% | 54% |
| 55 to 70 | 223 | 45% | 31% | 15% | 9% | 55% | 51% |
| UK | 1,012 | 37% | 34% | 18% | 11% | 63% | 59% |
The age British women work out their curl pattern[#]
The average UK woman identifies her curl pattern at 27.6 in 2026. For Type 2 hair it is 31.8 and for Type 4 it is 19.3, and 24% of British women with textured hair still are not sure.
Nearly a quarter of the women in this sample have never worked out what their hair is. Not forgotten it, not disagreed with a stylist about it. Never established it.
Read the two type figures next to each other and the mechanism is obvious. Recognition tracks visibility. A 4C pattern announces itself in childhood and there is no plausible way to mistake it for anything else, so Type 4 women land on their answer at 19.3. A 2A wave can be brushed, dried and conditioned out of existence every single day, so Type 2 women get there at 31.8, if they get there at all.
27.6 is not a neutral number. It is roughly two decades of adult buying for a hair type the buyer does not have, and the section on cost puts a figure on what those two decades are worth.
The free version of this takes four minutes. Zenvy's free curl identifier walks through the same wet-state classification used in this census.
The cumulative curve is the useful shape here. By age 10, 4% of women with textured hair have identified their pattern. By 13, 9%. By 16, 17%. By 18, 24%. By 21, 33%. By 25, 45%. By 30, 58%. By 35, 66%. By 40, 71%. By 50, 76%. The remaining 24% never have.
The still-not-sure figures split the same way as the mean ages: 34% of Type 2 women, 14% of Type 3 and 6% of Type 4. The looser the pattern, the longer a woman spends being told she simply has frizzy hair.
What actually triggers the realisation has never been measured before and it is not what the category would guess. Asked what prompted them to work it out, 38% said social media, 21% said a friend or family member, 14% said a hairdresser or stylist, 11% said a brand quiz or product, 9% said pregnancy or another physical change, and 7% said their own child's hair. Only 14% got there through a professional.
Then the finding that connects this section to the one on income. 68% of women who identified their pattern before 20 had a family member with the same pattern who had already worked it out. Among women who identified after 30 it was 34%. Curl knowledge is inherited before it is bought, and where it is not inherited it is paid for.
The trigger figures sit on a base of 484 women, being those who have identified their pattern at all. The 24% who have not are excluded from that table and from no other, because asking what prompted a realisation that has not happened produces nothing worth publishing.
Only 14% of British women got to their curl pattern through a hairdresser or stylist, which is the figure the curl misdiagnosis report is built around. Social media is doing nearly three times the work of the entire professional trade, and a friend or family member is doing half as much again as the trade on its own.
27.6 is not a neutral number and this report does not treat it as one. It is roughly two decades of adult buying against a hair type the buyer does not have, and the cost section further down turns that into pounds.
| By age | All textured | Type 2 | Type 3 | Type 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 4% | 1% | 4% | 14% |
| 13 | 9% | 3% | 11% | 27% |
| 16 | 17% | 7% | 22% | 44% |
| 18 | 24% | 11% | 32% | 57% |
| 21 | 33% | 18% | 43% | 69% |
| 25 | 45% | 29% | 57% | 81% |
| 30 | 58% | 44% | 71% | 89% |
| 35 | 66% | 53% | 79% | 92% |
| 40 | 71% | 59% | 83% | 93% |
| 50 | 76% | 66% | 86% | 94% |
| Mean age of discovery | 27.6 | 31.8 | 24.6 | 19.3 |
| Still not sure | 24% | 34% | 14% | 6% |
| Trigger | % | Mean age at which it happened |
|---|---|---|
| Social media | 38% | 26.1 |
| A friend or family member | 21% | 24.8 |
| A hairdresser or stylist | 14% | 29.4 |
| A brand quiz or product | 11% | 30.2 |
| Pregnancy or another physical change | 9% | 33.7 |
| Their own child's hair | 7% | 34.1 |
| Had a family member with the same pattern who already knew, identified before 20 | 68% | n/a |
| Had a family member with the same pattern who already knew, identified after 30 | 34% | n/a |
School: where curl confidence is made and lost[#]
45% of UK women with textured hair were teased about their hair at school in 2026, rising to 71% of Type 4 women. 64% of Type 3 and Type 4 women first straightened their hair before they turned 16, at an average age of 14.2.
These figures are reported flat, with their bases attached, and without an adjective that the numbers have not already earned.
Almost half of Britain's textured-hair women were teased about it at school. Among Type 4 women it is closer to three quarters. 22% say a teacher commented on their hair, which is a different kind of number, because a teacher is not a peer and a comment from one carries the weight of the institution behind it.
The straightening data sits underneath all of it. Two thirds of Type 3 and Type 4 women had already straightened their hair before the end of compulsory schooling, at a mean age of 14.2. That is a decision taken at an age when very few of them had been told what the alternative was, and several years before the average British woman works out what her pattern is at all.
The teasing figures split hard by type: 31% of Type 2 women, 57% of Type 3 and 71% of Type 4, against 45% across all textured hair. The teacher figures run the same way, at 14%, 26% and 34%. Straightening before 16 runs 39%, 61% and 68%, and before 12 it runs 12%, 24% and 37%. The mean age of first straightening is 16.8 for Type 2 women, 14.6 for Type 3 and 13.1 for Type 4.
The reasons given for first straightening are the part that connects to the rest of this report. 41% did it to fit in at school. 29% did it because they did not know how else to manage their hair. 17% did it for a specific event, 8% because a parent or carer suggested it, and 5% because a stylist did. Nearly a third of British women first straightened their hair because nobody had told them what else to do with it.
There is an association here that wants stating carefully, as an association and not a mechanism. Among women who were teased at school, the mean age of identifying their curl pattern is 29.4. Among those who were not, it is 26.1. More than three years apart, and the direction is consistent across all three textured types. Being teased about your hair does not stop you understanding it. The two simply travel together.
One intergenerational figure to close, reported flat and without commentary. Among panellists with school-age daughters who have textured hair, 38% say they have already straightened their daughter's hair for school. It runs from 29% among Type 2 mothers to 52% among Type 4 mothers.
Every figure in this section sits on the 637 UK women in the sample with Type 2 to Type 4 hair, and the type splits sit on 344, 182 and 111 respectively. The Type 4 sub-base is the smallest of the three and the numbers on it are the largest in the section, which is worth holding in mind when quoting them.
| School-years experience | Type 2 | Type 3 | Type 4 | All textured |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Teased about their hair at school | 31% | 57% | 71% | 45% |
| A teacher commented on their hair | 14% | 26% | 34% | 22% |
| First straightened before age 16 | 39% | 61% | 68% | 51% |
| First straightened before age 12 | 12% | 24% | 37% | 21% |
| Mean age of first straightening | 16.8 | 14.6 | 13.1 | 14.2 |
| First straightened to fit in at school | 34% | 43% | 48% | 41% |
| First straightened because they did not know what else to do | 33% | 27% | 24% | 29% |
| Mean age of identifying their pattern, teased at school | 32.1 | 26.4 | 20.8 | 29.4 |
| Mean age of identifying their pattern, not teased | 31.4 | 23.1 | 17.9 | 26.1 |
| Have already straightened a school-age daughter's hair | 29% | 41% | 52% | 38% |
Chemical straightening in 2026[#]
36% of UK women with textured hair have chemically straightened at some point and 10% currently do, in 2026. Among Type 4 women it is 68% ever and 19% currently, the highest rate of any group.
Zenvy sells curl products. It does not lecture women about relaxers, and this section reports the behaviour without a view attached to it.
Just over a third of British women with textured hair have chemically straightened it at least once. One in ten still does. The Type 4 figures run far above the national rate on both measures, and the ever-rate in particular is a cumulative one, so it will always read higher than current use for any group.
What a relaxer does is worth stating once and precisely. It breaks and re-forms the disulphide bonds in the hair's cortex, which permanently alters the pattern of that section of the strand. That is the whole of it for the purposes of this report. Anything about whether it is right for you is a conversation with a professional, and nothing here should be read as advice either way.
The split by type is 21% ever and 6% currently among Type 2 women, 44% and 11% among Type 3, and 68% and 19% among Type 4. The age bands carry the trend: among women aged 18 to 27, 22% have ever chemically straightened; among 28 to 43 it is 38%; among 44 to 70 it is 47%. Ever-rates rise with age partly because there has simply been more time to accumulate one, so the cleaner comparison is current use, which runs 6%, 10% and 13% across the same three bands. Even on the clean measure, current use falls by more than half across the age range.
Among the 26% who have stopped, the reasons given are 44% damage or breakage, 31% wanting to see their natural pattern, 14% cost, 6% pregnancy and 5% a stylist advising it. The honest counterweight to a simple progress narrative is the return rate: 18% of those who stopped have gone back at least once, and the most common reason given was a specific work or social event.
There is a cost overlay on all of this. Women currently chemically straightening spend £186 a year more on haircare than women with the same curl pattern who do not. Among Type 4 women the gap is £467 against £281. The crown report puts a number on the work half of the reasons women give.
There is one thing the ever-rate cannot tell you, and it is worth saying so. A woman who relaxed her hair twice in 1998 and a woman who has relaxed every eight weeks for twenty years both appear in the 36%. That is why the current-use figure carries the trend rather than the ever-rate, and why the age-band comparison in the table below uses both.
The reasons women give for stopping and for going back are reported here as they were given, without weighting one against another. Damage or breakage leads at 44%, wanting to see the natural pattern follows at 31%, and cost at 14%. A specific work or social event is the most common reason for returning.
| Group | Base | Ever chemically straightened | Currently | Stopped | Annual haircare spend if currently | Annual spend if never |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type 2 | 344 | 21% | 6% | 15% | £312 | £229 |
| Type 3 | 182 | 44% | 11% | 33% | £398 | £294 |
| Type 4 | 111 | 68% | 19% | 49% | £467 | £281 |
| Aged 18 to 27 | 148 | 22% | 6% | 16% | £341 | £248 |
| Aged 28 to 43 | 227 | 38% | 10% | 28% | £389 | £272 |
| Aged 44 to 70 | 262 | 47% | 13% | 34% | £412 | £284 |
| All textured | 637 | 36% | 10% | 26% | £394 | £268 |
Pregnancy, menopause and when curl pattern changes[#]
38% of UK women who have been pregnant report a permanent change to their curl pattern afterwards in 2026, and 61% of those say their hair became curlier. 44% of peri- and post-menopausal women report a change, with 57% reporting looser or limper curl.
Two life-stage findings that nobody had measured in the UK before this February. The biology gets one sentence and no more: hormonal change is associated with altered follicle shape, and follicle shape is what determines curl pattern.
Take pregnancy first, on a base of 511 women who have been pregnant. The 38% figure is not the temporary shedding phase that follows a birth. Respondents were asked about a settled difference in pattern that had not reverted by the time they answered. Of those reporting one, 61% said their hair became curlier and 24% said it became straighter.
Menopause runs the other way. On a base of 236 peri- or post-menopausal women, 44% report a change, and of those, 57% describe looser or limper curl. The direction is consistent enough to be worth acting on.
The practical instruction is the same in both cases. If your hair has changed after a pregnancy or through menopause, re-run the wet-state classification rather than assuming the pattern you knew. The women most affected by this are also the least likely to be reading curl content, because they had already solved their hair once and had no reason to expect the answer to expire. Our hair porosity guide is worth re-reading at the same time, because porosity moves at the same life stages.
The direction after pregnancy splits 61% curlier, 24% straighter and 15% mixed or patchy. The mean reported shift is just under one sub-type, so a 2B becoming a 2C rather than a 2B becoming a 3B. That is worth stating explicitly, because it stops the finding being overstated the moment it leaves this page.
At menopause the reported directions are 57% looser or limper curl, 29% drier and coarser without a pattern change, and 14% with no clear direction. Drier and coarser is a texture change rather than a pattern change and it is counted in its own column. Merging the two would inflate the pattern-change figure by thirteen points, which is why the table keeps them apart.
The finding that ties both life stages together is the most useful thing in this section. 29% of women who reported a life-stage change said they had to rebuild their routine from scratch afterwards, and 41% of those said the rebuild took over six months. The median spend during it was £164. And 63% of women reporting a change had not re-classified their pattern at all, which is why the retest instruction sits in this section rather than at the end of the report.
The mean shift after pregnancy is just under one sub-type. That is the sentence that keeps the finding the right size. A 2B becoming a 2C is a real change and it will alter which products work. A 2B becoming a 3B would be a different story, and it is not the one this data tells.
If your hair has changed after a pregnancy or through menopause, the instruction is the same one this report has given throughout. Re-run the wet-state classification rather than assuming the pattern you knew. 63% of the women reporting a change had not done it.
| Life stage | Report a change | Curlier | Straighter or looser | Mixed or no direction | Texture change without pattern change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| After pregnancy | 38% | 61% | 24% | 15% | n/a |
| Peri- or post-menopause | 44% | n/a | 57% | 14% | 29% |
| Had to rebuild their routine from scratch | 29% of all who reported a change | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Of those, took over six months | 41% | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Median spend during the rebuild | £164 | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Had not re-classified their pattern after the change | 63% | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
A texture change without a pattern change is counted in its own column and is never merged into the pattern-change figure.
Curl pattern by season: the summer swing[#]
Britain's measured textured share rises from 63% in February to 65% in August across the same 618 women in 2026. 8% of women classified as Type 1 in winter classify as Type 2 in summer, the same hair read twice.
On a page built entirely on a self-administered image-grid classification, this is the most methodologically important section after the one on wet state. If the instrument gives a different answer in August than it gave in February, a reader is entitled to know that before deciding what the headline is worth.
So we asked. 618 of the original 1,012 panellists re-ran the identical nine-image classification between 4 and 18 August 2026, wet-state and air-dried, same instructions, same randomisation on both passes. The re-contact sample matches the original on age, region and ethnicity to within two points on every cell, which means the movement below is movement in the reading rather than movement in who was reading.
Type 1 goes from 37% to 35%. Type 2 from 34% to 36%. Type 3 from 18% to 19%. Type 4 from 11% to 10%. Textured share goes from 63% to 65%.
The flows underneath are more informative than the net figure, because a two-point net movement could hide almost anything. 38 women moved from Type 1 to Type 2, and 18 moved the other way. 22 moved from Type 2 to Type 3, and 12 came back. At the coily end there is almost no movement at all, 4 women in total across the whole Type 3 and Type 4 boundary. The seasonal effect is concentrated entirely at the loose end of the spectrum, which is precisely where the pattern is most easily suppressed and most easily revealed.
The mechanism is straightforward. Ambient humidity raises visible curl formation in loose patterns, because hydrogen bonds in the cortex reform under higher moisture and pull a wave into a more defined shape. That is one sentence of structural biology and it needs no more than one. 41% of Type 2 women selected a curlier grid image in August than they had in February. Only 9% selected a straighter one.
Which produces the single cheapest diagnostic in this report, and it is worth putting in a sentence a reader will remember. If you have been told your hair is straight, look at it in August, wet, before you touch it. No equipment, no appointment, no purchase.
One statement of policy to close, because it protects the series. The figure this report publishes as its headline is the February reading. February is the fieldwork month, the 2024 baseline was fielded in February, and every future edition will be. Publishing the August number as the national figure would flatter the finding by two points and make next year's comparison meaningless. Saying so now is cheaper than being asked later.
One consequence for anyone quoting this page. If you read a curl figure taken in July and compare it against a figure taken in January, two of the points between them are weather. That is small enough not to matter for most purposes and large enough to matter for a series, which is why the fieldwork window is stated on every table on this page rather than left in the small print.
| Measure | February | August | Movement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type 1 | 37% | 35% | -2 pts |
| Type 2 | 34% | 36% | +2 pts |
| Type 3 | 18% | 19% | +1 pt |
| Type 4 | 11% | 10% | -1 pt |
| Textured, Types 2 to 4 | 63% | 65% | +2 pts |
| Moved from Type 1 to Type 2 | 38 women | n/a | n/a |
| Moved from Type 2 to Type 1 | 18 women | n/a | n/a |
| Type 2 women selecting a curlier image in August | 41% | n/a | n/a |
| Type 2 women selecting a straighter image in August | 9% | n/a | n/a |
| Movement across the Type 3 and Type 4 boundary | 4 women | n/a | n/a |
February is the published reading, because February is the fieldwork month and the series has to stay comparable year on year.
The Zenvy Curl Routine Builder
This asks for porosity, strand width and density before it asks for your curl pattern, because that is the order the 2026 data supports. Product weight is selected from strand width and density. Porosity sets the routine. Curl pattern adjusts the styler format only.
The weight grid, without JavaScript
Fine strands with low density, light. Fine with medium or high density, light to medium. Medium strands with low or medium density, medium. Medium with high density, medium to rich. Coarse strands with low density, medium to rich. Coarse with medium or high density, rich.
We asked for your curl pattern last on purpose. In our 2026 census only 29% of UK women with textured hair said curl pattern alone was enough to choose products, and 61% said porosity mattered more once they learned about it. Our shop is organised by curl type. Our data says it should not be.
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The cost of finding out[#]
UK women with textured hair try a median of 12 products and spend £416 before finding a routine that works, and it takes them 5.9 years.
Three numbers, one behaviour. Twelve products, £416, 5.9 years, and at the end of it a routine that finally does what she wanted it to do in the first place.
It is worth being clear about what the £416 is not. It is not what British women spend on haircare. It is the cost of the products that did not work, bought while establishing which ones would. It is a discovery cost, and it is paid almost entirely because the information that would have shortened it was not available to her at the start.
Nearly six years is the part that should bother the category most. That is not a shopping trip. It is most of a decade of buying, trying, being disappointed and buying again, and the women doing it are the same women the category describes as loyal when they finally settle.
Zenvy keeps the free curl identifier free for exactly this reason. £416 is an absurd price for information. If you want somewhere sensible to start on the product side, curl creams are the single category most often bought wrong, because weight matters more in that slot than in any other.
The three-way split by type is where the number stops being an average. Type 2 women try nine products, spend £287 and take 5.1 years. Type 3 women try fourteen, spend £486 and take 6.4 years. Type 4 women try nineteen, spend £702 and take 7.8 years. The national figures are twelve products, £416 and 5.9 years.
Where the £416 went: 34% on shampoos and conditioners that turned out to be wrong for the pattern, 27% on stylers that did not hold, 21% on treatments and masks, 12% on tools including brushes and diffusers, and 6% on salon services that did not produce a repeatable result. Two thirds of it is the wrong bottle bought twice.
Then the comparison that reframes the whole number. Among women who identified their curl pattern before age 20, the median spend to a working routine was £248 and it took 3.4 years. Among those who identified it after 30, it was £561 and 7.1 years. Identifying the pattern earlier more than halves the cost and cuts the time by more than half. Read that as an association rather than a mechanism, because women who identify earlier differ in other ways, notably in whether a family member had already worked it out. The size of the gap is still the point.
Annualised, it looks smaller and reads worse. £416 spread across 5.9 years is roughly £71 a year of pure trial and error, sitting on top of the £290 a year that women with textured hair spend on products that do work. Close to a fifth of the category's revenue from this group is the cost of not knowing.
Zenvy keeps the curl identifier free for exactly this reason, and there is no version of the argument in which £416 is a reasonable price for information that a bathroom mirror can supply. If you want somewhere sensible to start on the product side, curl creams are the single category most often bought wrong, because weight matters more in that slot than in any other.
| Group | Products tried | Spend to a working routine | Years taken | Annual cost of the discovery period |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type 2 | 9 | £287 | 5.1 | £56 |
| Type 3 | 14 | £486 | 6.4 | £76 |
| Type 4 | 19 | £702 | 7.8 | £90 |
| Identified their pattern before 20 | 8 | £248 | 3.4 | £73 |
| Identified their pattern after 30 | 16 | £561 | 7.1 | £79 |
| All textured | 12 | £416 | 5.9 | £71 |
| Category | Share of discovery spend | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Shampoos and conditioners wrong for the pattern | 34% | £141 |
| Stylers that did not hold | 27% | £112 |
| Treatments and masks | 21% | £87 |
| Tools, brushes and diffusers | 12% | £50 |
| Salon services that did not produce a repeatable result | 6% | £25 |
| Total | 100% | £416 |
Values are rounded to the nearest pound, so the five categories carry a pound of rounding against the total.
Curl knowledge by household income[#]
31% of UK women with textured hair in households under £20,000 still do not know their curl pattern in 2026, against 16% in households over £80,000. Curl knowledge is distributed as unequally as anything else in this report.
Five income bands, five measures, and each line on its own is unremarkable. Products tried falls as income rises: 14, 13, 12, 11, 10. Spend to a working routine rises: £298, £361, £427, £484, £561. Years taken falls: 6.8, 6.3, 5.8, 5.4, 4.9. Still not sure falls sharply: 31%, 27%, 23%, 20%, 16%. Identified before 20 rises: 19%, 22%, 26%, 30%, 36%.
Read the five together and the finding appears. Higher-income women spend more money getting to a working routine and get there faster, with fewer products and less uncertainty along the way. They are not buying better products. They are buying fewer wrong ones, more quickly, and they are much more likely to have started with the answer already in hand.
Expressed as a share of income the burden inverts, which is the number that takes this out of the beauty pages. £298 spread across 6.8 years in an £18,000 household is 0.24% of annual income every year. £561 spread across 4.9 years in a £95,000 household is 0.12%. Half the burden for twice the outlay.
The mechanism the data actually supports is not price, and it is worth being precise about that. 68% of women who identified their pattern before 20 had a family member with the same pattern who had already worked it out, against 34% of those who identified after 30. That family-knowledge figure is itself unevenly distributed, running from 39% in the lowest income band to 58% in the highest. What is being inherited is not money. It is an answer.
Which is where the honest limits of this section sit. Income bands correlate with a great deal else, including where a woman lives, what her mother's hair looks like and how many people around her have already solved the same problem. The table shows an association across five bands with a consistent direction on all five measures. It does not isolate income as a cause, and no cross-sectional survey could.
If the finding has a solution, it is not a cheaper product. The wet-state classification set out earlier on this page costs nothing, needs no equipment and works in a bathroom mirror. That is why the chart on this page is published under a licence that lets a school, a charity, a youth service or a competitor reproduce it without asking and without paying. A diagnostic that only reaches the women who can already afford to get there faster is not much of a diagnostic.
One base note before the table. 566 women with textured hair gave an income band and 71 declined. Those 71 are excluded from this table and from no other table on the page, so the figures here sit on a slightly smaller base than the ones above them. That is the honest way to handle a refused question, and it is worth saying rather than quietly re-weighting.
| Household income | Base | Products tried | Spend to a working routine | Years taken | Still not sure of their pattern | Identified before 20 | Had a family member who already knew |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under £20,000 | 118 | 14 | £298 | 6.8 | 31% | 19% | 39% |
| £20,000 to £34,999 | 142 | 13 | £361 | 6.3 | 27% | 22% | 44% |
| £35,000 to £54,999 | 136 | 12 | £427 | 5.8 | 23% | 26% | 49% |
| £55,000 to £79,999 | 104 | 11 | £484 | 5.4 | 20% | 30% | 54% |
| £80,000 and over | 66 | 10 | £561 | 4.9 | 16% | 36% | 58% |
| All | 566 | 12 | £416 | 5.9 | 24% | 26% | 47% |
The Curl Cost-to-Routine Calculator
Compare your own discovery journey against the 2026 national benchmark. The benchmark is Table 19: a median of 12 products, £416 and 5.9 years across 637 UK women with Type 2 to 4 hair.
See the benchmark without JavaScript
Products tried 12. Spend to a working routine £416. Years taken 5.9. Base 637. Source: Zenvy Beauty Research, 2026 edition, Table 19.
About £71 a year. You are level with the UK median on every measure.
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Seven things Britain believes about curl type that the 2026 data does not support[#]
61% of UK women believe curly hair is inherently dry hair in 2026. Porosity, not curl pattern, determines how hair holds moisture, and at 3B the porosity split is an almost even 34% low, 31% medium and 35% high.
Seven beliefs, each with the share of UK women who hold it and the figure on this page that answers it. None of them is anybody's fault. Every one is a reasonable inference from a category that has taught curl type as a complete answer for twenty years.
One. Curly hair is dry hair. 61% agree. Dryness is a porosity behaviour, not a pattern. Curl pattern raises the odds of high porosity, from 17% at 2A up to 59% at 4C, but the odds are not the answer. At 3B the split is 34% low, 31% medium and 35% high, which is a three-way tie. A great many curly-haired women are being sold moisture they do not need, and some are being sold it against a cuticle that will not take it.
Two. You should never brush curly hair. 54% agree. The rule is about state, not tool. Brushing dry breaks up clumps and turns definition into frizz. Brushing wet with conditioner through it does not, and for Type 3 and Type 4 hair it is often the only practical way to detangle without losing length. The advice that circulates has lost its qualifier somewhere between the salon and the caption.
Three. Curl pattern tells you which products to buy. 58% agree. Curl pattern explains 11% of whether a product works over twelve weeks. Porosity and density together explain 38%. This is the most consequential correction on the page and it gets a whole section of its own further down.
Four. Type 4 hair does not grow. 29% agree. Median self-reported shrinkage among UK Type 4 women is 68%, and 83% say shrinkage makes growth hard to judge. A 25cm strand sitting at 8cm has not failed to grow. It has coiled. The converter on this page turns any two measurements into a percentage and back.
Five. Wavy hair is just straight hair that has been damaged. 33% agree. 34% of UK women have a measurable Type 2 wave pattern and only 48% of them call it wavy. It is the country's largest textured group, not a damaged version of the second largest, and treating it as damage is how a woman ends up buying repair for a shape.
Six. Your curl pattern is fixed. 47% agree. 38% of women who have been pregnant report a permanent change, 44% of peri- and post-menopausal women report one, and Britain's measured textured share moves two points between February and August on the same 618 women. Three separate findings, all pointing the same way.
Seven. Everyone has one curl pattern. 42% agree. 58% of UK women with textured hair have more than one pattern on their own head, rising to 71% among Type 3 women. A single-type label describes a head of hair roughly the way a single colour describes a painting.
What connects all seven is worth naming. Each is a sensible thing to conclude from a shelf that sorts by curl type and says nothing else. Five of the seven would be corrected by two tests that between them cost nothing: the wet-state classification set out earlier, and a porosity check.
Each row of the table below names where the correction comes from, so a reader who wants to check one can go straight to the table it sits in rather than taking our word for it. Six of the seven point at a table on this page. The seventh points at the porosity report, because the porosity split at 3B is measured there and not here.
| Belief | Share who agree | What the 2026 data shows | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Curly hair is dry hair | 61% | Dryness is a porosity behaviour, not a pattern. At 3B the porosity split is 34% low, 31% medium and 35% high. | The UK Hair Porosity Report 2026 |
| You should never brush curly hair | 54% | The rule is about state, not tool. Brushing dry turns definition into frizz. Brushing wet with conditioner through it does not. | Table 23 |
| Curl pattern tells you which products to buy | 58% | Curl pattern explains 11% of whether a product works over twelve weeks. Porosity and density together explain 38%. | Table 27 |
| Type 4 hair does not grow | 29% | Median self-reported shrinkage among UK Type 4 women is 68%, and 83% say it makes growth hard to judge. | Table 7 |
| Wavy hair is just straight hair that has been damaged | 33% | 34% of UK women have a measurable Type 2 wave pattern and only 48% of them call it wavy. | Tables 4 and 5 |
| Your curl pattern is fixed | 47% | 38% of women who have been pregnant report a permanent change, 44% of peri- and post-menopausal women do, and the measured share moves two points between February and August. | Tables 17 and 18 |
| Everyone has one curl pattern | 42% | 58% of UK women with textured hair have more than one pattern on their head, rising to 71% among Type 3 women. | Table 23 |
What the four-type system misses[#]
Only 29% of UK women with textured hair say curl pattern alone is enough to choose products in 2026, and 61% say porosity mattered more once they learned about it. 58% have more than one curl pattern on their own head.
This is the section that keeps the page honest about the framework it has just spent several thousand words using.
The first limitation is that most women do not have one pattern. 58% of British women with textured hair report more than one on their own head, rising to 71% among Type 3 women. A single-type label is a summary of a head of hair, and a range built as though every customer has one uniform pattern is designing for a minority of them.
The second is porosity, and it is the one the women in this sample reached for themselves. 61% of those who had learned about porosity said it mattered more than curl pattern for choosing products. Curl pattern tells you what shape your hair is. Porosity tells you what it does with water, which is to say how open the cuticle sits and how readily a conditioner gets in or stays on top. Only one of those two facts determines whether a product absorbs. Our hair porosity guide covers the self-test.
The third is the pair of variables almost nobody can name. Strand width is how thick one individual hair is. Density is how many hairs grow per square centimetre of scalp. Only 19% of respondents could say whether their strands were fine, medium or coarse, and only 14% could describe their density. Two women both at 3B with opposite strand widths need opposite product weights, and neither the typing system nor the average product label helps them tell.
None of that makes the four-type system worthless, and a section that only attacked it would be dishonest in the other direction. It is the shared vocabulary. It is what people actually search for, at 16,000 UK searches a month on the head term alone. It is a genuinely useful first filter. 29% saying it is sufficient is a long way from saying it is useless. It is a starting point that the market, including this one, has treated as an ending point. Our curly hair products are still shelved by pattern, and a beginner's curly hair routine still starts there, because that is where a beginner starts.
The most commonly reported combination among women with more than one pattern is a looser pattern at the crown and a tighter one underneath, at 51% of that group. Half of everyone with multiple patterns has the same two, arranged the same way, which is a specific enough finding for a formulator to act on and one no curl-type label carries.
The section that follows this one prices the difference. Curl pattern explains 11% of whether a product works over twelve weeks. Porosity explains 27%, and density and strand width together explain 19%. That is the handover, and it is the reason this page spends its last section arguing against the taxonomy it spent the previous twenty-three using.
None of that makes the four-type system worthless, and a section that only attacked it would be dishonest in the other direction. 29% saying it is sufficient is a long way from saying it is useless. It is a genuinely good first filter that the market, including this one, has treated as a complete answer.
| Limitation | All textured | Type 2 | Type 3 | Type 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Have more than one curl pattern on their head | 58% | 46% | 71% | 63% |
| Most common combination is looser at the crown, tighter underneath | 51% of those | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Say curl pattern alone is enough to choose products | 29% | 34% | 26% | 21% |
| Say porosity mattered more once they learned about it | 61% | 54% | 67% | 71% |
| Can say whether their strands are fine, medium or coarse | 19% | 16% | 21% | 27% |
| Can describe their hair density | 14% | 11% | 16% | 22% |
| Say shrinkage makes growth hard to judge | n/a | 21% | 47% | 83% |
| Median self-reported shrinkage | n/a | 19% | 41% | 68% |
How to find your routine faster, ranked by measured effect[#]
The single most effective way for a UK woman to find a working hair routine faster in 2026 is to identify her strand width and density, worth six fewer products and 2.1 fewer years. Every one of the top eight changes we measured is free.
The measurement first, because a ranking without a method behind it is a listicle. Each change was isolated within the Product-Match Trial and cross-checked against the census, measured as the difference in products tried and years taken between women who did the thing and matched women who did not. The margin of error is ±1.2 products and ±0.5 years, so anything under those thresholds is reported as directional rather than proven, and the table says which is which on every row.
The ten, in order, with the cost attached to each.
One. Identify your strand width and density. Six fewer products and 2.1 fewer years, for nothing. Strand width is how thick one hair is. Density is how many of them grow per square centimetre of scalp. Both can be established at a bathroom mirror in about ten minutes.
Two. Test your porosity with a six-signal composite. Five fewer products, 1.8 fewer years, £0. A single-signal test is where most people go wrong, and the float test on its own is the least reliable of the six.
Three. Buy one product at a time and give it four weeks. Four fewer products, 0.9 fewer years, £0. Changing three things at once tells you nothing about any of them.
Four. Classify your curl pattern wet, not air-dried. Three fewer products, 1.2 fewer years, £0.
Five. Ask a family member with the same hair what works. Three fewer products, 1.4 fewer years, £0. This is the inheritance effect from the income section, turned into an instruction.
Six. Buy sample or travel sizes before full sizes. Three fewer products and 0.4 fewer years, and it saves about £38.
Seven. Photograph the result weekly in the same light. Two fewer products, 0.6 fewer years, £0. Hair changes slowly enough that memory is a poor instrument.
Eight. Use a free online curl diagnostic. Two fewer products, 0.8 fewer years, £0.
Nine. Shop a retailer range organised by curl type. One fewer product and 0.2 fewer years, both inside the margin of error. £0.
Ten. Buy a matched multi-product system from one brand. No fewer products and 0.1 fewer years, inside the margin of error, at about £26 more.
Draw the conclusion out rather than leaving it to be noticed. The top eight are free or save money. The two at the bottom, the two the trial could not distinguish from noise, are the two that most closely resemble how the category actually sells: a range organised by curl type, and a matched system from a single brand.
None of that makes either a bad purchase. A matched system is convenient and a curl-type range is easier to shop. It does mean that the things which move the measured outcome and the things the shelf is built to sell are almost entirely different sets, and a woman who is £400 into a discovery period is entitled to know which is which. If you want this as a plan rather than a list, the 90-day audit below turns it into one, and there is a beginner's curly hair routine that follows the same order.
One caution on reading the ranking. These are measured differences between women who did a thing and matched women who did not, which is not the same as a controlled experiment on the same woman. The order is stable and the top of it is a long way clear of the bottom, but treat a one-place difference in the middle of the list as no difference at all.
| Rank | Change | Fewer products tried | Fewer years taken | Cost | Proven or directional |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Identify your strand width and density | 6 | 2.1 | £0 | Proven |
| 2 | Test your porosity with a six-signal composite | 5 | 1.8 | £0 | Proven |
| 3 | Buy one product at a time and give it four weeks | 4 | 0.9 | £0 | Proven |
| 4 | Classify your curl pattern wet, not air-dried | 3 | 1.2 | £0 | Proven |
| 5 | Ask a family member with the same hair what works | 3 | 1.4 | £0 | Proven |
| 6 | Buy sample or travel sizes before full sizes | 3 | 0.4 | Saves about £38 | Proven |
| 7 | Photograph the result weekly in the same light | 2 | 0.6 | £0 | Proven |
| 8 | Use a free online curl diagnostic | 2 | 0.8 | £0 | Proven |
| 9 | Shop a retailer range organised by curl type | 1 | 0.2 | £0 | Directional, inside the margin of error |
| 10 | Buy a matched multi-product system from one brand | 0 | 0.1 | Costs about £26 more | Directional, inside the margin of error |
The 90-Day Curl Discovery Audit
Twelve steps. Click an item to cycle it through To do, Done and Not applicable. Anything marked not applicable comes out of the total. Your progress is stored in this browser only.
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What changed since 2024, and the five-year view to 2031[#]
Britain's textured-hair share did not move between 2024 and 2026, from 62% to 63%, which is inside sampling error. What moved is how many women know where they sit in it: accurate self-description rose from 51% to 57%, and mean age of discovery fell from 29.1 to 27.6.
Zenvy ran a smaller pilot in February 2024. 598 UK women, the same nine-image grid, the same wet-state rule. It was never published. It appears here as the baseline, and it is the reason this section can say anything about direction at all.
Start with the number that did not move, because it is what makes the rest of the section credible. The distribution itself should not shift in two years, and it did not. 62% to 63%, on samples of 598 and 1,012, is inside sampling error, and anyone reporting that as growth in Britain's curly population would be wrong. A survey series that reports movement in something which cannot move has a problem with its instrument. Saying so out loud is how a reader knows this one does not.
Then the eight comparisons. Measured textured share 62% to 63%. Correctly self-describe their pattern 51% to 57%. Still not sure 29% to 24%. Mean age of discovery 29.1 to 27.6. Products tried 13 to 12. Spend to a working routine £389 to £416. Years taken 6.4 to 5.9. Ever chemically straightened among textured hair 41% to 36%, and currently 13% to 10%.
Read together, knowledge is improving on every measure that carries it. Six points more accurate self-description, five points fewer unsure, a year and a half earlier discovery, half a year faster to a routine, one fewer product tried. The one line moving the other way is spend, up £27, which is roughly consistent with price movement rather than with more products being bought. Twelve products at 2026 prices cost more than thirteen did at 2024 prices.
The projection comes with its assumptions on the table. Each line is extrapolated from the 2024 to 2026 movement with a logistic damping factor as the measure approaches its ceiling or its floor. Accuracy is capped at 85%, which is the agreement rate we would expect between two runs of the instrument itself, so it cannot be projected past the noise in its own measurement. Correctly self-describe goes 57, then 63, then 72. Still not sure goes 24, then 20, then 14. Mean age of discovery goes 27.6, then 26.2, then 24.1. Ever chemically straightened goes 36, then 32, then 26.
The honest reading of that is not a triumphant one. On this trajectory, one in seven British women with textured hair still will not know her pattern in 2031, and the mean age of discovery will still be over 24. Both would be a good deal better than 2026. Neither is anything like solved.
Three things would break the projection, and they are worth naming so the 2031 edition can be scored against them. A mass-market retailer adopting porosity or density labelling would move the accuracy line faster than the model allows. A change in the ethnic composition of the UK adult female population would move the distribution itself, which the model holds flat. And the school findings earlier on this page mean the biggest single lever on the 2031 numbers was pulled, or not pulled, around 2014.
The census is re-fielded every February with the same nine images and published every May, which is what makes that last sentence a commitment rather than a flourish.
| Measure | 2024 | 2026 | 2028 projected | 2031 projected |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Measured textured share, Types 2 to 4 | 62% | 63% | 63% | 63% |
| Correctly self-describe their pattern | 51% | 57% | 63% | 72% |
| Still not sure of their pattern | 29% | 24% | 20% | 14% |
| Mean age of identifying their pattern | 29.1 | 27.6 | 26.2 | 24.1 |
| Products tried before a working routine | 13 | 12 | 11 | 10 |
| Spend to a working routine | £389 | £416 | £438 | £471 |
| Years taken | 6.4 | 5.9 | 5.5 | 4.9 |
| Ever chemically straightened, textured hair | 41% | 36% | 32% | 26% |
| Currently chemically straightening | 13% | 10% | 8% | 6% |
Accuracy is capped at 85% in the projection, which is the agreement rate we would expect between two runs of the instrument itself.
What this report says, in eight findings[#]
63% of UK women have wavy, curly or coily hair in 2026, they find out at an average age of 27.6, it costs them £416 and 5.9 years to get to a routine that works, and curl pattern is the weakest of the three variables that predict whether a product will.
Eight findings, each one anchored to a table already on this page. No new figures appear here.
One. Britain is a textured-hair country. 63% of women have Type 2, 3 or 4 hair, and straight hair is a minority at 37%. The mass-market category is built for the smaller group.
Two. Type 2 is the biggest group and the least recognised. 34% of women, larger than Type 3 and Type 4 put together, and only 48% of them call their hair wavy.
Three. The category's pictures do not match the country. Type 3 is 18% of British women and 47% of curl-category imagery. Type 2 is 34% of women and 14% of the pictures.
Four. Recognition tracks visibility. 93% of Type 4 women describe their hair accurately, against 48% of Type 2 women, and they identify their pattern at 19.3 against 31.8.
Five. The answer is inherited before it is bought. 68% of women who identified their pattern before 20 had a family member who already knew, against 34% of those who identified after 30, and that inheritance is unevenly distributed by income.
Six. The classification depends on the state you look at. 26% of women disagreed with themselves between wet and air-dried, four points of Britain's textured share are invisible in the mirror, and two more appear in August.
Seven. The discovery period costs £416 and 5.9 years. Identifying the pattern early more than halves it, to £248 and 3.4 years, and 24% of British women with textured hair never get there at all.
What Zenvy does with this is short. We publish it, we re-field it every February, we keep the diagnostic free, we release every table as a CSV, and we put the chart out under a licence that lets a school, a charity, a journalist or a competitor reproduce it without asking us.
Eight. Curl pattern is the weakest predictor of the three. 11% of explained variance against 27% for porosity and 19% for density and strand width. That is the section immediately below this one, and it is the most consequential finding in the report.
Those eight are the findings this report will be quoted on, and each one is checkable against a table above it. Nothing in this section is new, and no figure appears here that has not already been printed with its base attached. If a figure surprises you, the table it came from is two clicks away, the base is in the caption and the CSV is one button further.
What Zenvy does with all of this is short and it is the whole of the commitment. We publish it. We re-field the census every February with the same nine images. We keep the curl identifier free. We release every table on this page as a CSV, and the chart under a licence that lets a school, a charity, a journalist or a competitor reproduce it without asking us and without paying us. The 2027 edition will be scored against this one.
| Finding | 2026 figure | Source table |
|---|---|---|
| Britain is a textured-hair country | 63% textured, 37% straight | Table 1 |
| Type 2 is the biggest group and the least recognised | 34% of women, 48% of them call it wavy | Tables 4 and 5 |
| The category's pictures do not match the country | Type 3 is 18% of women and 47% of imagery, Type 2 is 34% and 14% | Table 6 |
| Recognition tracks visibility | 93% accuracy at Type 4 against 48% at Type 2 | Table 7 |
| The answer is inherited before it is bought | 68% who identified before 20 had a family member who already knew, against 34% after 30 | Table 14 |
| The classification depends on the state you look at | 26% disagreed with themselves wet against dry, four points invisible in the mirror and two more in August | Tables 3 and 18 |
| The discovery period costs £416 and 5.9 years | £416 and 5.9 years, falling to £248 and 3.4 years if identified before 20 | Table 19 |
| Curl pattern is the weakest predictor of the three | 11% explained variance against 27% for porosity and 19% for density and strand width | Table 27 |
Which diagnostic actually predicts whether a product works[#]
Curl pattern explains 11% of whether a hair product works in 2026. Porosity explains 27%, and hair density and strand width together explain 19%. Curl pattern is the weakest of the three, and it is the one the category is organised around.
This is the most consequential finding in the report, and it is deliberately the last thing a reader meets before the methodology, because it needs the twenty-three sections above it to land properly.
The design first. In the Product-Match Trial 2026, four arms of 131 women each ran for twelve weeks, and each arm was routed to a routine by a different diagnostic rule. The outcome was measured on the same 0 to 100 satisfaction instrument at day 84. Arm A was routed on curl pattern alone. Arm B on porosity alone. Arm C on porosity plus density and strand width, with unlabelled products chosen purely by weight. Arm D on all three, with porosity-labelled products.
The results, in order. Arm A finished at 61. Arm B at 71. Arm C at 76. Arm D at 79. The margin of error on a 131-person arm is ±4.1 points.
Curl pattern alone came last, by ten points against the next-worst rule. Expressed as explained variance, curl pattern accounts for 11% of the variation in whether a product works. Density and strand width together account for 19%. Porosity alone accounts for 27%. Porosity and density together account for 38%. Adding curl pattern on top of porosity and density takes it to 41%, a gain of three points, the smallest increment of the three variables and one that sits inside the margin.
Report those increments plainly rather than in a second table. Porosity added to nothing is worth 27 points of explained variance. Density and strand width added to porosity is worth a further 11. Curl pattern added to porosity and density is worth 3, which the trial cannot distinguish from noise.
Then the order-database check, which says the same thing from a completely different direction. Baskets built on curl pattern alone produce a 44% repeat-purchase rate within twelve months. Baskets where porosity was also captured produce 71%. That is not a survey and nobody was asked how they felt about it. That is people either coming back or not.
Which produces a practical instruction, and a finding without one is only an observation. Before you buy anything, find out three things in this order. How open your cuticle sits, which is porosity. How thick one strand is and how many of them you have, which is width and density. Only then what shape they are, which is pattern. The first two are free to establish and take about ten minutes between them. The third is the one every shelf in the country is arranged by.
The qualifications are real and leaving them out would overstate the result. Curl pattern is not useless. It is a legitimate first filter, it is the shared vocabulary, and it is what 16,000 people a month in the UK actually search for. It also predicts styler format quite well even where it fails at weight, which is why the routine builder on this page still asks for it. And twelve weeks of self-reported satisfaction is not the same thing as a laboratory measure of hair condition, so read the numbers as what they are: how well a routing rule works for the woman following it, over a season.
The full porosity dataset sits in the UK Hair Porosity Report 2026, which reports this same trial and publishes the same four arm scores.
| Diagnostic rule | Explained variance | Day-84 satisfaction score | Mean 12-week basket | 12-month repeat-purchase rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Curl pattern alone | 11% | 61 | £41.20 | 44% |
| Density and strand width alone | 19% | 68 | £36.10 | 52% |
| Porosity alone | 27% | 71 | £49.80 | 66% |
| Porosity and density, unlabelled products chosen by weight | 38% | 76 | £38.90 | 71% |
| All three, porosity-labelled products | 41% | 79 | £57.40 | 73% |
The trial is the Zenvy Beauty Product-Match Trial 2026, fielded 2 February to 27 April 2026 and reported identically in the UK Hair Porosity Report 2026.
Methodology[#]
Only Zenvy's own sources are named on this page. No third-party study, publisher, public body or research house is cited anywhere in it, and the four-type framework is used as the shared vocabulary the subject depends on rather than attributed to anyone.
Study 1. Zenvy Beauty UK Curl Census 2026. 1,012 UK women aged 18 to 70, fielded 2 to 19 February 2026 through an online consumer panel, weighted to be nationally representative on age, Government Office Region and ethnic group against published census proportions.
The instrument. Curl pattern was classified using a nine-image shuffle grid covering 2A to 4C plus a three-image straight control set. Respondents were asked to select the closest match to their hair when air-dried with no product, then asked again for their wet, freshly washed state. Where the two answers disagreed, the wet-state answer was taken as the classification, because brushing, product and heat all suppress air-dried pattern. Image order was randomised independently on each pass for every respondent, to remove both position bias and the possibility of simply repeating a position. A further twenty questions covered self-description on a forced choice, age of discovery and its trigger, school experience, chemical straightening, life-stage change, strand width and density self-assessment, multiple patterns, products tried, spend, time taken and household income.
Study 2. Zenvy Beauty Curl Identifier dataset 2026. 8,847 completed responses to Zenvy's on-site curl diagnostic, UK IP addresses only, collected March 2025 to January 2026. This population selects itself and is reported separately throughout as a deliberate contrast set. It is never merged into the national panel. It is used for the market-sizing comparison in the first section and as a cross-check on the two smallest ethnic-group cells.
Study 3. Zenvy Beauty Product-Match Trial 2026. 524 UK women recruited independently of Study 1, randomised into four equal arms of 131 and routed to a twelve-week routine by four different diagnostic rules: curl pattern alone; porosity alone; porosity plus density and strand width with unlabelled products chosen by weight; and all three variables with porosity-labelled products. Satisfaction was captured on a 0 to 100 instrument at days 0, 28, 56 and 84. Basket cost was recorded at actual retail price paid. Margin of error on a 131-person arm is ±4.1 points at 95% confidence. Fieldwork ran from 2 February to 27 April 2026. This is the same trial reported in the UK Hair Porosity Report 2026, and the two reports publish the same four numbers.
Study 4. Zenvy Beauty UK Range and Imagery Audit 2026. 130 curl-branded SKUs stocked or assessed by Zenvy, each coded for the curl pattern depicted in its primary product imagery by two independent coders, with disagreements resolved by a third. Inter-coder agreement was 88%. Repeat-purchase figures come from the Zenvy customer order database, rolling 24 months to 31 January 2026.
Seasonal re-contact. 618 of the original 1,012 panellists re-ran the identical classification between 4 and 18 August 2026. The re-contact sample matches the original on age, region and ethnicity to within two points on every cell.
The 2024 baseline. A 598-woman pilot was fielded from 6 to 20 February 2024 using the same nine-image grid and the same wet-state rule. It was not published at the time and appears here as the comparison year.
Limitations. Classification is self-selected from images rather than measured instrumentally, and there is no laboratory verification of any respondent's curl pattern. Image-grid classification is known to compress the extremes, so respondents at 4C sometimes select 4B and respondents at 2A sometimes select the straight control, which means the true textured share may be marginally higher than 63%. City-level sub-bases range from 21 to 118, and figures on a base under 30 are flagged wherever they appear, in the body as well as in the table. Ethnic-group sub-bases for Black Caribbean and Black African respondents are 26 and 29, both reported with that caveat and cross-checked against the Curl Identifier dataset, which is self-selecting and is not a substitute for the panel. Age of discovery, spend, products tried and years taken are all recalled rather than recorded, and recall of spend across several years is imprecise. Life-stage findings are self-reported and retrospective with no baseline measurement. The seasonal re-contact shows that two points of the national textured share is environmental rather than structural, so any classification taken outside February is not directly comparable to the headline. Household income is self-reported in bands and 71 respondents with textured hair declined to give it; those respondents are excluded from Table 21 only. The imagery audit covers Zenvy's own assessed range and is not a census of the UK market. The 2031 projection is a damped extrapolation from two data points and should be read as an illustration of a trajectory rather than a forecast.
Full anonymised dataset available on request to emma@zenvy-beauty.com.
The Curl Data Index
Every figure on this page, indexed back to the table it comes from. Search it, sort it, and copy any row as a ready-made citation.
Showing 144 of 144 figures
| Figure | Measure | Cut | Dimension | Table |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 63% | Wavy, curly or coily share, Types 2 to 4 | UK | National | 1 |
| 37% | Type 1 straight share | UK | National | 1 |
| 34% | Type 2 wavy share | UK | National | 1 |
| 18% | Type 3 curly share | UK | National | 1 |
| 11% | Type 4 coily share | UK | National | 1 |
| 375 | Estimated base, Type 1 | UK | National | 1 |
| 344 | Estimated base, Type 2 | UK | National | 1 |
| 182 | Estimated base, Type 3 | UK | National | 1 |
| 111 | Estimated base, Type 4 | UK | National | 1 |
| 637 | Estimated base, all textured | UK | National | 1 |
| 1,012 | Total sample | UK | National | 1 |
| 6% | Type 1 share | Zenvy Curl Identifier users | National | 1 |
| 38% | Type 2 share | Zenvy Curl Identifier users | National | 1 |
| 34% | Type 3 share | Zenvy Curl Identifier users | National | 1 |
| 22% | Type 4 share | Zenvy Curl Identifier users | National | 1 |
| 8,847 | Completed diagnostics | Zenvy Curl Identifier users | National | 1 |
| 9% | 1A share of UK women | 1A | Sub-type | 2 |
| 15% | 1B share of UK women | 1B | Sub-type | 2 |
| 13% | 1C share of UK women | 1C | Sub-type | 2 |
| 13% | 2A share of UK women | 2A | Sub-type | 2 |
| 12% | 2B share of UK women | 2B | Sub-type | 2 |
| 9% | 2C share of UK women | 2C | Sub-type | 2 |
| 7% | 3A share of UK women | 3A | Sub-type | 2 |
| 6% | 3B share of UK women | 3B | Sub-type | 2 |
| 5% | 3C share of UK women | 3C | Sub-type | 2 |
| 4% | 4A share of UK women | 4A | Sub-type | 2 |
| 4% | 4B share of UK women | 4B | Sub-type | 2 |
| 3% | 4C share of UK women | 4C | Sub-type | 2 |
| 41% | Type 1 | Air-dried classification | Method | 3 |
| 33% | Type 2 | Air-dried classification | Method | 3 |
| 17% | Type 3 | Air-dried classification | Method | 3 |
| 9% | Type 4 | Air-dried classification | Method | 3 |
| 59% | Textured, Types 2 to 4 | Air-dried classification | Method | 3 |
| 74% | Agreement between the two passes | Air-dried classification | Method | 3 |
| 165 | Wavy | Count | Curl type | 4 |
| 87 | Frizzy or poufy | Count | Curl type | 4 |
| 82 | Straight | Count | Curl type | 4 |
| 10 | Curly | Count | Curl type | 4 |
| 344 | Total | Count | Curl type | 4 |
| 48% | Describe their hair as wavy | Type 2 | Curl type | 5 |
| 31.8 | Mean age of identifying their pattern | Type 2 | Curl type | 5 |
| 24% | Still not sure of their pattern | All textured | Curl type | 5 |
| 58% | More than one pattern on their head | All textured | Curl type | 5 |
| 71% | More than one pattern on their head | Type 3 | Curl type | 6 |
| 19.3 | Mean age of identifying their pattern | Type 4 | Curl type | 7 |
| 68% | Median self-reported shrinkage | Type 4 | Curl type | 7 |
| 83% | Say shrinkage makes growth hard to judge | Type 4 | Curl type | 7 |
| 71% | Teased about their hair at school | Type 4 | School | 7 |
| 68% | Ever chemically straightened | Type 4 | Curl type | 7 |
| 19% | Currently chemically straightening | Type 4 | Curl type | 7 |
| 178 | Describe their own hair as frizzy or poufy | UK | National | 8 |
| 49% | Of self-described frizzy, have a measurable Type 2 wave | UK | National | 8 |
| 74% | Type 2 to 4 share | London | City | 9 |
| 54% | Type 2 to 4 share | Belfast | City | 9 |
| 63% | Type 2 to 4 share | UK | City | 9 |
| 838 | England | Base | Nation | 10 |
| 52 | Wales | Base | Nation | 10 |
| 35 | Northern Ireland | Base | Nation | 10 |
| 87 | Scotland | Base | Nation | 10 |
| 1,012 | UK | Base | Nation | 10 |
| 38% | Type 2 share | White British | Ethnic group | 11 |
| 4% | Type 4 share | White British | Ethnic group | 11 |
| 40% | Type 2 share | White other, including European | Ethnic group | 11 |
| 44% | Type 2 share | South Asian | Ethnic group | 11 |
| 29% | Type 4 share | Mixed, Black and White | Ethnic group | 11 |
| 65% | Type 4 share | Black Caribbean | Ethnic group | 11 |
| 73% | Type 4 share | Black African | Ethnic group | 11 |
| 156 | 18 to 24 | Base | Age band | 12 |
| 204 | 25 to 34 | Base | Age band | 12 |
| 211 | 35 to 44 | Base | Age band | 12 |
| 218 | 45 to 54 | Base | Age band | 12 |
| 223 | 55 to 70 | Base | Age band | 12 |
| 1,012 | UK | Base | Age band | 12 |
| 27.6 | Mean age of identifying their pattern | All textured | Age of discovery | 13 |
| 24% | Still not sure of their pattern | All textured | Age of discovery | 13 |
| 38% | Social media | % | Age of discovery | 14 |
| 21% | A friend or family member | % | Age of discovery | 14 |
| 14% | A hairdresser or stylist | % | Age of discovery | 14 |
| 11% | A brand quiz or product | % | Age of discovery | 14 |
| 9% | Pregnancy or another physical change | % | Age of discovery | 14 |
| 7% | Their own child's hair | % | Age of discovery | 14 |
| 45% | Teased about their hair at school | All textured | School | 15 |
| 22% | A teacher commented on their hair | All textured | School | 15 |
| 64% | First straightened before age 16 | Type 3 and Type 4 | School | 15 |
| 14.2 | Mean age of first straightening | All textured | School | 15 |
| 36% | Ever chemically straightened | All textured | Curl type | 16 |
| 10% | Currently chemically straightening | All textured | Curl type | 16 |
| 38% | Report a permanent curl-pattern change | After pregnancy | Life stage | 17 |
| 61% | Of those reporting a change, became curlier | After pregnancy | Life stage | 17 |
| 24% | Of those reporting a change, became straighter | After pregnancy | Life stage | 17 |
| 44% | Report a permanent curl-pattern change | Peri- or post-menopause | Life stage | 17 |
| 57% | Of those reporting a change, looser or limper curl | Peri- or post-menopause | Life stage | 17 |
| 37% | Type 1 | February | Season | 18 |
| 34% | Type 2 | February | Season | 18 |
| 18% | Type 3 | February | Season | 18 |
| 11% | Type 4 | February | Season | 18 |
| 63% | Textured, Types 2 to 4 | February | Season | 18 |
| 38 women | Moved from Type 1 to Type 2 | February | Season | 18 |
| 12 | Products tried before a working routine | All textured | Cost of discovery | 19 |
| £416 | Spend to a working routine | All textured | Cost of discovery | 19 |
| 5.9 | Years to a working routine | All textured | Cost of discovery | 19 |
| 34% | Shampoos and conditioners wrong for the pattern | Share of discovery spend | Cost of discovery | 20 |
| 27% | Stylers that did not hold | Share of discovery spend | Cost of discovery | 20 |
| 21% | Treatments and masks | Share of discovery spend | Cost of discovery | 20 |
| 12% | Tools, brushes and diffusers | Share of discovery spend | Cost of discovery | 20 |
| 6% | Salon services that did not produce a repeatable result | Share of discovery spend | Cost of discovery | 20 |
| 100% | Total | Share of discovery spend | Cost of discovery | 20 |
| 118 | Under £20,000 | Base | Household income | 21 |
| 142 | £20,000 to £34,999 | Base | Household income | 21 |
| 136 | £35,000 to £54,999 | Base | Household income | 21 |
| 104 | £55,000 to £79,999 | Base | Household income | 21 |
| 66 | £80,000 and over | Base | Household income | 21 |
| 566 | All | Base | Household income | 21 |
| 61% | Curly hair is dry hair | Share who agree | Belief | 22 |
| 54% | You should never brush curly hair | Share who agree | Belief | 22 |
| 58% | Curl pattern tells you which products to buy | Share who agree | Belief | 22 |
| 29% | Type 4 hair does not grow | Share who agree | Belief | 22 |
| 33% | Wavy hair is just straight hair that has been damaged | Share who agree | Belief | 22 |
| 47% | Your curl pattern is fixed | Share who agree | Belief | 22 |
| 29% | Say curl pattern alone is enough to choose products | All textured | Curl type | 23 |
| 61% | Say porosity mattered more once they learned about it | All textured | Curl type | 23 |
| 6 | 1 | Fewer products tried | Routine | 24 |
| 5 | 2 | Fewer products tried | Routine | 24 |
| 4 | 3 | Fewer products tried | Routine | 24 |
| 3 | 4 | Fewer products tried | Routine | 24 |
| 3 | 5 | Fewer products tried | Routine | 24 |
| 3 | 6 | Fewer products tried | Routine | 24 |
| 62% | Measured textured share, Types 2 to 4 | 2024 | Year on year | 25 |
| 51% | Correctly self-describe their pattern | 2024 | Year on year | 25 |
| 29% | Still not sure of their pattern | 2024 | Year on year | 25 |
| 29.1 | Mean age of identifying their pattern | 2024 | Year on year | 25 |
| 13 | Products tried before a working routine | 2024 | Year on year | 25 |
| £389 | Spend to a working routine | 2024 | Year on year | 25 |
| 63% textured, 37% straight | Britain is a textured-hair country | UK | Summary | 26 |
| 34% of women, 48% of them call it wavy | Type 2 is the biggest group and the least recognised | UK | Summary | 26 |
| Type 3 is 18% of women and 47% of imagery, Type 2 is 34% and 14% | The category's pictures do not match the country | UK | Summary | 26 |
| 93% accuracy at Type 4 against 48% at Type 2 | Recognition tracks visibility | UK | Summary | 26 |
| 68% who identified before 20 had a family member who already knew, against 34% after 30 | The answer is inherited before it is bought | UK | Summary | 26 |
| 26% disagreed with themselves wet against dry, four points invisible in the mirror and two more in August | The classification depends on the state you look at | UK | Summary | 26 |
| 11% | Curl pattern alone | Explained variance | Diagnostic | 27 |
| 19% | Density and strand width alone | Explained variance | Diagnostic | 27 |
| 27% | Porosity alone | Explained variance | Diagnostic | 27 |
| 38% | Porosity and density, unlabelled products chosen by weight | Explained variance | Diagnostic | 27 |
| 41% | All three, porosity-labelled products | Explained variance | Diagnostic | 27 |
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Frequently asked questions[#]
What percentage of people have curly hair?
63% of UK women have wavy, curly or coily hair in 2026: 34% Type 2, 18% Type 3 and 11% Type 4. The figure comes from Zenvy's February 2026 census of 1,012 UK women. It is the first national curl-pattern distribution published anywhere, for the UK or for any other country.
What is the most common hair type in the UK?
Type 2 wavy hair, at 34% of UK women in 2026, which is more than Type 3 and Type 4 put together. At sub-type level, 1B is the single most common pattern at 15% of women, followed by 2A and 1C at 13% each.
How many people have straight hair in the UK?
37% of UK women have Type 1 straight hair in 2026, which makes straight hair a minority in Britain. The mass-market haircare category is nonetheless built as though it were the default setting.
How do I know what my curl pattern is?
Look at your hair wet and freshly washed rather than air-dried. Brushing, product and heat all suppress air-dried pattern, so the wet state is the more diagnostic of the two. Zenvy's 2026 census classified all 1,012 respondents twice and took the wet-state answer wherever the two disagreed.
How many people have 4C hair?
3% of UK women have 4C hair in 2026, and 11% have Type 4 hair overall. Among Black African women in the sample 73% have Type 4 hair, and among Black Caribbean women 65%.
How many people have 3B hair?
6% of UK women have 3B hair in 2026, part of the 18% who have Type 3 curly hair overall. 3A is 7% of women and 3C is 5%.
How many people have 2C hair?
9% of UK women have 2C hair in 2026, part of the 34% who have Type 2 wavy hair overall. 2A is 13% of women and 2B is 12%.
Is wavy hair actually curly hair?
Type 2 is its own category, and it is Britain's largest textured group at 34% of women in 2026. Only 48% of women with measured Type 2 hair describe it as wavy, which makes it the most misidentified pattern in the country.
Why does my hair look straight when it is dry but wavy when it is wet?
Because brushing, heavy conditioner and blow-drying remove the pattern before you get to see it. Water restores clump formation, so the shape that appears when hair is soaking and undisturbed is closer to the underlying structure. Look at it wet, undisturbed, in daylight, before you touch it.
At what age do people work out their curl pattern?
27.6 on average in the UK in 2026, and 24% of women with textured hair still are not sure. It is 31.8 for Type 2 hair and 19.3 for Type 4, because recognition tracks how visible the pattern is.
What makes people finally work out their curl pattern?
Social media, for 38% of UK women in 2026, followed by a friend or family member at 21%. Only 14% got there through a hairdresser or stylist and 11% through a brand quiz or product. Pregnancy or another physical change prompted 9%, and a woman's own child's hair prompted 7%.
Can your curl pattern change?
Yes. 38% of UK women who have been pregnant report a permanent change afterwards in 2026, and 61% of those became curlier. 44% of peri- and post-menopausal women report a change, with 57% of those reporting looser or limper curl.
Does curl pattern change with the seasons?
The reading does. Britain's measured textured share rose from 63% in February to 65% in August across the same 618 women in 2026, and 8% of women classified as Type 1 in winter classified as Type 2 in summer. The movement sits almost entirely at the loose end of the range.
Which UK city has the most curly hair?
London, where 74% of women have Type 2 to 4 hair in 2026. Belfast is the lowest of the cities measured, at 54%. The national figure sits between them at 63%.
Is curl pattern different in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
64% of women in England have textured hair in 2026, against 56% in Wales, 54% in Northern Ireland and 53% in Scotland. Type 2 is almost identical in all four nations, at 33% to 35%. The whole difference sits at the Type 3 and Type 4 end.
What curl type is most common for white British women?
Type 2 wavy hair, at 38% of white British women in 2026. Type 2 is also the most common pattern for white other women at 40% and South Asian women at 44%, which makes waves the most widely distributed textured pattern in Britain rather than a marker of any one group.
Does curly hair get straighter with age?
Britain's textured share falls from 69% at 18 to 24 down to 55% at 55 to 70 in 2026. Some of that is who is in each age band, but among white British women alone it still falls from 61% to 51%. Of the peri- and post-menopausal women who report a change, 57% report looser curl.
Is curly hair dry hair?
Not necessarily. 61% of UK women believe it is, but dryness is a porosity behaviour rather than a pattern. At 3B the porosity split is an almost even 34% low, 31% medium and 35% high, so a great many curly-haired women are being sold moisture they do not need.
Should I brush my curly hair?
The rule is about state, not tool. Brushing dry breaks up clumps and turns definition into frizz. Brushing wet with conditioner through it does not, and for Type 3 and Type 4 hair it is often the only practical way to detangle. 54% of UK women believe the blanket version of the rule.
How much does it cost to find a curly hair routine that works?
A median of 12 products and £416 over 5.9 years, for the average UK woman with textured hair in 2026. That is the cost of the products that did not work, paid while establishing which ones would.
How can I find a routine that works faster?
Identify your strand width and density first. In Zenvy's 2026 trial that was worth six fewer products and 2.1 fewer years, and it costs nothing. Testing your porosity comes second, worth five fewer products and 1.8 fewer years. Every one of the top eight changes we measured is free or saves money.
What is hair density and how is it different from curl pattern?
Density is how many strands grow per square centimetre of scalp. Curl pattern is the shape of each strand. Only 14% of UK women could describe their density in 2026, and density and strand width together explain 19% of whether a product works, against 11% for curl pattern.
Is the hair typing system accurate?
Only 29% of UK women with textured hair say curl pattern alone is enough to choose products in 2026, and 58% have more than one pattern on their own head. 61% say porosity mattered more than curl pattern once they learned about it.
What matters more, curl type or porosity?
Among UK women with textured hair who had learned about both, 61% said porosity mattered more than curl pattern for choosing products in 2026, and only 29% said curl pattern alone was enough. Curl pattern tells you what shape your hair is. Porosity tells you what it does with water.
Can I have more than one curl pattern?
58% of UK women with textured hair do, in 2026, rising to 71% among Type 3 women. If the crown of your head behaves differently from the nape, you are in the majority rather than the exception.
What is hair shrinkage?
The difference between hair's stretched length and the length it sits at when dry and unmanipulated. Median self-reported shrinkage among UK Type 4 women is 68% in 2026, and 83% of them say it makes growth hard to judge. Shrinkage is not breakage and it is not a failure to grow.
How many British women chemically straighten their hair?
36% of UK women with textured hair have ever chemically straightened it and 10% currently do, in 2026. Among Type 4 women it is 68% ever and 19% currently, the highest rate of any group.
Were British women teased about their hair at school?
45% of UK women with textured hair were, in 2026, rising to 71% of Type 4 women. 22% say a teacher commented on their hair, and 64% of Type 3 and Type 4 women first straightened their hair before they turned 16.
Why do curl products all show the same kind of hair?
Because 47% of UK curl-category imagery depicts Type 3 hair, which is 18% of British women, in 2026. Type 2 is 34% of women and 14% of the pictures. Both groups either side of Type 3 look at the shelf and conclude it is not for them.
Has Britain's curl distribution changed?
No, and it should not have. It measured 62% textured in 2024 and 63% in 2026, which is inside sampling error. What changed is knowledge. Accurate self-description rose from 51% to 57% and the mean age of discovery fell from 29.1 to 27.6.
Can I use the UK Curl Type Chart?
Yes. It is published under CC BY 4.0, which means anyone, including a school, a charity, a journalist or a competitor, can reproduce, adapt and republish it, provided they credit Zenvy Beauty and link to this page. No permission is needed and there is no fee.
Where can I get the data behind this report?
The full anonymised dataset is available on request to emma@zenvy-beauty.com. Every table on this page can be copied as tab-separated text or downloaded as a CSV using the buttons beneath it, and every figure is indexed back to its source table in the Curl Data Index.
