How to Buy Human Hair

Your hair plus someone else's hair equals longer hair.

Human hair extensions offer a way to instantly change your whole look. Quickly morph hairstyles, changing color, adding highlights, length and volume. Hair extensions accomplish this without the time needed to grow out your hair or the potential damage from hair dyes and bleaches.

Where to Buy

Human hair extensions can be purchased from various sources. Salons specializing in extensions may have inventory you can purchase directly. You can buy human hair from local beauty supply stores, where you can touch and feel the hair before buying. You can even buy human hair from online sources. Select an online retailer that offers the texture, color and length of your choice. Merchants offer color charts for human hair extensions; color #1 correlates to black hair, and color #4 correlates to medium brown hair.

Texture

Human hair extensions come in many different textures, including straight, curly and wavy. In order to match your own hair texture, chose the extension hair that most closely resembles your own texture. Yaki human hair extensions are closest to relaxed hair texture, while more finely textured hair will match silky straight extensions.

Hair Quality

Human hair extensions come in different degrees of quality. Human hair strands are made up of layers, with the outer layer called the cuticle. The cuticle consists of layers of long, overlapping cells, all going in the same direction. European hair extensions are thinner than Asian hair extensions, which are thicker and very dark in color. Remy hair has all of the cuticles arranged in the same direction. Cuticles facing the same direction means fewer tangles for extensions.

References

• Laissez Faire: Color Chart
• Sally Beauty: Hair Extensions 101: Terms
• Hair Extension Guide: Human Hair Extension