Hair extensions can be a worthy investment and spending a high amount of money should mean that you're getting what you paid for. With every brand stating they're the best it's important to know how to test the quality of the hair extensions you purchased to truly see if you have bought low or high quality hair extensions. A lot of companies will claim to have the highest quality of hair, that their hair is 100% remy HUMAN hair when in fact it's not always the complete truth. It's extremely common for companies to mix human hair with animal hair, fibres and even synthetic hair.We have put together a small list of ways to test from the comfort of your home to test the quality of your hair extensions and how to prove for yourself that you have purchased high quality extensions and the expectations you have are validated with good results.
Before you continue to the list, we felt it important to remind you that we as a business stand by our quality and pride ourselves on honesty and keeping no secrets from you as a customer. Our hair is 100% remy human hair and can pass all the tests with flying colours. Yes, hair extensions look beautiful and make you feel beautiful but knowing a little bit about how they are made, will help you in knowing when to be forgiving towards a brand and when to know they've outright been dishonest.
1. Length Percentage Test
A good way in determining the quality of your hair extensions is to see the percentage of how many strands of the hair are the same in length. To test this, you simply hold your extensions together at the roots and one hand at the bottom. Begin to lightly shake the hair and twist it around to let loss any freed hair strands. If you find your hair extensions have a lot of hairs come loss, this means less of the hair is the same in length and will affect the thickness from the roots to the tip whereas if you have little hair come loss this equals to higher quality because during the compiling process, the manufacturers have taken the time to make sure the length percentage is higher than usual. Hey Stacey's average hair extensions length percentage ranges from 24-28% which is much higher in comparison to our competitors average that range between 14-18%. The importance behind having a higher percentage in the same length strands is to ensure that your set is thick from top to bottom and you don't find your hair extensions appear thin with noticeable gaps at the ends.
2. Tapered Test
The tapered test goes hand-in-hand with the length percentage test but is a more visual way to instantly see how much of your hair extension set is the same in length. Tapering happens when the manufacturer during the hair sorting process doesn't draw out the shorter strands, this instantly lowers the quality. When purchasing hair extensions, it's important to look at not only the roots thickness but also the tips, so to see if your hair extensions are thick from root-to-tip, lay down your extensions on a flat surface and be sure that all the hair are aligned on a straight line if comparing clip in's so that the hair is equal and lays the same. Once you've laid the hair down, if you instantly notice a V type shape at the bottom, this shows that the hair is tapered and is lower quality because the thickness isn't distributedevenly the whole way through the hair. Higher quality hair extensions are thick from root-to-tip and this is something you will noticeably see when purchasing any set of Hey Stacey hair extensions, that our hair does not taper at the ends and are bluntly cut to ensure equal strand lengths.
3. Temperature Test
As odd as this sounds, determining the quality of your hair extensions by how it feels in your hands is a big give away. To check the quality of your hair through temperature, grab a small piece of hair and determine whether or not it feels cold to touch because when human hair retains moisture, it will wick the heat away from your fingers which results in the hair feeling cool where in comparison to lower quality hair that does not retain moisture, it will feel warmer. The general rule to note is the cooler the hair, the higher the quality so be sure to touch your hair extensions and take note of the temperature.
4. Burn Test
Yep, you read that correctly... the burn test. We're not saying you need to go and cut off a great deal of your hair extensions but this is a significant and extreme way to test the quality of your hair by burning it with fire. Perhaps if you're having a professional to cut your hair extensions for blending purposes, ask for a small section of the hair to perform the burn test. All you need to do is cut a small bundle of hair (we do mean small, minor even, just enough to see a difference when applying a flame to it) and light the ends on fire. If the hairis synthetic it will do one of two things, it will either light up and char or become molten at the ends where the flame stops almost instantly after being lit. Keep note of the smell because both of these instances will smell of burnt plastic.If your hair extensions continue to burn and you need to blow out the flame, this means the hair is in fact human hair and will smell a lot worse than synthetic hair.
5. Shedding Test
Although it is normal for your hair extensions shed just like your natural hair, too much shedding is a noticeable sign in low quality hair extensions. Comb your hair extensions with your fingers, if the hair feels silky smooth to touch and separates with ease and little to no shedding, this means the hair is high quality. However, if your fingers get stuck in tangles and find your hands covered in lost strands, this shows the hair is made of or with low quality hair. The same rule applies when using a brush instead of your fingers, less shedding equals to higher quality hair extensions and lots of shedding equals to lesser quality hair.
These are just a few simple tests to to perform on your hair extensions to validate it's quality. There are plenty more ways like testing the cuticle and others which can be easily found on the internet. The five about dot points are the easiest and most effective way to see the quality of your hair extensions.
Let us know what you think in the comments below, have you tried any of these tests? How did they go?
