As you have probably already noticed, hair extensions are often offered not only in different lengths and colors, but also in grams. End customers keep comparing the weight and believe they can calculate a good price / performance ratio. But is the gram really that meaningful as a unit of measurement for hair extensions?
First of all, at wholesalers it is quite common to buy “raw hair” by weight. However, the wholesalers carefully check the hair quality on site beforehand. Is hair weight a good method for end consumers to determine the amount or quality of hair?
Unfortunately, no!
1.) What do general gram data say about the amount of hair?
(The trick with little hair on the tips!)
For example, if you order tape extensions with a length of 50 cm, you expect all hair to be 50 cm long, right? Unfortunately, you don't get it like this everywhere! Because there is a so-called lower length of the hair, so how dense is the hair in the tips! (Unfortunately, the names Remy or Double Drawn cannot help 100%, as these are not protected terms. You can find more about Remy and Double Drawn Hair in the blog section Recognize hair quality..
In this example we have compared two hair extensions with a length of 50 cm and a total weight of 20 grams. With provider A, however, 82% of the hair was shorter than 50 cm.
This shows: Even if you get 20 grams of hair, that doesn't automatically mean that these 20 grams are evenly distributed over 50 cm in length! Here is a short video on how you can quickly identify shorter hair in extensions (link to video "Detecting descenders")
For some sellers in the cheap segment, "thin" tips can be a big advantage, as cheaper, shorter hair can be used. For hairdressers or end customers, however, this creates problems:
On the one hand, hair / price comparisons are made more difficult, on the other hand, hair with "thin" tips still has to be severely trimmed, which in turn has a major impact on the desired hairstyle.
2.) What do general gram information say about the quality of the hair?
(Fine hair vs. heavy hair):
In general, one can say that dark-haired people have more pigments in their hair and blond hair has a finer and softer hair structure than darker hair colors. For example, Africans, Australasians tend to have thicker hair and Central Europeans often have rather fine individual head hair. That means a "natural" single hair with a Europid hair structure usually weighs less than, for example, a Chinese hair.
If you now find hair weight information that declares blonde and dark hair equally heavy, the following can mean: a.) Information is inaccurate / incorrect b.) Same raw hair for all colors. For example, black hair, often from China / Asia, is bleached (the lighter the hair color, the longer / more aggressive the bleaching process) and, in order to achieve elasticity and shine, the damaged cuticle is coated with silicone / oils. So all hair colors have almost the same weight!