Why Is My Hair So Frizzy? How to Find the Cause and Get Rid of Frizz

What is hair frizz?

Frizz is a property of a group of hairs: one hair can curve, but only neighbors curving out of sync look frizzy. Robbins's hair-chemistry textbook defines frizziness as what happens "when the curvature of neighboring hairs of an assembly are not synchronized (parallel) producing the appearance of disorder or disarray near the ends" (Robbins 2012).

The evidence comes from Kao, the Japanese haircare company. Its researchers sorted the hair of 230 Japanese women as straight, slightly wavy, wavy or frizzy and measured how tightly the hairs curved (Nagase 2008). Curl radius told straight hair from wavy hair, but wavy and frizzy hair did not differ in curl radius. The authors concluded that whether neighboring fibers curl in phase "is probably an important factor for forming a frizzy hair style." That suggests the same wavy hair could dry as defined waves or as frizz, depending on whether neighboring hairs set in step.

In Kao's studies, curved hairs had a different internal structure on the outer and inner side of the curve, so a curl is grown in, and it returns when a styled shape fades.

Why is my hair so frizzy? How to tell which kind you have

Usually one of three causes, sometimes two at once: your hair's own wave, humid air, or a worn surface on the lengths. Static looks similar. Five checks on clean, unstyled hair in daylight help tell them apart.

1. Do the wet test. Soak a frizzy section, then let it dry without touching, combing or product. Water erases a blow-dry, though not a perm or keratin smoothing, which is why the Kao researchers soaked hair before measuring its natural curve. If it dries into waves, your frizz is grown-in shape. On bleached or permed lengths, also test a section near the root; damaged lengths can dry disordered whatever their shape.
2. Look at where the frizz sits. Frizz from root to tip points to your hair's shape or to humidity. Frizz shows most near the ends whatever its cause, so ends that are frizzy and also feel rougher than the roots (check 3) point to the surface of older hair.
3. Your roots are the control. If the ends feel distinctly rougher than the hair near your scalp, sliding toward the tips both times, they have probably lost surface.
4. Watch the weather for a week. Frizz that is worse on humid days, or on the day the weather turns, is humidity. Hairs that spread apart after combing on cold, dry days are static.
5. Write down what the frizzy part of your hair has been through. Bleach, color, perms and frequent hot tools all wear the surface faster.

A halo of short hairs at the crown or hairline is a separate question, covered in the hair breakage guide.

Frizz from the root that dries into waves is your hair's shape, and frizz that comes and goes with the weather is humidity; neither is damage. Rough ends, frizz concentrated in the lengths and a history of bleach, color or heat point to surface damage, often on top of one of the others.

If yours points to damage, the check still cannot tell you how much damage those treatments have done, or what to change first. The free hair consultation is built for that: a few questions on how you color, heat-style and wash your hair and how it behaves. It takes about a minute, scores porosity and damage, and asks for your email before it shows your Damage Profile, with a routine in order. Find your Damage Profile. If your answers point only to wave, humidity or static, you do not need it; the fixes further down cover all three.

What causes frizzy hair?

Natural wave or curl, humidity and surface damage, often more than one at a time, plus static flyaway as a look-alike.

• Natural wave or curl. Wavy and curly hair probably looks frizzy when neighboring hairs curl out of step instead of together. Nothing is wrong with it.
• Humidity. Humid air swells hair and loosens the hydrogen bonds holding a style, so each hair drifts back toward its grown-in shape.
• Surface damage. Bleaching, coloring, heat and brushing strip the water-repellent surface lipid (18-MEA), leaving a surface that attracts water. In a lab study of bleached hair, that water formed films that dragged fibers out of line as they dried.
• Static flyaway. Combing in dry air charges hairs so they push apart, a separate effect from frizz.

Wave, humidity and static are not damage, so you do not need a Damage Profile for them; their fixes are further down.

Did your check point to the damage column?

Why does humidity make my hair frizzy?

Because hair takes up water from humid air and swells, and that water breaks the hydrogen bonds holding your style. Each hair relaxes toward its grown-in shape, and neighboring hairs fall out of step.

Hair holds about 10% of its dry weight in water at 40% relative humidity and about 23% at 86% (Robbins 2012). It happens slowly: a single hair takes 18 to 24 hours to settle at a new humidity, and a bundle of hair longer, so humid-day frizz builds over hours. A change in humidity, up or down, loosens a set faster than steady air. In Robbins's data, hairs set at 60% humidity kept 73.5% of their curl after two hours at 60% and 61.3% after two hours at 10%; by 24 hours both were near 60%.

None of this means frizzy hair is thirsty. On a humid day it holds more water than on a dry one. Robbins describes a trained panel that judged tresses kept at 80% humidity as less moisturized than tresses kept at 15%, although the humid ones contained more water, because the wetter hair had more friction and felt rougher. Conditioned hair was judged far more moisturized at the same water content. What people feel as moisture in hair, Robbins concludes, "is not at all related to the water content of the hair but to smoothness and softness."

No surface product makes hair humidity-proof. Even under an oil film in one lab study, "a considerable amount of moisture vapor was still able to penetrate into hair fibers" (Keis 2007), and every surface treatment washes off.

Is frizzy hair a sign of damage?

Not on its own. Healthy wavy and curly hair frizz in the right conditions, and humidity undoes a blow-dry on any hair. Damage gives frizz more to work with, and the surface wears most along the lengths.

Most of what has been measured about damage concerns the surface. Bleaching, coloring, heat styling, brushing and combing strip the surface lipid, and what is left attracts water, carries more negative charge and has more friction. People feel that friction as coarseness: in a blindfolded panel Robbins describes, more bleach damage meant coarser ratings. Heavy processing can also leave the fibers themselves irregular.

Why is my hair frizzy after bleaching or highlights?

Lightening strips much of the surface lipid layer that helps hair shed water and slide smoothly. In lab tests, bleached lengths held water films that pulled fibers out of line as they dried, and they had more friction, which helps explain why they tangle as well as frizz. No study we found has measured how much more a bleached head frizzes.

In one Kao study, a single bleach removed about 80% of the 18-MEA from the outer surface (Habe 2011). In BASF's lab, water beaded on a bundle of virgin hair at a contact angle of 97° and spread on bleached hair at 62.5° (Liu 2022). As those films shrank during drying, the authors write, "the concurrent stresses cause fiber misalignment and increasing disorder."

Stylists often call this hair "dehydrated." The measurements we have point the other way. In an ingredient maker's study, bleached hair took up more water than virgin hair at the same humidity, and slightly more the longer it was bleached (Gao 2007). It feels dry because it is rougher, and the humidity panel above showed that rough hair reads as dry. So the word gets the feel right and the cause wrong, and it suggests the hair needs water.

What helps is a smoother surface. In BASF's tests a conditioner brought bleached hair's contact angle back to the virgin value, and in Robbins's friction data, conditioned bleached hair slid more easily than unconditioned virgin hair. Both effects wash out and need repeating.

With highlights, lightened strands sit beside unlightened ones that take up different amounts of water. That may leave the two kinds drying out of sync, but we found no study that measured frizz in highlighted hair.

The lightened length will not return to how it was, since hair beyond the scalp has no way to mend itself, though how it combs and lies can still change. Is bleached hair high porosity? explains what bleaching does to water uptake, and the bleached hair repair guide covers bleach damage beyond frizz.

Why is my hair getting frizzier as I get older?

Two things may contribute: in one study of Japanese women, older women had more irregularly curved hair, and long hair at any age carries older, more weathered ends. The difference was found only by comparing women of different ages, not by following the same women over time.

Kao researchers cut hair at the scalp from 230 Japanese women aged 10 to 70, soaked it to remove any set, and measured its curvature every millimeter along 15 cm (Nagase 2009). Curvature rose with age and became more irregular, though age explained only about 19% of the differences between women. The authors conclude that this increase in curvature "is one of the important factors that leads to a poor alignment of hairs and luster reduction." Why it happens is not known. Whether it causes frizz has not been measured either; Robbins expects that more curvature "will likely make the hair fibers more prone to frizziness."

Gray hair often gets the blame. Small older studies disagree, and in the Kao study gray and pigmented hairs did not differ significantly in curvature.

The surface ages too. In another study of Japanese women's hair, weathered hair from older women lost its 18-MEA faster, with the change appearing in the 40s and 50s (Takahashi 2015). Grooming wear depends more on how long a hair has been on the head than on your age: in one Kao study, hair that had never been chemically treated had lost more than 80% of its 18-MEA 40 cm from the root (Okamoto 2011).

Treat frizz that arrives with age as two problems, a possibly changed shape and older lengths; the wave and damage steps below are meant for each. If you are also noticing more shedding or thinner hair, see a dermatologist; that is a separate question from frizz.

How do I get rid of frizz and prevent it from coming back?

Condition the mid-lengths and ends after every wash, smooth a leave-in or a little oil over damp lengths, hold the style with a styling product, and comb less; then add the steps for your cause below. Every non-chemical fix lasts only while it is on the hair, so keeping frizz away means repeating these steps after every wash. Conditioner helps with every cause: it lowers friction, neutralizes charge and binds most strongly to damaged hair.

If it is humidity on healthy hair

1. Put the leave-in or oil on damp lengths before you go out. In one lab study, an oil film cut the water hair absorbed at 95% humidity from 27.4% of its weight to about 22% to 24%, and the effect vanished when the film was wiped off (Keis 2007). On fine hair, use less and keep it to the ends; what does leave-in conditioner do? has a path for fine hair.
2. Finish with hairspray, mousse or gel. Styling polymers are made to hold a set when humidity changes.

If it is natural wave or curl

Wave is not damage; the fix is technique.

1. Apply conditioner or a leave-in, then a gel or mousse, to very wet hair, scrunch the lengths into groups, and leave them alone until dry. Hair holds the shape it dries in until moisture changes it.
2. Avoid brushing it once dry; brushing and combing speed the loss of the surface layer.
3. If humidity undoes the waves, try a styling product with silicones (see the silicone FAQ).

If it is static flyaway

1. Condition after every wash. In Robbins's data, the relative charge on a comb at 27% humidity was 14.3 after a test shampoo and 2.5 after a creme rinse, about a sixth.
2. Comb less. Less combing work means less charge.

If it is damage on the lengths

1. Condition the lengths after every wash. Damaged hair responds more: in one study of hair tresses, three washes with a drugstore shampoo and conditioner improved a computer-measured alignment score by 4% to 7%, with larger effects on bleached hair than on virgin hair (Daniels 2021).
2. Use a leave-in on the damaged lengths. In BASF's lab, bleached hair treated with glyceryl oleate, the test conditioner's emulsifier, formed no extended water films and dried significantly faster, while a pure oil kept wet fibers closely aligned but slowed drying, probably by trapping the films. Leave-ins vary; this was one ingredient in one lab. If oil seems to vanish into your lengths, read high porosity hair.
3. Comb and brush less; both speed the loss of the surface layer.
4. Space out bleach, color and heat. Does coloring damage hair? and heat-damaged hair cover each.
5. Trim the roughest ends; weathered length goes only when it is cut. The split ends guide explains what a trim can and cannot do.
6. With more than one kind of damage, such as color and heat, it can be hard to tell which to deal with first. The table in how to repair damaged hair shows the first move for each kind of damage, and the free consultation puts yours in order.

How do I get rid of frizz in 5 minutes?

Smooth the surface and hold it. The effect lasts until the humidity changes or you wash.

1. Warm a pea-sized amount of leave-in or oil between your palms and press it over the frizz instead of raking it through.
2. Mist on a light hairspray to hold it.
3. For a halo at the part, spray a clean toothbrush and smooth the short hairs down.
4. On a static day, smooth a little leave-in conditioner over the hair to take the charge down.

Is there a permanent fix for frizz?

No. Keratin smoothing changes frizzy hair's shape for months and damages the fiber, and the hair that grows in afterward has its natural shape. Everything else in this article has to be repeated.

Smoothing treatments combine an aldehyde, or a chemical that releases one, with a hot flat iron. In 30 women with curly hair, a chemical straightener decreased curl and increased smoothness and shine; cuticle scores improved under a light microscope, but fissures across the fiber and split ends did not (Sanad 2019). A 2022 review summarizes one study in which these treatments reduced the hair's resistance to breaking. In another, a trained panel rated straightened and heat-damaged tresses as if they had improved, because aligned fibers hide damage (Bloch 2021). In a South African test, five brands labeled formaldehyde-free contained formaldehyde above the recommended limit (Maneli 2014). Formaldehyde is classified as a known human carcinogen (Gavazzoni Dias 2015). If you choose a smoothing service, ask your salon what the product contains; protein treatment for hair has more on keratin smoothing.

Can you get rid of frizz naturally?

Yes, mostly through technique: let waves dry undisturbed, comb less and condition the lengths.

• Against humid air, coconut oil acts mainly as a surface film. In one lab study it reduced and slowed the water hair took up until the film was wiped off, and oil that had soaked in did not change how much water the hair absorbed.
• Acidic rinses come closest to a review's suggestion that lower-pH shampoos "may cause less frizzing," but the review tested neither frizz nor rinses (Gavazzoni Dias 2014).
• Vinegar and aloe rinses were not among the studies we could verify, so we make no claim either way.

Natural or not, the effect lasts until the next wash.

ANATOMY's Complete Reconstruction System is a shampoo, a conditioner and a 100 ml Leave-In. It is built on click chemistry, the reaction class recognized by the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. It is patented, made in Switzerland and independently tested at SGS proderm in Germany, on bleached hair. It has not been tested on frizz, and none of the paths above depends on it.

If your frizz came with bleach, color or heat, find your Damage Profile with the free consultation.

Frequently asked questions

Does frizz mean my hair is high porosity?

Not by itself. Frizz has several causes: humidity, curl and surface damage, plus static flyaway, which looks similar. Damaged, more porous hair usually frizzes more, but frizz on its own does not diagnose porosity. The science of hair porosity explains what porosity is and how to read it.

Can straight hair be frizzy?

Yes. Damage can do it: in a Kao lab test, a straight tress given one perm and five bleaches became unruly, its hairs taking an irregular form (Breakspear 2013). Humidity also undoes any blow-dry, so hair styled straighter or smoother than its natural shape drifts back. Fine straight hair is prone to static flyaway too, a different effect.

Why is my hair frizzier right after I wash it?

Washing takes off the conditioner, oil and styling film that were smoothing it; in a lab test, a minute in a surfactant solution took off more than half of one deposited conditioning polymer. On bleached lengths, water then spreads as films that pull fibers apart as they dry. Hair also keeps whatever shape it dries in, tidy or not.

Do silicones make frizz worse?

In the one frizz-related study we found, run by a silicone supplier, silicones helped curly hair hold together: treated fibers gripped each other more, and tresses stayed smaller after an hour in humid air. At the highest dose, a silicone gum also clumped fibers. Plain dimethicone deposits more readily on healthy hair than on damaged ends.

Does a cold rinse or a silk pillowcase stop frizz?

Neither has been shown to. Cold rinses, silk pillowcases, microfiber towels and diffusers have not been tested as frizz remedies in any study we reviewed, so we cannot tell you they work. The measured effects come from conditioners, oils and styling products, and those last only while they stay on the hair.

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