Assessing Raw Hair Quality: The Acetone Secret
Finding the best raw hair can be tricky. Despite people actively seeking top-notch quality, there’s a common issue – they often end up feeling dissatisfied, even when they’ve chosen what’s supposed to be the best in terms of raw hair quality. It’s a situation where expectations don’t always match the reality of the product received.
“My bundles aren’t silky.”
“It has a brown tint, and I like hair closer to jet black.”
“The hair tangles.”
If you’re just interested in the test, watch the following video. We’ll further expand on why this happens in this article.
Table of Contents
Raw Hair Quality
It’s important to understand where raw hair quality differences originate. If you’re interested in a complete breakdown of hair quality, read this article.
It starts with the sourcing of hair
Cut hair directly from a donor, and you get raw hair. As it’s from one donor, the color is pure.
What happens when you cut hair from 10 girls and combine it? Now you have raw hair in 10 shades of black.
And what about floor hair? Floor hair might be from 100 girls, resulting in 100 shades of black.
You get the point: fewer donors in a single bundle creates a purer color of hair.
And what happens if the hair is of an impure color? It’s ugly, so manufacturers will color it to an even shade of black. So technically, if you have bundles that look pure and aren’t dyed, you’re 99% certain that you’re dealing with the top-quality category of hair!
However, be careful when making judgments based on pictures alone. For example, you can see the difference in the YouTube video, as it was taken under a 200W diffuse light. Mostly, our product photos are taken with two 400W strobe lights, which turn out much darker. Lighting and camera can make a difference.
So how do you test for this?
So raw hair that was processed and dyed obviously wouldn’t be the best. It’s a bit harder to test for any processing done to the hair objectively, but it’s pretty easy to test for coloring.
While we’ve previously recommended scraping the hair with a knife or scissors, floor hair gets dyed a lot, and scraping the hair would quickly pick up on it. However, impure raw hair doesn’t get dyed as strongly, and the test isn’t sensitive enough for accurate results.
Luckily there’s another way to test for it. Acetone (found in most nail polish remover) is a dissolvent for dye. Rubbing it on the hair will dissolve the dye and cause the tissue to absorb some of the dye. The best raw hair, which should be 100% pure of color, will not have this result.
What does the test result mean?
As mentioned, hair coloring is often preceded by the chemical processing of the hair. It’s often related to bad sourcing of raw hair.
If it passes the acetone test from the video, the hair material is likely to be relatively pure (and thus more likely to be good quality). It’s still worth mentioning that this processed raw hair is going to be of much a higher quality than floor hair and will probably still be acceptable to many buyers.
Conclusion….
If the raw hair you bought has an even shade of black, you can test it with acetone. If it passes this test, you can be 99% certain that you’ve got good quality hair. Of course you would not just stop there, and you’d still take the time to look for follicles, look if the ends are damaged or split, and check for the hair’s elasticity.
Additional Info
While this information isn’t directly related to the ACETONE TEST, they’re still worth learning.
The best raw hair isn’t silky
Many people are looking for silky raw hair. It would help if you understood that the average Asian girl doesn’t have soft, smooth hair but quite thick hair.
So how do I get silky hair then? There are two ways. The first is by chemically stripping some of the cuticles, meaning a decrease in quality. It doesn’t sound too great, right?
The alternative is using silicon products. They have a bit of a negative reputation with buyers, as when you first receive the hair, it’s all soft and lovely and gives you that “wow effect.” But once you wash it, the hair’s true nature will be revealed. But this true nature may be the best raw hair. We also add silicon to our Double Drawn Collection, as it gives that wow effect when people first receive it. But that said, silicon products aren’t a long-term solution, and you’ll still have to deal with the hair’s true nature.
Processing of raw hair
So once you cut hair from a donor, can you directly turn it into hair extensions?
It’s not as simple. Most Asian hair is thick and tough and isn’t particularly good at holding a texture.
My own hair is quite thick. On multiple occasions, I’ve only tried to curl my hair with heat and lost most of the texture within hours. I had it permed once and lost the texture within days. Chemical processing will make it easier to maintain texture, but it isn’t ideal.
The cuticles of the hair must stay in the same direction. But what happens if you create a curl?
Now, the hair is in a 360-degree direction, and technically, the cuticles are no longer aligned. Hair with cuticles in opposite directions will tangle. Even if you hold your own natural straight hair, bend it 180 degrees, and rub it together, it will tangle to some extent. So when making textures with tighter waves or curls, some cuticles need to be removed to prevent tangling.
A manufacturer can choose to remove the absolute minimum, meaning the quality will be higher. However, users must be more on point with their hair care routine. As many retail buyers don’t have a solid hair care routine, this type of hair will lead to more complaints. As an Asian vendor, we usually don’t get a lot of trust from buyers, but you’re most likely in a position where you’re closer to your clients than we are. That gives you the advantage of giving your buyers excellent hair care tips.
The alternative is to remove some more cuticles. Many clients prefer this type of hair as it’s smoother and appears to be silky. It’s a bit lower in maintenance but, at the same time, is lower in quality.
Single Donor Hair
Please note that single donor hair is mainly a marketing label and doesn’t exist. The number of donors doesn’t affect the quality, but it would be more expensive to make. The experienced quality differences are based on what I mentioned above.
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