More Hair Volume: Hair Frictional Interactions

Temporarily increasing hair friction also helps increase volume and fullness. There are four ways to temporarily increase friction:

1. Clean your hair

Your hair's natural oils or sebum can build up over time, making your hair more slippery, reducing friction and making hair go limp.

Hair Science Advice
Cleaning these oils off with a volume-building shampoo will restore your hair's natural friction and give you the best start at creating long-lasting volume.

2. Use hair stylers like mousse and gel

Styling gels and mousses actually temporarily increase friction during styling to help you achieve and keep your style. They go into your hair as a smooth film but as the film partially dries they go through a tacky or sticky phase. This helps you hold your hair into shape while you finish drying your hair. Once the film is completely dry, it is smooth once again.

3. Hair color treatment

Another way to increase friction is to color treat your hair. Research has shown that bleaching can increase surface friction by as much as 1/3. Color treating your hair changes the chemistry of your cuticle - the important outer layer of the hair shaft. This change in chemistry makes the hair less slippery, increasing friction and making your hair feel and look fuller. Be careful - too much bleaching or excessive coloring can make your hair so rough that it becomes hard to detangle and more susceptible to damage.

4. Teasing or backcombing your hair

Teasing or combing your hair backwards from tip to root will rough up the cuticle, drastically increasing friction. This temporarily creates loads of volume but is very dangerous to your hair shaft over time. Teasing causes the cuticle layers to roll and peel up.

Hair Style Advice
You might be willing to tease your hair once in a while for a special occasion, but repeated teasing will cause serious hair damage. One alternative to teasing is to use hairspray on the roots of dry hair before styling to give some of the same benefits of increased friction as teasing without damaging the hair cuticle.

Hair volume created via friction alone can collapse over time as wind, head-shaking or other forms of disruption move around your hair. It is a house of cards that can be sealed into place with the right styling products.

*Clarence R. Robbins, Chemical and Physical Behavior of Human Hair. 4th Edition, 2002 (New York), 444.