White Hair

How do I tell if my extensions are a synthetic mix?

Its much more common than you would think but buyers claiming to be selling 100% human remy hair mixes are often actually selling a real/synthetic mix. Most of the time a buyer wont notice and there will be just enough real hair in the mix for the hair to be able to be slightly lightened or dyed. 

The problem with real/Synthetic mixes is that the hair has a much shorter life, tangles more readily, and can often look tacky. 

I recently purchased some extensions from a seller (who will remain nameless as they were incredibly helpful in rectifying the issue and I would certainly buy from them again) that were not 100% human hair as was claimed but rather a real/synthetic mix. I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity to show how to identify these mixes as opposed to 100% human hair. Its not hard but you get better at it the more you buy and handle extensions. 

The most common method of identifying fake strand is the ‘burn test’. Synthetic strands do not burn in the same way that human hair does. When you burm human hair it kind of fizzles up and ashes. When you burn synthetic hair it burns very cleanly, does not ash and it much harder to ignite.

Above are the extensions. They were in colour #60 which is normally very white, however due to the nature of the real/synthetic mix they were quite dirty and looked much more towards the #613 shade. Generally (and since we are all here for white blonde hair!) #613 needs to be lightened with a gentle bleach to bring up to white, however #60 should only need a good wash with some violet or blue shampoo to bring it to the correct tone.

In the above photographs you can VERY clearly see the synthetic strands. Synthetic hair looks unnatural because it is plastic, lacks the natural ridges and imperfections that normal hair has as well as reflecting light differently. Because of this the synthetic strands are unnaturally shiny against the real hair mixed in with it. It is also a slightly lighter tone than the natural hair which in this case is particularly low quality.

In the above photograph you can see just how bad the quality of the REAL hair is, and the wefts are littered with dark brown and even black strands. Really, the artificial hair is the only part of the weft that is the correct tone of #60.

So lets place this synthetic/real mix beside another mix with a much higher percentage of real hair.

Can you see the difference? 

With 100% remy hair, the cuticle is placed so that all strands are the same ‘way up’. Naturally this is how hair is and it stops it from tangling among other things. When a mix has a very high fake strand count you will also notice that the hair will fall out of the weft in clumps of fake hair. Looking at the tips of this hair makes it quite obvious that it is infact plastic. Here is a closeup of one of the clumps of fake hair that came easily away from the edge of the weft:

Yes, that cluster of synthetic hair is actually partly glued together.

So I hope this was helpful to all of you beautiful girls who like me just cant live without their extensions whether its for length, thickness or just to add a splash of bright colour here and there without damaging your natural hair.

Id love to hear about all of your experiences with hair extensions so if you have something to say or add, by all means I encourage you to ‘Ask me anything’. 

hearts!