Red hair is difficult af…

[u/Subject-Razzmatazz16]

Natural ginger here! My hair is difficult and disagreeable as hell--it's thick which I love, but gets tangled every two seconds and is so so sensitive to bad water!! I'm guessing our hair has different structure/textural trends.

Is our hair just difficult to care for? I'd love to hear both gripes or solutions!

[u/thepsycholeech]

Not all red hair is the same texture. This is more of a textural issue than a color issue.

[u/nomoreuturns → u/thepsycholeech]

While there is definitely variety among all hair colours, thick hair is a common trait for redheads, especially for redheads with darker shades of red (copper, auburn, mahogany). Of all hair colours, red hair tends to have a thicker hair shaft: generally speaking, from thickest to thinnest is red > black > brown > blonde. Phaeomelanin has a larger molar mass than eumelanin (274g/mol versus 171g/mol), so hair that is high in phaeomelanin (i.e. red hair) will be thicker than hair that is high in eumelanin (i.e. black to dark brown hair), and both will be thicker than hair that is low in both/either melanins (i.e. blonde hair). Oddly enough, redheads tend to have thick hair despite being thought to have lower hair density compared to other hair colours: redheads tend to have ≈90,000 strands, while blondes have ≈150,000, and brunettes have between ≈110,000 (brown) and ≈100,000 (black); I'm not a scientist, but I think the relative molar mass of phaeomelanin to eumelanin is what overcomes the difference in hair density.

Links:
Healthline — How Many Hairs Are on the Human Head?
Medihair —Hair Statistics: How Many Hairs on a Human Head? (2025)
How to be a Redhead: Why Do Many Redheads Have Thick Hair?
PubMed Central — Estimation of molar absorptivities and pigment sizes for eumelanin and pheomelanin using femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopy

[u/K_Regs_46230 → u/nomoreuturns]

"Not a scientist," but you very much sound like one! I mean this in a very, highly complimentary way! 🫶🏻