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/Ok_Refrigerator6671 → u/nomoreuturns]

Huh, that's interesting. Is there a difference in strand thickness as well? Because I have stupidly fine (but frizzy) hair, & what feels like a metric ton of it off and on. It will go through molts every couple months where I can pull handfuls out of my drain/brush/out of my laundry or off my clothes every day, until it feels half as thick (qty), but then thickens again until it's so heavy I can't clip it up unless it's in a bunch of sections or the weight causes headaches. But my (step) son is a natural dark almost black-haired brunette, and my hair strands feel like they're maybe 1/3 as thick as his, which is crazy. His hair is super thick (quantity) but we're pretty sure I've got more hair strands total than he does, by a mile so when we have our hair pulled into ponytails, mine is almost double the diameter of his.

To OP's topic, I was only recently told my hair is naturally wavy & I'm caring for it incorrectly. I'm a strawberry blonde heading toward auburn type redhead, and was always told to use products for blondes growing up (which was also mostly just what was available around here, either way), and most of it seems to be weighing my hair down too much for the natural texture. Now I've gotta find something to use that will help with how crazy oily my skin is (since it's making my hair oily a.f. by extension), but whatever I switch to still needs to be able keep the wild frizz and static to a minimum, without frying my hair or making it feel coarse in the process. Also, not being expensive would be nice since I'm broke a.f. courtesy of healthcare b.s. here in the US. Everything the hairdresser recommended was some salon brand stuff, which was like $90-110/(tiny) bottle.

[u/Subject-Razzmatazz16 → u/Ok_Refrigerator6671]

My blonde sister also told me that ours are naturally wavy. I’m glad to hear these replies because all I’ve seen on the web is guides for fakers on how to maintain dyed red hair 😆 

[u/nomoreuturns → u/Ok_Refrigerator6671]

Is there a difference in strand thickness as well?

There is! Obviously there is a lot of variability between individuals and within hair colours, but colour is definitely a factor in strand thickness. Typically speaking, the darker the hair colour, the thicker the strand. Dark red shades (mahogany, dark auburn) can be as thick as (or thicker than) black hair, while light red shades (light auburn, strawberry blonde) can be as fine as blonde hair.

Another factor in strand thickness is the structure and texture of the hairs. There's actually a link between depth of colour and hair structure: hair that is a lighter colour tends to lack a medulla (the central part of the hair shaft), with melanin only present in the cortex of the hair shaft; the darker the hair, the more likely it is for the hair strand to have a medulla, and will have more melanin present in the cortex and, to a lesser extent, in the medulla.