I think drying time can be influenced by how tight your curl is as well.  If its very tightly curled then the water can;t evaporate as effecitvely as there is more hair in the way!  I found this yesterday when I did the twisting method, even diffusing my drying time nearly doubled. 

For me personally, without any product I dry in about an hour, with product its generally about 4 hours but depends very much on what I’m doing.  Drying time is very subjective and I think it can only be an indication of porosity rather then giving you a real answer.  I still don’t know what mine is.

Sorry to revive this old thread but I recently bought the Live Curly, Live Free e-book and finally got round to reading it. I just read this and it finally clicked,

hair that is
more coarse and porous usually takes much, much
longer to dry completely

(on page 33 if anyone has it).

So hair that is porous takes longer to dry? I thought it would have been the other way round, explaining my confusion on this topic for that last year

Well I guess that I can say that I am porous. I now just don’t know how/why though. My hair has never been exposed to any real damage (no colouring, no salon treatments, no years of heat abuse etc). Unless it’s just how my hair is naturally….

ToTheSky - 03 September 2010 11:03 PM

Sorry to revive this old thread but I recently bought the Live Curly, Live Free e-book and finally got round to reading it. I just read this and it finally clicked,

hair that is
more coarse and porous usually takes much, much
longer to dry completely

(on page 33 if anyone has it).

So hair that is porous takes longer to dry? I thought it would have been the other way round, explaining my confusion on this topic for that last year

Well I guess that I can say that I am porous. I now just don’t know how/why though. My hair has never been exposed to any real damage (no colouring, no salon treatments, no years of heat abuse etc). Unless it’s just how my hair is naturally….

Ooh - now this has confused me!! I would def say that my porous hair, left to dry naturally without the use of stylers, would dry v v quickly indeed! However, as my hair is porous I need to use a TON of stylers - which my hair literally soaks up - so I have to saturate. If I don’t saturate, then my hair would frizz. Therefore, because I saturate, my hair - if left to dry naturally - would take a long time to dry. With regard to coarseness, I’m not sure how significant this is in drying time. I’d say density would make a difference but not necessarily coarseness per se. I think I may be disagreeing with Tiffany’s assertions here.

I’m totally baffled by the porosity thing too, which is why I now don’t bother too much with it!  When I tested a strand of hair in the bath (to see if it sunk or floated), the oldest half of the hair would sink (implying porous) with the half closest to the root floating.  Well, this makes sense that hair would get more porous over time through damage.  The porous half of my hair definitely takes a very short time to dry if I don’t seal the moisture in with oil.  However, it is also very easily over-conditioned.

So… I just shrug and carry on doing what I’m doing these days! 

My hair doesn’t sink at all. It just floats. Which is kind of right, since my hair doesn’t immediately absorb water - it just kind of sits there till I trap it with an oil or something.