About Us

Hair Is Curly: Built Out of Frustration, Not a Business Plan

This whole thing started because we kept getting burned.

Not dramatically. Just the slow, expensive kind. Buying a conditioner because the bottle said “for all curl types,” using it for three weeks, watching hair get progressively dull and weighed down. Reading a glowing review, ordering the product, waiting a week for delivery, then realizing within one wash that whoever wrote that review either has completely different hair or got paid.

That got old fast.

Four of us, friends who’d been swapping product recommendations for years, started keeping a shared notes document somewhere in early 2024. A running list of what actually worked, what didn’t, and why. Ingredients that kept showing up in products that failed us. Brands clearly formulating for straight hair and slapping “all hair types” on the label as an afterthought. We started digging into what dermatologists had been flagging for years about sulfates and scalp damage and it explained a lot of what we’d been experiencing.

At some point the document got long enough that other people probably needed it too.

That Hair Is Curly. No grand founding story. We’re a US based team, some licensed cosmetologists who’ve spent years working hands-on with textured and curly hair, some with skincare research backgrounds, some just people who spent way too much money figuring things out the hard way. We review products the way we’d want someone to review them for us, over weeks of real use, with honest notes on who they actually work for and who should skip them entirely.

We built a shop eventually, only because we got tired of recommending things we couldn’t link to directly. Everything in it went through the same process. Didn’t earn its spot, didn’t make the list. We also started the blog for the same reason, because the guides we actually needed didn’t exist anywhere in a form we trusted. If something we published ever seems off, we want to hear it.

Reviews, Guides, and a Shop That Actually Earned Its Products

Testing takes weeks here, not minutes. When a product lands with our team, it goes through real use across different curl patterns, different climates, different routines. We track how it performs over time, whether the ingredients hold up to scrutiny, whether the price makes sense for what you actually get. If something stops impressing us two weeks in, that matters more than how it performed on day one. You can read the full breakdown of our process on the blog.

The shop is split into four categories because that is genuinely how hair and skin problems work. Hair Care covers the everyday stuff, shampoos, conditioners, styling products, the things you are reaching for constantly. Skin Care is there because a lot of the same women dealing with textured hair are also dealing with skin that the mainstream beauty industry largely ignores. Supplements for Hair only features what has actual research behind it, not just good marketing. Problem-Based Solutions is for the specific stuff, breakage, scalp issues, moisture retention, things that need more than a general recommendation.

Nothing gets listed because a brand reached out or sent us free product. The testing process is the same regardless.

The guides come from the same place the product reviews do, real experience plus research. Our team includes licensed cosmetologists who have worked professionally with curly and textured hair, and that background shapes how we write about ingredients, techniques, and routines. When we cover something like porosity or scalp care, it is not assembled from other articles. It comes from people who have dealt with these questions practically, not just theoretically.

We also opened the Write for Us program because some of the best knowledge about curly and textured hair sits with hairstylists, dermatologists, and experienced writers who are not on our team. Every submission goes through editorial review before it goes live. The standard is the same across the board.

Questions about anything on the site, product suggestions, something that seems wrong, all of it reaches us at contact@hairiscurly.com.

The Principles Behind Everything We Publish

Sulfate-free, paraben-free, and cruelty-free are not checkboxes for us. They are how we started testing products in the first place, because we kept tracing disappointing results back to the same problematic ingredients. The American Academy of Dermatology has documented how harsh surfactants strip natural oils from textured hair specifically, and that research lines up with what our team kept seeing in practice. So clean ingredients became the baseline, not a selling point.

On reviews, we say what we actually think. If a product underdelivered, that goes in the review. If it only works for certain curl patterns or hair densities, we say that too rather than writing something vague enough to apply to everyone. Some links on the site are affiliate links and we disclose that clearly, because the trust this site runs on is worth more than any commission. The inclusivity piece matters to us practically, not just in principle. Curly hair runs from 2A waves to 4C coils and everything sitting between those two points, and the products and routines that work at one end of that range can genuinely damage hair at the other. Our Hair Care and Skin Care recommendations reflect that range because our team actually covers it. Fine wavy hair and dense coily hair both get specific, honest guidance here, not recycled generic advice dressed up differently.

Things People Usually Ask Us