This is a bit of a companion piece to doll hair re-rooting articles. If you haven’t already, check them out to learn all about how to re-root!

The average human head (an average scalp measures approximately 120 square inches or 770 cm²) has about 100,000 hair follicles (Gray 2003). Each follicle can grow about 20 individual hairs in a person’s lifetime (About 2007). Average hair loss is around 100 strands a day.

Don’t start counting each individual Saran or Nylon hair now but expert doll hair re-rooters will generally have smaller spaces in between each re-root hole in order to mimic real hair on a human head as close as possible. The key to a perfect re-root is understanding how hair works.

Source: Modern Aesthetics – Hair Loss Management in Women

Ideally one would want to re-root a doll head one follicle at a time but realistically, no one in their right mind should and actually doing so would drive anyone crazy from the process. Hence, we make do by poking 16-20 strands of hair (if you go by the re-root tool method: 8-20 strands of hair folded in half) and space the holes out in such a way that the scalp would be as invisible as possible.

The most common types of re-root pattern done on dolls are the middle part and the side part. They are based on human hair growth patterns as evidenced by the fact that most people have a naturally occurring middle or side part.

Source: Understanding Hair Growth Patterns- The Key to The System – NicolasHairSF

Middle Part

Source: tsubasa_ozora.rm – Flickr – Photo Sharing!

Side Part

Source: tsubasa_ozora.rm – Flickr – Photo Sharing!

The Anatomy of a Re-root pattern

An important factor to consider is whether a doll’s hair is going to be restyled or not. Their hairstyle dictates the root pattern on their scalps. For most dolls, it only really matters that hair is rooted along their hairline and the rest is a variation on this concept.

Dolls with a permanent pony tail will generally have the pattern as shown below:

The downside on only having hair along the hairline is that it tends to expose the baldness below which is necessitates rerooting a filler section which fills in the gaps. The crown is right about where a hair part line ends.

Middle Part examples:

Side Part examples:

For hair styles that have forced part lines like pigtails, the thatched part line is extended. Since hairstyles like pigtails tend to be permanent, creating a filler layer is optional.

Examples:

Which is why when you have very specialized hairstyles like cornrows, it isn’t necessary to have any fillers:

Examples:

Most people generally prefer thicker hair on their dolls because they do tend to be attractive but depending on the hair style you have planned for your dolly, you may not need to necessarily need more hair.

I think I may have mentioned this bit of info in previous hair re-rooting articles but it also helps to get to know the type of fiber you’re planning to use to re-root with. Saran comes in thin strands so you’ll end up using more strands in a plug compared to Nylon which has thicker strands. This coincides with the aspect of how Blondes tend to have more hair than a red head because they have thinner strands of hair. With dolls, it all comes down to how well you’re covering up the scalp!

Further reading: