How Long Do Hair Extensions Last? Every Type, Real Numbers

Search this question and you get the same table on every result. Six methods, a month range beside each one, then a list of care tips. This guide carries that table too. It also covers the part that moves you from the bottom of a range to the top, which happens at a factory, months before your stylist opens the packet.

Each method has two numbers: how often it goes back up, and how long the hair itself stays usable.

Those ranges are self-published by salons and extension sellers, and that includes us. No independent study measures how long a bundle survives in salon use, and we have not run one either. Treat the table as a starting range. The rest of this guide is about what moves you inside it.

A tape-in installation lasts 6 to 8 weeks. Tape-in hair lasts 6 to 12 months. Both sentences get quoted as answers to the same question, which is where most of the confusion around extension lifespan comes from.

Your stylist moves wefts and tape-ins up because your own hair grew out from the scalp. After 6 to 8 weeks the row sits lower than it did and starts to show. The extension hair comes off, gets cleaned, and goes back on. Same hair, new position.

Keratin bonds work differently. The bond has to be broken to remove them and the tip is spent, so the 3 to 6 month figure covers the whole life of that set. Nano tips and micro links sit in between. The ring reopens and gets reused, and the hair usually gives out before the ring does.

Bleaching removes the lipid layer that lets strands slide past each other. A 2025 open-access review in Dermatology Research and Practice puts a number on it: "More than 80% of 18-MEA is removed in a single bleaching treatment", and the paper describes the result as a more porous cuticle with higher surface friction. Friction is what tangling is.

So a 613 bundle starts its life with less runway than a #1B bundle from the same factory. When a blonde set feels finished at 5 months and the natural black set is still going at 10, that is the reason, and your washing routine had very little to do with it.

Remy hair is hair where every strand in the bundle runs root to tip in the same direction. Non-remy hair is collected loose, from brushes and salon floors, and gets sorted by length, with direction ignored.

When directions are mixed, the cuticle scales on one strand run against the scales on the next every time the hair moves. That is friction again, and it shows up as matting at the nape after a few weeks. We covered the terminology in what remy hair actually means and the sourcing side in raw hair vs virgin hair.

Cheap hair often ships with a silicone coating on it. In your hand on day one it feels heavy, smooth and expensive. A few washes later the coating is gone and what is left is the hair you actually bought.

This is the complaint that runs through stylist groups every week, worded as hair that fades out or goes dry at the 3 month mark. At month 3 the coating finished coming off. The hair underneath was always that hair.

The hair did not get worse. It got honest.

There is a cheap way to catch it before you commit to a full order, and it is in section 07.

Drawn type describes how much of a bundle keeps its full length down to the end. Single drawn tapers toward the tail. Double drawn holds thickness further down. Super double drawn holds it further still.

All three describe the shape of the bundle. Whether the strand was healthy when it was cut is a separate spec, and that spec is the one that decides lifespan. A super double drawn bundle made from hair that has been coloured and permed for years will give out before a double drawn bundle made from hair that has never been near a salon.

Buyers compare grade names across two vendors and believe they have compared quality. They have compared thickness.

1. Order three grades from the same factory at once One sample tells you what that factory calls good. Three tell you what the gaps between their grades feel like, which is the only way to translate their grade names into your own hands.
2. Wash each one 10 times The way your client will wash it, heat included. Write down which wash it starts catching on. Coated hair usually announces itself somewhere in that run.
3. Ask for a video of someone holding the hair Watch the tail of the bundle, and watch what the hair does when a hand runs down it and lets go. Stripped and coated hair separates slowly and stays where it was pushed.
4. Keep one strand from every sample Labelled, in an envelope. It costs nothing and it is what turns a vague feeling about batch two into a comparison you can put in front of a supplier.

We give this advice knowing it costs us the bigger first order. A buyer who guesses on grade one time usually does not come back, so the sample sale is the cheaper outcome for both sides.

One of our UK buyers asked for that video three times before he paid, and never once asked for a certificate. His words were "just want to see the quality of the hair."

Salon owners leave a vendor at the second order. Batch two behaves differently from batch one, the client has already booked her move-up, and there is no version of that conversation that goes well.

Three things are worth writing down every time a box arrives: the weight on your own scale, the tail thickness held against the strand you kept from the last batch, and how it behaves after the fifth wash. A vendor whose batches drift will show it in one of those three inside two orders.

The hair is cut from women in northern Vietnam. We buy it, sort it, and process it in our own factory, through our 6-step production process: sourcing, sorting and aligning cuticles, natural air drying, bleaching and colouring, quality inspection, and extension production.

Air drying on bamboo racks takes longer than heat drying. It also leaves the cuticle where it is, which is the layer everything in section 03 depends on.

We do the bleaching and colouring in-house. Most Vietnamese factories do not, which is why custom colours are hard to find at this quality tier, and it is also why we know how much lift a given bundle has been through before it ships.

• Ready to ship, 1 to 2 days Natural black machine weft, 16 to 26 inches, 100 grams, in double drawn and super double drawn.
• Made to order, 10 to 12 working days Everything outside that list. Tell us the texture and colour before you pay and we will say which bucket your order falls into.
• Testing minimum, 1 bundle at 100g At normal price. The sample and the minimum order are the same thing, which is deliberate.

Standard production runs 8 to 32 inches, with 34 and 36 inches on request, though stock is limited at those two lengths and lead time runs longer.

Channel NewsAsia filmed inside the factory. NPO Netherlands filmed there as well. Both broadcasts are public. We have held Alibaba Verified Supplier status for 7 years.

There is a limit to what any of that proves, and it is worth saying plainly. We can show you the sorting floor, the drying racks and the finished bundle. We cannot show you a certificate that says one donor, and neither can anyone else in this industry.