What Is Hair Extension Tape Made Of?

Jan 23, 2021|

What Is Hair Extension Tape Made Of?

What is hair extension tape made out of? Our Beautify extension tapes are made of a modified acrylic adhesive coated onto a plastic film carrier and protected by a release liner. That’s the technical answer. The answer that we know to feel truest to us is that our tapes are made of the magic of science and innovation.

If any of the above technical answers didn’t help, don’t worry. The explanations below hopefully should clear things up. For the rest of this blog, we’re talking about the actual materials of tape. These include the adhesive, what’s called a carrier, and a liner.

Modified Acrylic Adhesive

Beautify’s catalog includes eight double-sided tapes and one single-sided tape. That means, on all but our Single-Sided Natural Hold there is an adhesive on both sides. Think about what extensions need to be able to hold up against: showering, running, pulling, pressing, humidity, dryness, heat, cold, sunlight, UV, oxidation, etc. All the different fashion accessories from hats to scarves would be another long list of different demands.

To be able to withstand such varied, harsh conditions, we’ve created tapes with modified acrylic adhesive. These adhesives tend to offer the best quality for the most salon-friendly prices.

We’ve made them to account for all kinds of different conditions, surfaces, and lifestyles. Every Beautify tape is latex-free and safe for the hair. In fact, half of our tapes are hypoallergenic and one is even medical grade. We made sure to offer these even though Beautify tape should never interact with skin.

Other traits of the modified acrylic adhesives that we use includes offering reliably strong holds with excellent performance in changing and challenging environments. Could you imagine trying to keep a piece of Scotch tape working properly in the shower?

Our acrylic adhesives also offer a great immediate bond to the extension wefts. This comes in handy if your clients have to leave the salon and wade through a passing storm. That said, of course, tapes still need time to build to their full strength. After about an hour, our tapes are at 75% their ultimate strength. At 24 hours, they’re between 90% and 100% full strength. But since they are not completely at 100% yet, we always suggest that you encourage your clients to wait 48 hours before washing their hair.

Film Carrier

A tape’s carrier, also called a backing, is the material that literally carries the adhesives. They are what give the tape its structure. On double-sided tape, the carrier is in the exact center of the tape, holding the two adhesive layers on both sides of itself. On single-sided tape, the carrier is the non-sticky side of the tape.

All of our extension tapes’ carriers are microscopically thin. Almost all of them are ultra-thin, transparent plastic film. Our Lace Front extension tape’s carrier is more of a mesh construction that requires careful application to avoid tearing. The rest of our tapes have either stiff or stretchable plastic film carriers.

The plastic film carriers make our tapes more durable, capable of being stretched without tearing (again, besides Lace Front). They also provide our tapes with heat resistant qualities, as well as chemical resistance to sulfate-free shampoos.

This is as good a place as any to remind you to ask your clients to only use sulfate-free shampoos. The sulfates in shampoos can weaken a tape’s hold and even cause it to fail. But sulfate-free shampoos tend to work great without compromising the tape’s performance.

Also, while we’re mentioning shampoos, we should probably also touch on proper conditioner use. Make sure to remind your client only to use conditioners on the length of their hair. If they apply conditioner at the roots, the chemicals then reach the tape. Most conditioners have silicone which makes the hair feel silky, but silicone is incredibly tough for most tapes to stick to. If silicone gets onto the tape, then it could compromise the tape’s hold.

Release Liner

Liners are probably one of the more familiar parts of tape. Anyone who has needed a bandage has had to peel away the white liners first. Liners have the simple but vital job of protecting the adhesive until the time of application.

We use liners with a release coating that makes it more stylist-friendly to remove. Our liners come in different colors based on which tape you use: