Saran vs Acrylic Yarn for Doll Hair

To give you an idea of the two materials, here is an example of a doll with rooted saran hair(left) and a doll with acrylic hair (right).

Saran is the typical factory doll hair. It's easy to work with and doesn't take hours of processing like acrylic will. It is also a lot stronger than acrylic, and if you glue it down well, you shouldn't worry about it coming out after you've rerooted it.

However, saran strands are not to scale with a Barbie or Monster High (to name some examples), and you are not going to be able to style it as easily. I think we've all be frustrated at one time or another because we couldn't give our Barbie a decent looking braid or bun.

Saran also requires heat for it to stay down or to retain curls. In doing so, you have to be careful. This hair type will burn, shrivel, and or melt if you're not careful with a hair straightener, curler, or boiling water (I talk more about this in my post about rerooting hair). However, this will hold a shape with heat alone and stay pretty strong.

Because of it's bulk, stiffness, and its need for heat, I wouldn't recommend using saran for wigs. It is great for rerooting, though!

A good place to buy saran hair or similar hair types like nylon is Dollyhair.com. There are also plenty of vendors selling custom doll hair on Etsy.

So to recap:

If you're going for realism, and you don't mind the extra work, use acrylic yarn. I loooove this stuff. It's super affordable, it looks better, it's easy to style, heat resistant, the list goes on. Just look how much better Legolas's hair looks than Fashionista #138's. The saran doesn't look bad, but acrylic looks amazing.

Not only is acrylic yarn the perfect scale for doll hair strands, making for beautifully proportionate braids, it's posable. Yeah. You can pull it up to the side like it's being blown in the wind, and it stays there! Case in point:

And unlike saran, acrylic fiber is much tougher against heat. This is great for creating soft, bouncy curls that will hold a shape.

I've never had an issue with acrylic burning, though I wouldn't push your luck, just in case.

You can easily style with water as well.

This stuff sounds good to be true, right? So what are the cons? Acrylic fiber takes a lot of work. Here's a brief overview of how to get yarn to turn into doll hair:

• Get some acrylic yarn from your local craft store (Dollar Tree even has it in limited colors)

• Cut and tie small bunches of yarn to some kind of stick like a paintbrush or a barbeque skewer.

• Unravel each string of yarn

• Brush it out with a cat brush until it's a big poof

• Straighten it with a hair straightener

It takes a while, but if you watch a movie when tying and unraveling the yarn, it's not an issue.

You're definitely going to get way more bang for your buck with yarn. When you buy saran online, you only get enough to root one doll head. DollyHair.com charges $6.25 for enough medium-length hair to root one Barbie. Meanwhile, you can get a jumbo roll of Red Heart yarn for $6, and it will last you for literal years.

This is also great because you have plenty to experiment and learn with. It's okay if you botch a wig and need to throw it away. You don't have to worry about waste when you have more material than you may ever use.

A drawback to yarn is that there are a limited amount of hair colors. I guess people aren't interested in knitting with various tones of brown and beige. In the end, you can always use fabric dye to get the shades you looking for, but it would be nice to skip that step seeing as how it already takes a lot of work to get hair.

You are also going to face a limit with how long you can get this type of hair. When brushing it out, a large portion of the yarn is going to come off with the cat brush. This is normal, but you're only going to be able to get about waist-length hair on a doll. If you want the hair to be longer, Hextian does have a method for creating extensions in this video.

Recap:

Both are great, and whatever material you choose will be according to your needs and artistic style. I hope this helps!

Love,

Haley

#dollrepaints #howtorepaintdolls #dollrepainting #repaintingtips #customdolls #customactionfigures #custombarbies #custommonsterhigh #blog #artblog #customcollectables #artdolls #dollart #Mrsuperclear #msc #rerooting #toycollector #Etsy #Etsyseller #monsterhigh #barbie #balljointeddoll #bjd #dollhair #customdollhair